Within a few weeks of Eric's death, Gonzales brought the case to his mentor, Jay Gray, a partner in Noteboom and Gray, where Gonzales worked as an intern in law school. A high-test plaintiff's lawyer, Gray won a news-making $100 million jury-imposed judgment last year against the owner of a chain of substandard nursing homes.
"You read this, and you are amazed there was a child placed in that home," says Gray, patting a copy of the state's report, which sits on a huge granite conference table. "This is not a pretty picture."
Alyssa Banta
Before the funeral in March, Eric rests in his coffin while his mother, Juana Olalde, looks on.
Related Content
More About
Gray has been working to sketch in more details of life in the state-licensed Claud foster home. He hired private investigator Fred Pendergraf, a former Fort Worth cop who headed the city's Crimes Against Children unit. In his report to Gray, Pendergraf included the account of Cheryl Anne Sundstrom, a neighbor who had known Sue Claud for three years.
A 43-year-old homemaker who has raised nine children, four of whom are still home, Sundstrom told Pendergraff and the Observer that Claud would call her every day and talk for a long time. Claud, in fact, was so pesky, she inspired Sundstrom to get caller ID to cut down on their conversations.
After observing Sue Claud as a foster parent, Sundstrom is convinced she was in it for the money.
"She'd have those kids in their room 12 hours a day," Sundstrom recalls during an interview with the Observer. The neighbor says Claud would either stack pet gates two high across the bedroom door or place an ironing board across the entrance. "She told me CPS wouldn't let her have a lock on the door," Sundstrom says.
Sundstrom remembers that Sue called her one day and told her she had taped a pacifier to a 10-day-old child's face so she and her husband could get some rest. Claud had been concerned, Sundstrom says, because the baby had a doctor's appointment scheduled the next day and the tape left red marks around the baby's mouth. The appointment ended up getting canceled, Sundstrom says.
Babies were fed by simply propping the bottle up on a pillow, Sundstrom says. She adds that she once witnessed a baby vomit up its formula because Claud's feeding method sometimes didn't include burping.
The neighbor recalls the time her stepson had spent the night visiting the Clauds' son. According to Sundstrom, the boy told her that children at the Clauds were kept in their rooms so long, they were in their own waste. "The house smelled like crap," Sundstrom says. "Always."
She says that when the Clauds received Eric, Sue said she didn't really want to care for a child in a cast because she once had a child in a full body cast and he "messed his pants" and soiled the cast. She waited until her husband got home to clean it up, Sundstrom says.
The neighbor recounts that Sue once told her the family could not meet its bills without the foster-parent payments they received from CPS. And since the state money was cut off, the Clauds have held near-weekly garage sales. Sundstrom says many foster-care items -- including the bassinet in which Eric died -- have been sold.
In fact, Sundstrom says, the family is so hard-pressed now to pay its bills that Jerome and his son have also been soliciting yard-mowing work around the neighborhood.
"Sue says they need to mow so many yards to make it work," Sundstrom says. "She says she doesn't think she needs to go out and get a job. I think it's because she's too lazy."
Although Sundstrom's portrait of the Claud household is as stunning as it is consistent with some other accounts, Gray says he faces enormous hurdles in bringing legal action against the state child welfare system, which is immune from all sorts of legal claims. To bring a civil rights suit alleging deprivation of life, he must prove CPS acted with intent or gross negligence -- a very high barrier. Simple negligence isn't cause enough.
"Obviously, I want to find out why they hadn't had their foster-parent privileges taken away earlier," Gray says. "What's the deal? Are they short foster parents? Were they friends with someone?"
Gray says he is not concerned with whether the state was right in taking Eric away in the first place. "I have no complaint that in an abundance of caution, they took the child away," he insists. "If they are doing their job, the baby is gonna be safe and fine. My problem is, they took a child from an environment they thought was dangerous and put him in one they knew was dangerous. That's the big problem here."
And, for the state, it could get a whole lot bigger.
