Grisly Testimony in 20-Year-Old Slay Case

N E W   Y O R K, Oct. 10 -- A woman testified today that her mother andolder brother beat her 3-year-old sister to death before entombingthe body in a bedroom closet — a macabre secret the Brooklyn familykept for two decades.

“I see both of them as devils,” Sabrina Yaw, 30, said at thenon-jury murder trial in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

Asked by prosecutors to expose the family’s dark past, Yawrecalled seeing Madeline Carmichael, 61, and her son, GregoryCarmichael, 38, “standing over the child and beating the child.”The victim, she added, “screamed in pain, like a child hurtingreal bad” before the toddler dropped dead in a Brownsvilleapartment.

Dark Family SecretThe defendants have pleaded innocent to second-degree murdercharges alleging they killed Latanisha Carmichael in front of hertwin brother and Yaw, then 9, in November 1979 after the abusivesingle parent became enraged that the victim had vomited.

The pair allegedly wrapped the diapered body in plastic andstashed it in a trunk filled with mothballs to cover the odor. Itremained there for the next 20 years.

The defendants told any outsiders who asked about Latanisha thatshe was in a foster home, or had “moved south,” prosecutor BarrySchreiber said. When Sabrina asked, she was beaten into a lastingsilence, he said.

“This bizarre and unthinkable murder and its cover-up became adeep, dark family secret,” Schreiber said in opening statements.

Schreiber said that the crime might never surfaced ifLatanisha’s surviving twin, Andre — who had no memory of the victim — hadn’t contacted an aunt last year. The aunt startled him byasking if he was in touch with his twin.

That prompted Andre to confront Sabrina, who revealed the secretand agreed to go to police. Armed with a search warrant, detectivesfound the trunk in the mother’s closet last November.

Accidental Death or Faulty MemoryDefense attorneys suggested the death was an accident. Theyclaimed the murder case was solely built on the faultychildhood memories of Sabrina, and that an autopsy wasinconclusive.