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Young parent's past a mystery (Family Law)

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 05:52:00 GMT
Tags: baby, beaconjournal, canton, charged, family, htm, http, law, mld, mystery, ohio, parent, parents, son, starving, tangled, tree, woman

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/8246500.htm

Young parent's past a mystery

Canton woman charged with starving baby son has tangled family tree

By Ed Meyer

Beacon Journal staff writer

CANTON - She grew up as a child no one wanted.

And they say she has no memory of her own parents.

Until the age of 7, she apparently bounced around Ohio from one foster home to
the next, although nobody seems to have kept track of how many homes there
were.

Neither is it clear how her formative years unfolded after that in the homes
she knew in Texas and Florida.

But today, as 19-year-old Juanita Johnson-Millender faces the possibility of
execution if convicted for the Jan. 27 starvation death of her 17-month-old
son, Joshua, those bits and pieces of her history may become important.

Stark County authorities and family members involved in the tragic case say a
precise timetable for where life took her has been difficult to pinpoint.

She was born in Cuyahoga County, they think.

And when she finally was old enough to have a place of her own, she and her two
young sons settled into a dingy apartment on Alan Page Drive in southeast
Canton.

Between those two benchmarks in her life, little seems clear.

The Alan Page Drive apartment is where her youngest son, 17-month-old Joshua
Rumph, was found lifeless in his crib in the early evening of Jan. 28 with a
full bottle of diluted milk underneath his pillow.

He weighed 10 pounds, 4 ounces, and according to authorities, had not been
given any solid food since New Year's Eve.

How could such a thing happen?

Lack of details on past

He grants it is only a theory, but Randall B. Muth, senior attorney with the
Child Protective Services Division of the county's Department of Job and Family
Services, says he suspects the woman had no true bonding with Joshua -- nor
with her surviving son, 2 -year-old Jeremiah Rumph -- because of the endless
rejection she experienced in her own childhood.

Jeremiah's paternal grandfather, Gary Rumph of Akron, shares that view.

``I don't think Juanita is mature as a young adult,'' he said. ``I think she
has a lot of personal issues with the relationships she had in the past with
foster homes.

``She didn't have a father figure in her life. I think she was reaching out for
love in all the wrong places, to be honest. I really hope she can get some
psychological help, because I think she needs it.''

She apparently was adopted twice -- once in her early years in Cuyahoga County
and then again when she was 13, by Muriel Millender, formerly of Canton.

But whatever facts may be contained within whatever Cuyahoga County adoption
records there may be, Muth said, they are beyond his reach because they were
sealed by a judge.

At some point, though, Muth said the youngster apparently attended Lehman
Middle School in Canton, and yet the school principal, Zettie Sims, who has
been there since 1995, said he has no recollection of her at all.

Officials in charge of the district school records, citing confidentiality
requirements, will not release any information about how far she progressed --
not, at least, without Johnson-Millender's signed approval.

And one of her court-appointed lawyers, Allyson J. Blake of the Stark County
Public Defender's Office, said her client has no comment on any aspect of the
case and will not consent to an interview.

She remains in the Stark County Jail in lieu of a $500,000 cash bond, under
indictment for aggravated murder with death penalty specifications in her son's
death.

Canton police detectives, who interviewed her on two separate occasions the
night she was arrested, compiled a 73-page transcript from the tape recordings,
Muth said.

But the police, too, are remaining tight-lipped, refusing to comment on the
case before it goes to trial.

Thus far, Johnson-Millender's only input during court proceedings came on March
16 when Family Court Judge John R. Hoffman approved the placement of her
surviving son, Jeremiah, in the home of his paternal grandfather, Gary Rumph,
42, and his wife, Phyllis, 41. Blake, the public defender, said
Johnson-Millender approved of Jeremiah's placement with them. ``She believes
the child has responded to Mr. Rumph and believes he should stay there,'' Blake
said.

Family tree

If the missing pieces of Juanita Johnson-Millender's life seem confusing,
though, so is her placement in the portions of her family tree that are known.

For Muriel Millender -- who adopted her when she was 13 -- is also the mother
of Madeline J. Rumph.

And Madeline Rumph, the first wife of Gary Rumph, is the mother of Jamarr
Rumph, who is said to be the father of both of Johnson-Millender's children.

That means Johnson-Millender's adoptive sister, Madeline, is both the aunt and
the paternal grandmother of Johnson-Millender's children.

But the confusion doesn't end there.

Even though the records say Jamarr Rumph is the ``established father'' of
Jeremiah -- who was born in July 2001, when Johnson-Millender was 17 -- the
same record notes that Jamarr Rumph refused to sign Joshua's birth certificate
in August 2002 ``because he does not believe he is the biological father.''

Jamarr Rumph, like Johnson-Millender, is 19.

He lives in the Jacksonville, Fla., area with his maternal grandmother, Muriel
Millender.

And according to his father, Gary Rumph, he is enrolled in a trade school
there, learning to be a carpenter.

He has not returned phone messages seeking comment on the case.

On Feb. 3, though, when Joshua was buried after a graveside service in Canton,
Jamarr Rumph was there.

Afterward, his father said, he took him to the bus station for the long ride
back to Jacksonville.

Boys' early lives

The best clues as to what happened to Joshua may well come through tracing the
travails of his older brother, Jeremiah.

In January 2002, when Jeremiah was only 6 months old, Job and Family Services
records show he was placed in the legal custody of Madeline J. Rumph, Gary
Rumph's first wife.

According to the records, Madeline Rumph, who is now 42, wanted custody because
the child's father, Jamarr Rumph, is her son, and the child's mother,
Johnson-Millender, was incapable of handling him.

Shortly after Madeline Rumph gained custody, Johnson-Millender moved to Florida
to be with Jamarr Rumph. It was there, the state records claim, that she became
pregnant with Joshua.

Then, when Johnson-Millender returned to Stark County to attend Jeremiah's
first birthday in July 2002, the records state she gave birth to Joshua, who
was two months premature.

Nine months later, in April 2003, Johnson-Millender and her two children took
up residence with Madeline Rumph -- her adoptive sister and their grandmother.

Later that same month, the records state Johnson-Millender obtained her own
housing on the second floor of an apartment building in the Alan Page Drive
complex.

By this time, according to the records, she was caring for both of her sons.
But then some unexplained thing happened, causing the mother to ask Madeline
Rumph to again take Jeremiah.

Finally, the records state, Madeline Rumph and Johnson-Millender worked out an
arrangement whereby Johnson-Millender had Jeremiah four or five days a week and
Madeline Rumph had him on days off from her job as a staff supervisor at the
county's Juvenile Attention Center.

In November of 2003, all of Jeremiah's belongings were at Johnson-Millender's
apartment.

A month earlier, when Joshua was seen at a physician's office for treatment of
asthma, records show he weighed 17.7 pounds.

And 17 weeks later, he was dead.

End of Joshua's life

According to caseworkers, Johnson-Millender stopped feeding him solid food on
New Year's Eve because the child was constantly ill, and she said she was
``tired of cleaning up puke.''

On the last night of Joshua's life, Jan. 27, Johnson-Millender told caseworkers
she and the two boys were at a friend's house ``and the children played.''

She said she was at her friend's house for four hours and Jeremiah had corn
dogs, fish, shrimp and onion rings for dinner.

When she returned to her apartment, she told caseworkers, she put Joshua to bed
between 7 and 8 p.m., giving him a bottle of half water and half milk.

Jeremiah, she said, went to bed at 10:30 p.m.

An hour later, according to the mother's account, she returned to Joshua's room
and found he was not breathing.

The records state she ``couldn't open his hand and his eyes wouldn't close.''

Seeing that, the records state: ``Mother knew he was dead and sat up all night
and smoked cigarettes.''

It was not until 4:50 p.m. the next afternoon, Jan. 28, that someone -- not
Johnson-Millender -- called 911.

Muth, the Protective Services lawyer, said Johnson-Millender and a friend had
spent hours together playing video games at the apartment. The friend, he said,
finally called a relative, and the relative came to the apartment, saw the
child dead in his urine-soaked crib and called police.

Muth said when he saw the postmortem photos of Joshua, he wept.

``I'm not afraid to admit it,'' Muth said. ``Ten years of doing this, and this
one got to me. This one really got to me. This was just 30 days of torture.''

The photos of the child were an issue at the March 16 hearing in which Judge
Hoffman approved Jeremiah's placement with Gary and Phyllis Rumph.

Denise Duffy, a Job and Family Services case investigator, said she showed them
to Gary and Phyllis Rumph.

They were so shocked by what they saw, Duffy testified, that she was convinced
they had no knowledge of the conditions that led to the child's death.

``We have satisfied ourselves that Gary and Phyllis Rumph did not know, nor
should they have known, of Joshua's dire condition,'' Muth said.

Jeremiah, meanwhile, is doing as well as expected, Muth said. The child has
significant hearing impairment and cannot speak, he said.

But Phyllis Rumph already has made plans to take leave from her job to care for
Jeremiah, taking him for therapy at the Northeast Ohio Behavioral Health
facility in Akron.

She and her husband hope to adopt him.

``I'm not old yet,'' she said. ``With the help of the Lord, I'm going to see to
it that he gets all the care he needs.''

-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown

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  • Comments
  • Mon, 22 Mar 2004 06:30:00 GMT(1)
  • Thanks. This is my hometown and I've been following the case since it
    started. Most of this stuff I was unaware of--the details that is. The
    whole famliy tree is is so confuisng, and has been written up in the local
    press, but not in this much detail. (for some reason the Beacon Journal
    handles these kind of cases better than the Rep.). People are ready to
    string this woman up to the nearest tree and for some reason ascribe all the
    problems to Lamarr Rumpf for living in Florida.

    Marley

    "LilMtnCbn" <lilmtncbn@lawknowledge.org.aol.comnospam> wrote in message
    news:20040322085227.23388.00000177@lawknowledge.org.mb-m15.aol.com... http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/8246500.htm Young parent's past a mystery Canton woman charged with starving baby son has tangled family tree By Ed Meyer Beacon Journal staff writer CANTON - She grew up as a child no one wanted. And they say she has no memory of her own parents. Until the age of 7, she apparently bounced around Ohio from one foster
    home to the next, although nobody seems to have kept track of how many homes there were. Neither is it clear how her formative years unfolded after that in the
    homes she knew in Texas and Florida. But today, as 19-year-old Juanita Johnson-Millender faces the possibility
    of execution if convicted for the Jan. 27 starvation death of her
    17-month-old son, Joshua, those bits and pieces of her history may become important. Stark County authorities and family members involved in the tragic case
    say a precise timetable for where life took her has been difficult to pinpoint. She was born in Cuyahoga County, they think. And when she finally was old enough to have a place of her own, she and
    her two young sons settled into a dingy apartment on Alan Page Drive in southeast Canton. Between those two benchmarks in her life, little seems clear. The Alan Page Drive apartment is where her youngest son, 17-month-old
    Joshua Rumph, was found lifeless in his crib in the early evening of Jan. 28 with
    a full bottle of diluted milk underneath his pillow. He weighed 10 pounds, 4 ounces, and according to authorities, had not been given any solid food since New Year's Eve. How could such a thing happen? Lack of details on past He grants it is only a theory, but Randall B. Muth, senior attorney with
    the Child Protective Services Division of the county's Department of Job and
    Family Services, says he suspects the woman had no true bonding with Joshua --
    nor with her surviving son, 2 -year-old Jeremiah Rumph -- because of the
    endless rejection she experienced in her own childhood. Jeremiah's paternal grandfather, Gary Rumph of Akron, shares that view. ``I don't think Juanita is mature as a young adult,'' he said. ``I think
    she has a lot of personal issues with the relationships she had in the past
    with foster homes. ``She didn't have a father figure in her life. I think she was reaching
    out for love in all the wrong places, to be honest. I really hope she can get some psychological help, because I think she needs it.'' She apparently was adopted twice -- once in her early years in Cuyahoga
    County and then again when she was 13, by Muriel Millender, formerly of Canton. But whatever facts may be contained within whatever Cuyahoga County
    adoption records there may be, Muth said, they are beyond his reach because they
    were sealed by a judge. At some point, though, Muth said the youngster apparently attended Lehman Middle School in Canton, and yet the school principal, Zettie Sims, who
    has been there since 1995, said he has no recollection of her at all. Officials in charge of the district school records, citing confidentiality requirements, will not release any information about how far she
    progressed -- not, at least, without Johnson-Millender's signed approval. And one of her court-appointed lawyers, Allyson J. Blake of the Stark
    County Public Defender's Office, said her client has no comment on any aspect of
    the case and will not consent to an interview. She remains in the Stark County Jail in lieu of a $500,000 cash bond,
    under indictment for aggravated murder with death penalty specifications in her
    son's death. Canton police detectives, who interviewed her on two separate occasions
    the night she was arrested, compiled a 73-page transcript from the tape
    recordings, Muth said. But the police, too, are remaining tight-lipped, refusing to comment on
    the case before it goes to trial. Thus far, Johnson-Millender's only input during court proceedings came on
    March 16 when Family Court Judge John R. Hoffman approved the placement of her surviving son, Jeremiah, in the home of his paternal grandfather, Gary
    Rumph, 42, and his wife, Phyllis, 41. Blake, the public defender, said Johnson-Millender approved of Jeremiah's placement with them. ``She
    believes the child has responded to Mr. Rumph and believes he should stay there,''
    Blake said. Family tree If the missing pieces of Juanita Johnson-Millender's life seem confusing, though, so is her placement in the portions of her family tree that are
    known. For Muriel Millender -- who adopted her when she was 13 -- is also the
    mother of Madeline J. Rumph. And Madeline Rumph, the first wife of Gary Rumph, is the mother of Jamarr Rumph, who is said to be the father of both of Johnson-Millender's
    children. That means Johnson-Millender's adoptive sister, Madeline, is both the aunt
    and the paternal grandmother of Johnson-Millender's children. But the confusion doesn't end there. Even though the records say Jamarr Rumph is the ``established father'' of Jeremiah -- who was born in July 2001, when Johnson-Millender was 17 --
    the same record notes that Jamarr Rumph refused to sign Joshua's birth
    certificate in August 2002 ``because he does not believe he is the biological
    father.'' Jamarr Rumph, like Johnson-Millender, is 19. He lives in the Jacksonville, Fla., area with his maternal grandmother,
    Muriel Millender. And according to his father, Gary Rumph, he is enrolled in a trade school there, learning to be a carpenter. He has not returned phone messages seeking comment on the case. On Feb. 3, though, when Joshua was buried after a graveside service in
    Canton, Jamarr Rumph was there. Afterward, his father said, he took him to the bus station for the long
    ride back to Jacksonville. Boys' early lives The best clues as to what happened to Joshua may well come through tracing
    the travails of his older brother, Jeremiah. In January 2002, when Jeremiah was only 6 months old, Job and Family
    Services records show he was placed in the legal custody of Madeline J. Rumph, Gary Rumph's first wife. According to the records, Madeline Rumph, who is now 42, wanted custody
    because the child's father, Jamarr Rumph, is her son, and the child's mother, Johnson-Millender, was incapable of handling him. Shortly after Madeline Rumph gained custody, Johnson-Millender moved to
    Florida to be with Jamarr Rumph. It was there, the state records claim, that she
    became pregnant with Joshua. Then, when Johnson-Millender returned to Stark County to attend Jeremiah's first birthday in July 2002, the records state she gave birth to Joshua,
    who was two months premature. Nine months later, in April 2003, Johnson-Millender and her two children
    took up residence with Madeline Rumph -- her adoptive sister and their
    grandmother. Later that same month, the records state Johnson-Millender obtained her
    own housing on the second floor of an apartment building in the Alan Page
    Drive complex. By this time, according to the records, she was caring for both of her
    sons. But then some unexplained thing happened, causing the mother to ask
    Madeline Rumph to again take Jeremiah. Finally, the records state, Madeline Rumph and Johnson-Millender worked
    out an arrangement whereby Johnson-Millender had Jeremiah four or five days a
    week and Madeline Rumph had him on days off from her job as a staff supervisor at
    the county's Juvenile Attention Center. In November of 2003, all of Jeremiah's belongings were at
    Johnson-Millender's apartment. A month earlier, when Joshua was seen at a physician's office for
    treatment of asthma, records show he weighed 17.7 pounds. And 17 weeks later, he was dead. End of Joshua's life According to caseworkers, Johnson-Millender stopped feeding him solid food
    on New Year's Eve because the child was constantly ill, and she said she was ``tired of cleaning up puke.'' On the last night of Joshua's life, Jan. 27, Johnson-Millender told
    caseworkers she and the two boys were at a friend's house ``and the children played.'' She said she was at her friend's house for four hours and Jeremiah had
    corn dogs, fish, shrimp and onion rings for dinner. When she returned to her apartment, she told caseworkers, she put Joshua
    to bed between 7 and 8 p.m., giving him a bottle of half water and half milk. Jeremiah, she said, went to bed at 10:30 p.m. An hour later, according to the mother's account, she returned to Joshua's
    room and found he was not breathing. The records state she ``couldn't open his hand and his eyes wouldn't
    close.'' Seeing that, the records state: ``Mother knew he was dead and sat up all
    night and smoked cigarettes.'' It was not until 4:50 p.m. the next afternoon, Jan. 28, that someone --
    not Johnson-Millender -- called 911. Muth, the Protective Services lawyer, said Johnson-Millender and a friend
    had spent hours together playing video games at the apartment. The friend, he
    said, finally called a relative, and the relative came to the apartment, saw the child dead in his urine-soaked crib and called police. Muth said when he saw the postmortem photos of Joshua, he wept. ``I'm not afraid to admit it,'' Muth said. ``Ten years of doing this, and
    this one got to me. This one really got to me. This was just 30 days of
    torture.'' The photos of the child were an issue at the March 16 hearing in which
    Judge Hoffman approved Jeremiah's placement with Gary and Phyllis Rumph. Denise Duffy, a Job and Family Services case investigator, said she showed
    them to Gary and Phyllis Rumph. They were so shocked by what they saw, Duffy testified, that she was
    convinced they had no knowledge of the conditions that led to the child's death. ``We have satisfied ourselves that Gary and Phyllis Rumph did not know,
    nor should they have known, of Joshua's dire condition,'' Muth said. Jeremiah, meanwhile, is doing as well as expected, Muth said. The child
    has significant hearing impairment and cannot speak, he said. But Phyllis Rumph already has made plans to take leave from her job to
    care for Jeremiah, taking him for therapy at the Northeast Ohio Behavioral Health facility in Akron. She and her husband hope to adopt him. ``I'm not old yet,'' she said. ``With the help of the Lord, I'm going to
    see to it that he gets all the care he needs.'' ------------------------- A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend
    will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!" -----Unknown
  • Leave a Comment Now.

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