Greenfield child death cold case; child abuse pediatrician testifies
MILWAUKEE - Multiple bruises on a newborn baby and fractures are part of a pattern of abuse that prosecutors say Ronald Schroeder handed out to not just the child he's accused of killing.
Video from August 24, 1991, captures the Schroeders at a video store. In that video is seven-week-old Catherine Schroeder.
"You can see her face off and on, for short periods of time," said Dr. Lynn Sheets, a professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a child abuse pediatrician.
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Ronald Schroeder
Dr. Lynn Sheets took the stand on Monday, Oct. 21.
"She is staring and really not expressive at all. Not even visually interacting with anything going on around her. Just staring," Dr. Sheets added.
Hours after that video, the Schroeders called 911. Catherine wasn't breathing. She was rushed to Children's Wisconsin.
For hours, doctors worked to resuscitate her, eventually getting a heartbeat.
Catherine
But the damage was done.
"So swollen it was actually forcing the bony plates apart," Dr. Sheets said.
It was bruised and bleeding. The doctor says Catherine had abusive head trauma, likely from shaking, slamming, or throwing the little girl.
"Are these serious injuries?" asked Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Matthew Torbenson.
Greenfield child death cold case; 2 more mothers, exes testify
Testimony resumed Friday morning, Oct. 18 in the trial of Ronald Schroeder, the man charged with homicide in the death of his infant daughter in 1991.
"These are fatal injuries," answered Dr. Sheets.
And doctors knew of serious bruising that landed Catherine in the hospital weeks earlier.
"What was going on in Catie’s brain, then?" asked defense attorney Kathleen Pakes.
Under cross-examination, Schroeder's defense suggested Catherine's injuries could have happened earlier, and gotten progressively worse.
"The traumatic event that caused that happened immediately before she [Catherine] quit breathing," said Dr. Sheets.
Prosecutors say it was a pattern of abuse seen in another child of Ronald Schroeder's years later, and physical abuse that extended beyond infants to his own wife -- and mother of Catherine.
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"He was shaking her and he was saying things. I don't remember, I'm sorry," she said, testifying to the abuse she witnessed against her daughter-in-law and Catherine's mother.
It included going along with her son, daughter-in-law and Catherine to Mexican Fiesta just days before Catherine died.
"Oh, she was beautiful," she added.
The state is expected to rest its case on Tuesday, Oct. 22.