Ms Louise Woodward (19), the British au pair accused of murdering a nine-month-old baby in her care, yesterday underwent more than four hours of hostile crossexamination, repeatedly denying claims that she had tossed Matthew Eappen on to a bed or dropped him on the bathroom floor because his crying upset her.
On her second day on the witness stand, Ms Woodward rejected police accounts she had admitted manhandling the child in the moments leading up to his death. But she gave another graphic demonstration of how she shook him when she said she realised something was terribly wrong.
Mr Gerry Leone, the prosecutor, took Ms Woodward back to the afternoon of February 4th when Matthew was rushed to hospital. After his nap, Ms Woodward told the court, she found him in his crib staring into space and began to worry.
"You panicked so you shook him," said the prosecutor.
"Yes."
"You were panicking so you shook him, a long, slow controlled shake, right?" insisted Mr Leone.
"No," Ms Woodward replied. "It was kind of like that," and she mimed shaking Matthew quickly and vigorously.
Standing in front of a model of a baby's brain, Mr Leone asked Ms Woodward to describe how she found Matthew that afternoon. "You told us he was staring up at you," Mr Leone said. "Not at me," she replied, "just staring."
"He appeared to vomit?"
"Something came out of his mouth," she said.
"You knew what it was?"
"I thought it was vomit."
So, Mr Leone continued, Matthew's eyes were "half-closed, he was half-blue and choking for breath and you thought he was choking on vomit?"
Ms Woodward agreed. She said she cleared his mouth as the Eappens, both doctors, had once shown her in case of emergency. "So you did CPR?" asked the prosecutor, using a term for emergency resuscitation.
"I didn't do chest compressions, I breathed into him," she said. "I thought maybe he was going to be all right."
Ms Woodward told the court she walked around the house with Matthew clapping and singing and trying to keep him awake.
Ms Woodward said when Mrs Eappen arrived home she told her Matthew had fallen the day before and might have hit his head on the playroom stairs. "You didn't tell her you dropped or tossed Matthew Eappen, did you?"
"No," said Ms Woodward, "because I didn't."
"You didn't tell her you had shaken him, did you?" pressed Mr Leone. She replied "No".
Ms Woodward then said she had told police she "popped" Matthew on to the bed. Mr Leone pretended not to understand what "popped" meant and she told him it was a British word which meant the same as "laid" or "put". "Is that why the police officers thought you said you tossed Matthew? Popped sounds a lot like tossed, doesn't it?" Ms Woodward said she didn't know.
Although the defence team was initially divided over whether to put Ms Woodward in the witness box, her testimony was strong.
Ms Woodward chose yesterday to have Massachussetts jurors decide on a charge of murder and refused to have them consider a lesser charge of manslaughter."What is your choice?" the judge asked her, after explaining the prison time served for convictions of first-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. "I choose the first option. The two murders or acquittal".