Notice from the Office of the Attorney General--Maryland

The following is an email which I sent to the office of the Attorney General of the State of Maryland, Doug Gansler. This office has ignored previous emails from me. I finally got an answer, which I have added after this copy of my email.

The response is worthless as far as offering an assistance to Elsa. But at least this time I GOT an answer.

The subject line of my email read, “Another question…”

...about Elsa Newman.
In short, what I need to know is this: do I have an ice cube's chance in hell of success in asking you to revisit this case?

I have other questions as well: Does your office consider it within the realm of professional standards and ethics to call a defendant names such as "nuts" or "delusional witch," as did Katherine Winfree in referring to Newman?

Is it within the realm of professional standards and ethics for a State's attorney to comment about the decision of Maryland's highest court by saying, "They just released the woman who wanted to kill her kids!" I thought the office of a State's attorney would be interested in truth and justice, rather than sound bites.

Is it within the realm of professional standards and ethics for the office of the State's Attorney for Montgomery County to withhold boxes of evidence--over 2000 pages which might have cleared a defendant?

I have been researching the case for close to a year now. Absolutely everything I find leads me to believe that this woman is innocent of the charges in a case where your office, as then-State's attorney, persuaded a jury to find her guilty.

Jurors themselves went so far as to say, after the first trial, that they saw no evidence of child abuse, and had they seen such evidence, they would never have decided on a guilty verdict. And the reason they never saw any such evidence? Dr. Jill Scharff refused to open her records, citing physician-client privilege. People to whom Newman's children had disclosed abuse were ignored. Authorities in the fields of psychiatry and medicine were ignored. Other authorities in the field of medicine refused to report such things as a serious cut over a little boy's eye, received when his father "knocked him off the bed."

Did anyone every try to find Anders Arestad of northern Virginia--possibly Arlington--or elsewhere in the D. C. area. This is a cameraman who has worked on such things as Starquest II--or maybe just an apprentice cameraman. If anyone in the world can testify to the fact that Arlen Slobodow sexually abused his sons, this man can--unless, of course, he is afraid either of Slobodow or of the possibility that legal authorities might discover his own part in the abuse.

Is is standard and ethical practice for one police detective named Q. Edwina Wallace to hold Newman's children virtually captive in an interrogation room from which the younger child was released only because he was afraid to ask Detective Lewis if he could use the restroom, and thus emptied his bowels into his unwear.

Is it professional standards and ethics for Detective Wallace to hold the older boy captive longer--for six hours or more--until he was unable to deal any longer with her badgering and, shame-faced and humiliated, recanted disclosures he had made to others.

Prison is a terrible place for anyone. But for an innocent person, who knows she is innocent, but is unable to do anything about it, prison is pure hell.

Yes...this smacks of anti-Semitism. Just about the only thing they haven't done to Elsa Newman yet is to send her to the "showers" with no soap...no wash cloth...no water, and only gas from the shower heads.

When I made this comment to Jewish friends today, the response was, "well...or starved her." Now that's ironic, because one thing Newman has had trouble with in Maryland Correctional Institution for Women is receiving a special diet which she needs to maintain her health. Periodically that special diet is simply disappeared.

Oh...and do you remember hearing that in the death camps of Nazi Germany the Germans confiscated eyeglasses? That's another thing Newman has difficulty with. She is supposed to be getting new glasses. She has not received the glasses. She has not even heard about them, to the best of my knowledge.

In closing, I venture to ask the same question with which I started: Do I have an ice cube's chance in hell of getting you to revisit this case?

I dare to hope that you will find in yourself enough honor and concern for insjustice that you will attempt to answer all these questions, and especially that final one. I look forward to hearing from you.


Dear Ms. O'Broken, --[Please notice how carefully this woman perused my email—so carefully that when she copied my name, she managed to misspell it.]
Thank you for contacting the Office of the Attorney General. Your email has been forwarded to me for response. The Attorney General is the legal counsel for the State of Maryland. As such, this Office provides legal advice to state agencies, department heads, investigates and prosecutes crimes against the State. The Attorney General does not have authority or jurisdiction to intervene in matters as described in your email.

Although the Office of the Attorney General does not have jurisdiction over this matter, we are aware of the record, including that Ms. Newman's case was twice reviewed by Maryland [which vacated the guilty conviction in the first trial, saying there was NO evidence to tie Newman to any conspiracy. Thus Newman is batting at lease .250] appellate courts. The evidentiary issues that you describe were fully aired. [Pardon my uncouth expression, but bullshit! For just one example of an issue that was not dealt with—the name of Anders Arestad.] Ms. Newman was appropriately prosecuted and convicted after a fair trial. [More or less “ditto” the previous comment—except for the part about Arestad. This whole “fair trial” concept is BS. In a fair trail, the prosecutor would be interested in truth, not spending her time calling the defendant names.]

Peggie McKee
Citizen Response Coordinator