Douglas Walker

MUNCIE – When interrogated by police last summer, Charlene Tabb maintained she knew nothing about the many scars, burns and bruises that covered her 5-year-old cousin’s body.

The 30-year-old Muncie woman is on trial for murder, charged with causing the death of young Marie Pierre, who prosecutors allege suffered through months of abuse and torture before being found dead on Tabb‘s dining room floor on June 22, 2013.

On Tuesday, prosecutors Jeffrey Arnold and Eric Hoffman showed jurors a recording of Tabb’s interview with police a few hours after Marie’s death.

In it, the Muncie woman repeatedly said she did not know how Marie had suffered her many injuries — which a pathologist said were in various stages of healing — and insisted the child was fine when she left for work that night.

Tabb’s siblings — ages 16, 14 and 11 at the time of Marie’s death — have testified during the trial that the defendant repeatedly punished Marie with beatings and other abuse, because she was angry about the little girl’s frequent bouts of nausea.

The younger two witnesses also acknowledged joining in the abuse, at Tabb’s direction, inflicting injures with tools including a hammer and pliers.

On Thursday morning, Tabb’s brother, now 15, said his younger sister had pierced one of Marie’s feet with a screwdriver the week of the child’s death.

While being questioned by police last June, Charlene Tabb maintained she was never violent with Marie.

“She’s well-behaved,” the defendant said, adding she had responded to any minor misdeeds by Marie only by talking with her young cousin, or taking her toys away for a short time.

“She hasn’t been complaining about anything,” Tabb added. “I did not punish her. ... She (is) a good child. I would never hurt her.”

Tabb — who also faces neglect and battery charges over her alleged abuse of her siblings — at first told police she was certain those children wouldn’t have harmed Marie.

But as investigators Jimmy Gibson and Robert Scaife asked increasingly pointed questions, Tabb began to suggest that perhaps her youngest sister and brother could be responsible.

“I have to find out what happened to Marie!” she said at one point. “My mom would never send all these kids with me if she didn’t trust me.”

“Well, it looks like Mom made a mistake here,” Gibson responded. Testimony has indicated Tabb’s three siblings and Marie came from Florida to live in her North Brady Street home in July 2012.

Told by police the victim appeared to have injuries to her nipples inflicted with pliers, Tabb said, “Hmm. I have no idea. ... I’m kind of shocked.”

Tabb repeatedly said her 16-year-old sister had been left in charge of the household while she worked.

Told by Gibson that the body’s condition reflected Marie had been tortured, Tabb siad, “Nobody said anything. ... She seemed happy.”

Tabb was silent for several seconds after Gibson asked when was the last time she had hugged Marie.

“They’ve been doing great,” she said of the children living in her home.

“Doesn’t sound like it,” Gibson responded. “You’ve got a little girl with all these wounds, and now she’s dead.”

A short time later, the interview took a strange turn when Tabb suddenly asked the officers, “Is Marie OK?”

“She’s passed on,” Gibson responded.

“She’s here,” Tabb responded, now in tears. “She has to be OK. She was just fine before I left for work.”

Glancing at a photograph of her cousin’s scarred hands, she said, “That’s not Marie.”

“I think she’s been living in hell for a while,” Gibson said.

The police sergeant later told Tabb that he had learned from her younger sister about the upset over Marie’s recurring nausea, which saw her vomit as many as three times a day.

“It was common to all of us,” Tabb said. “We didn’t pay any attention to that.”

Asked why she hadn’t sought medical attention for the little girl’s digestive problems, Tabb estimated the child vomited “once every three months.”

Tabb denied allegations — apparently lodged by her youngest sister, in another interview room — that she beat Marie with a belt, and forced the child to sleep on the dining room floor, where the victim’s body was found.

Gibson eventually told Tabb that she was under arrest for neglect of a dependent.

“Shame on you for not taking care of her,” the police officer told the defendant.

After the recording was played, Gibson took the witness stand and was questioned by Tabb’s attorney, Michael Quirk, who criticized the police officer for “the way you treated and talked to my client.”

Quirk said Gibson repeatedly interrupted Tabb during the interview, suggesting the police officer had made quick conclusions based on the word of “dubious” witnesses — his client’s siblings.

“That and I had a dead child,” Gibson said.

Asked whether he had been “a little bit rough” on Tabb, Gibson said, “Perhaps I was scolding her a little, I guess. I was a little upset that night.”

“Did it ever dawn on you that she might be telling the truth?” Quirk asked.

Gibson said he believed little of what Tabb said that night.

“I don’t think she cared too much for (Marie),” he added.

“And what are you basing that on?” Quirk demanded.

“Her maimed and tortured body,” the police sergeant responded.

Earlier in the day, Quirk cross-examined his client’s now-15-year-old brother. The teen’s testimony was seen by jurors via a live video link from the westside Child Advocacy Center.

The boy said that shortly before she died, Marie told him she was ‘very cold,” also saying, “I just feel weak.”

The youth had earlier acknowledged using a hammer to inflict Marie’s most serious injury — a gaping, baseball-sized wound in her buttocks — the week of her death. On Tuesday, he added that two days before Marie died, his younger sister both pierced their cousin’s foot with a screwdriver and smashed her toes with a hammer.

The abuse of Marie’s feet with the hammer was part of a “game” concocted by Charlene Tabb, all three of her siblings have testified.

After the teen said he felt remorse after abusing his young cousin, Quirk asked him, “Why did you continue to harm her in horrendous ways?”

“I don’t know,” the boy responded. “I was in way over my head. ... Sir, I was just doing what I was told.”

While Tabb and her siblings were born in Florida, one of their parents is a native of Haiti, and that is where Marie — daughter of their mother’s brother — was born in November 2007.

Tabb’s 16-year-old sister — the only one of the siblings not charged in connection with Marie’s death — told Quirk on Monday that her parents “believe in voodoo, but they don’t practice it.”

Under questioning from the defense attorney, the girl said she had heard no discussions of “Marie being possessed,” or of voodoo ties to her cousin’s abuse.

The same witness did tell Quirk that the day before Marie’s death, she saw “the devil’s face,” with red, glowing eyes, in a window of their home. The girl said she took that as an omen of bad things to come.

On Tuesday, Tabb’s brother said he had heard nothing about that claim, and also maintained “voodoo was not involved” in the brutality directed at Marie.

He also rejected Quirk’s suggestion there had been discussion in the Tabb household of “Marie coming back as a zombie.”

Also Tuesday, testimony reflected that when Charlene’s husband, Marcus Tabb, received a phone call from her siblings reporting that Marie had stopped breathing, he went to pick up his wife at the southside factory where she worked before going to the Brady Street home.

Emergency dispatchers were not called until the adults had arrived at the house and saw the girl’s remains. Marcus Tabb is set to stand trial next month on related abuse and battery charges.

Testimony will resume at 8:30 a.m. today, Delaware Circuit Court 5 Judge Thomas Cannon Jr. said. Arnold and Hoffman are expected to rest the state’s case today.

Quirk and co-counsel Ana Quirk Hunter will then begin presenting their case, expected to include testimony from Tabb’s Florida relatives.

Contact news reporter Douglas Walker at (765) 213-5851 and follow him on Twitter @DouglasWalkerSP.