By LISA HOFFMAN
Scripps Howard News Service

Like hundreds of other bereaved parents, Thomas and Lorrie Boettger turned to the Internet to share their sorrow after their 6-month-old son suddenly died in his sleep during a Disneyland vacation last October.

The Boettgers, of Shelton, Wash., both 38, created a Web site to honor their child, Thomas Jr., and to reach out to families who had lost babies to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which they blamed for killing their “Little Boo Man.”

Thomas Boettger's memorial Web site: After 6-month-old Thomas Boettger Jr., died suddenly last October, parents Thomas and Lorrie Boettger posted a tribute to their baby on a Web site devoted to children who died of SIDS. But now, prosecutors say his parents killed him.But prosecutors, and a coroner's toxicology report, say it was his parents who took Thomas Jr.'s life, not SIDS. The couple now sits behind bars in California, charged with murdering Thomas at a relative’s house in San Diego County by administering an overdose of over-the-counter antihistamines and sleep medication to quiet his chronic crying. Both parents have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.

While the overwhelming majority of baby deaths attributed to SIDS are tragic occurrences free from harmful intent, a disturbing number have been revealed as deliberate, criminal acts perpetrated by parents or caretakers.

In fact, a Scripps review of dozens of seemingly innocent cases has found that SIDS has frequently served as a shroud behind which murderers can hide undetected, sometimes for years.

Because forensic evidence often is scarce, the detection of a baby’s homicide by suffocation or similar means commonly depends on skilled and standardized scrutiny of the circumstances surrounding the death.

Unlike adults, a baby being smothered cannot fight back, which means physical clues of a struggle are absent. Most often there are no witnesses to the crime, and even if family members are suspicious, they frequently close ranks. Coroners find it hard to distinguish between an accidental or deliberate asphyxia, and often attach a finding of SIDS as a catch-all determination of ambiguity -- which is a defense lawyer's dream.

Many police departments provide no training in detecting circumstantial signs of foul play in these cases, or in eliciting information from parents who may or may not be suspects. Prosecutors and judges demand evidence of the intent to kill, which can be elusive and difficult to prove.

"These cases are hard, very hard," said Warren County, N.Y. sheriff Larry Cleveland, whose officers last year built a case of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide against a mother who, while intoxicated, smothered her 7-week-old son in bed. A judge threw out the charges because, he said, there was not "a scintilla of proof that the infant died of something other than natural causes."

The emotion that envelops a baby's death adds its own complications. Some police officers find the situation so upsetting that they rush an investigation just to get it over with.

"They just want to get rid of it," said Houston police officer Catheryn (cq) Gardner-Sanders, a child physical-abuse investigator for a decade and an expert who sits on Texas' child death review committee. That understandable emotion is a driving reason for training law enforcement in such cases and for the existence of a rigorous system of examining every baby death by professionals from different fields, she said.

More often than not, it is the gut feeling of a determined police officer that ultimately uncovers the deadly truth. Gardner herself pursued a cold case for five years until she could prove the official ruling that 7-month-old Joshua Austin died of SIDS was wrong. Joshua's mother eventually was convicted of causing his death by injecting the baby with insulin. Kimberly Sue Austin is now serving a 99-year prison sentence in Texas.

An investigator's instinct also solved the case of Daniel Poulin, who died two decades ago.

Jeanette Poulin, then 30, told Connecticut police she awoke around 6 a.m. on Aug. 31, 1986 and found her 6-week-old son Daniel lifeless in his crib.

Though police officers had picked up tips that Daniel and his older sister, Jennifer, had been abused in the past, they were stymied in pursuing the allegations because of a state law at the time that closed social services records to police. A medical examiner ruled Daniel had died of SIDS, effectively ending the police investigation.

When the state law was changed a decade later, Bristol police detective Roy Bredefeld looked up the Poulin file and began building a case. Finally, in June 2001 -- almost 15 years after Daniel died -- Jeanette Poulin was arrested and charged with his killing.

Poulin was sentenced in December 2002 to 15 years in prison.

Jose L. Barajas: San Pablo police officer Jose L. Barajas investigated infant deaths that were revealed to be murders. San Pablo, Calif. detective Jose Barajas was similarly troubled by the circumstances he found in September 2006 as he investigated the death of 6-week-old Darrion Johnson.

Darrion’s mother, Lavida Davis, 23, had brought her lifeless son to a hospital emergency room, saying he was found dead in his bed. Barajas’ antennae for wrongdoing first went up when Davis told a different story than her roommate about how they had spent the previous night. The roommate said the two had been out partying until 4 a.m. Davis said she had returned home at 10 p.m.

In the course of the interview, Davis told Barajas that in 2004 another son, Emmanuel Beals, was similarly found dead in his crib at just 22 days old. That set off internal alarm bells for the detective. “I felt in my gut she killed them,“ he said.

The Contra Costa County coroner was leaning toward a SIDS diagnosis, but Barajas convinced him to tag Daniel's death "undetermined" to give him time to investigate.

Fueled by a father’s empathetic emotions, Barajas, 37, hit the streets with a passion, researching Davis’ past. Finally, he and detective Erik Nilson sat down with her at the police station and laid out what they knew. It didn't take long before Davis confessed to smothering Darrion and Emmanuel by pushing their faces into a cushion or bedding.

“She said, `I did it'," Barajas recalled. “I could have fainted." Davis told the detectives it took Darrion 5 minutes to die. Emmanuel took 10.

The reason for their murders? Davis said she was tired of their crying and their demands on her time.

The mother is now fighting the murder charges and a trial date has not been set.