Shaken woman tells story of incest, babies’ deaths in Rinehart case

Posted on Mon, Apr. 19, 2010 11:55 PM

By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star

It was wrong having a baby with her father, the girl knew, but when Jack was born, she loved him as a mother should.

She tried to keep him warm in the overhead camper — the family’s home — when the 4-month-old got sick and wheezed that cold January. When baby Jack ran a high fever, she pleaded with her father for a doctor.

“I stayed up with him for two nights,” Ashley Rinehart, now 20, tearfully told a Cass County court Monday on the first day of her father’s trial.

“I just dozed for a few minutes, and when I woke up he was dead in my arms.”

As she told her story of years of alleged incest that began when she was 5 and produced four babies, her teal headband, chosen to match her blouse, bobbed with her cries.

Twenty feet away in the Harrisonville courtroom, Danial Rinehart, 49, leaned back in his chair and swiveled, peering over the top of his glasses as if listening to a stranger.

He is charged with second-degree felony murder, statutory rape and two counts each of child endangerment, incest and abandonment of a corpse.

Authorities say that DNA identifies him as the father of the babies and that he did not allow Ashley, who attended school only through the eighth grade, or any of the babies medical attention.

After his arrest in January 2009, he told police he didn’t want to take any of them to a doctor because his father had died in an ambulance.

The jury saw a video of a police interrogation in which Rinehart appeared to admit sex with his daughter but blamed his actions on medicine he took.

“It makes the back of my head swell up, and I didn’t know what I was doing,” Rinehart said.

He also said his daughters would peep at him through a hole in the wall when he took a shower and that the victim sometimes would want to have sex with him.

“How would she let you know that?” a detective asked.

“She would rub my shoulders,” Rinehart answered.

Over the years, the family, including three other daughters, moved from town to town, traveling a nomadic life in a pickup and spending nights in an overhead camper. By late 2005, the family had settled on a small farm north of Harrisonville that belonged to Danial Rinehart’s parents.

Assistant Cass County Prosecutor Scott Wright said new owners of the property found remains of two infants in chest-type coolers there.

Defense attorney Janeal Matheson said the trial, which is expected to continue at least through Thursday, would not be the “slam dunk” that prosecutors indicated it would be. She hinted that a key part of the defense would be that Jack’s death was accidental. The murder charge stems from the death of that child.

The investigation began when Hayley Rinehart, the year-younger sister of Ashley, ran away and called police from the Walmart in Harrisonville.

Their father had threatened the sisters with death if they ever revealed the abuse, Hayley said, but she couldn’t go on knowing what was happening to her sister.

The sisters also told of neglect and hunger. Authorities say Rinehart’s wife, Linda, knew of the incest but did nothing to stop it. She is charged with two counts of child endangerment and is scheduled for trial in August.

Court documents say Linda Rinehart was jealous of the relationship between her husband and daughter but helped with the deliveries of the babies.

Investigators say the first baby, Ethyl, was born in 2004 and buried in Oklahoma. Ashley was 14 at the time. The second, a boy, now 4, survives.

The last two babies were the remains found in the coolers. The jury saw graphic photos of the containers’ contents, bones and infant toys.

During her time on the witness stand, Ashley told how she buried Jack with a little stuffed bear, a Hot Wheels truck and a stocking cap with “Touchdown” on it.

The last baby, a girl, Goldie, was born April 6, 2008. Ashley had gone into labor while painting her father’s race car.

Goldie died soon after birth.

“I kept asking him (her father) if she was OK, and he said she was,” Ashley said. “But then he wrapped her in a blanket and left her at my feet.”

The judge stopped her testimony several times so Ashley could compose herself.

Danial Rinehart also talked about the ordeal of burying the dead babies. The detective told him he could have called a mortuary, and they would have taken care of all that.

“They would have?” Rinehart asked.

“Sure,” the detective answered. “But they might have asked some questions.”

From: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/19/1888689/shaken-woman-tells-story-of-incest.html