Dec 5, 1999, Pg. A01

PART I: When a Mother's Care Turns Deadly

SPECIAL REPORT: How Charlene Wise, Who Killed her Child, Lives with Herself.

By Shankar Vedantam

As soon as he entered the house at 3017 W. Harper St., Sgt. William Kelly was certain he would not find a body. There was no smell of decomposing flesh.

Kelly had been dispatched just after 9 a.m., when police received word from a teenager: She said they would find the corpse of her 5-year-old sister inside her mother's house in North Philadelphia.

The front door was locked. Kelly circled to the back. A second-floor window was open. He hoisted himself onto a shed and over the sill.

He was in a bedroom. The room was bare. He stepped carefully over the wood floorboards. The house appeared deserted. He looked behind doors, searched closets, peeked inside the bathtub.

Downstairs, the living room and kitchen were empty. He opened the basement door and peered into darkness. There was no bulb in the light socket. Kelly climbed down cautiously. The last step was broken. Weak light came through a window that had been nailed shut. A pile of rubbish lay under the stairs. A broom handle was propped against a wall.

He went back up, unlocked the front door and stepped outside. Denisha Wise, who had called police, had arrived. Kelly radioed in that the house was clear. Then he approached Denisha.

"We haven't found anything," he told her.

The 18-year-old was distraught.

"My mother told me she was in the basement."

The officer mentally replayed his search of the house. Then he went back inside, back down the rickety basement stairs. With the broom handle, he spread the garbage under the stairs. A cardboard sheet emerged. He lifted it. A mouse leaped out.

Kelly gathered himself and lifted the cardboard higher. There was something underneath, something small and round covered with garbage and dirt.

It was a skull.

One of the most horrific cases of child abuse ever seen in the city had been unearthed. For a long time afterward people would ask, how could anyone do such a thing to a child?

§

Hours earlier that same day, Sept. 16, 1997, Denisha Wise had heard the phone ringing when she returned home just after midnight.

She fumbled for her front door keys. It was a good two minutes before she reached the phone.

"Hello?"

"I've something to tell you," said her mother, Charlene Wise. Her voice sounded strange, no louder than a whisper.

"What is it?" Denisha asked. She had been worried about Charnae, her 5-year-old sister, whom she hadn't seen since May.

That evening, she had visited Charlene in Norristown and questioned her again about Charnae. For months, her mother had kept changing the story: First Charnae had been adopted. Then she was in Norristown. Then with relatives in North Carolina.

Denisha had searched everywhere. Local child-welfare agencies had no answers. Aunts in Norristown said they hadn't seen her. Scared, Denisha called human services hotlines and told them that Charnae was missing, perhaps dead.

Charlene was hooked on crack. She infuriated Denisha. The two shared an on-again, off-again relationship. They constantly fought. But neither cut herself off from the other, and one would always come back after a quarrel and make up.

On the phone now, Charlene was sobbing. She was calling from her sister's house in Norristown. She said social workers had somehow tracked her to the local Salvation Army shelter earlier and taken away her other children. Police had questioned her. Denisha, who had directed the social workers there, said nothing. She wanted to get at the truth about Charnae.

Charlene wanted to meet Denisha right away. Denisha threatened to hang up.

"Neesie, stay on the phone," Charlene begged. "This is real important."

Denisha hung up. She got ready for bed. Charlene called back.

"Where's Charnae?" Denisha demanded. Charlene dodged, asking Denisha to call social workers and say that Charnae was with her. Denisha hung up again.

The phone rang instantly.

"Mom, just tell me."

Charlene sniffled and sobbed. She collected her breath: "Charnae's dead."

"Where she at, Mom?"

"Wrapped in a sheet, under the stairs. . . ."

Denisha screamed. She slammed down the phone. She ran out the front door and rushed to her godmother's house nearby. She wore just her T-shirt and underwear.

Behind her, the phone rang like a thing possessed.

§

TV news trucks had arrived when forensic pathologist Patricia Kauffman got to 3017 W. Harper St.

In the basement's half light, Kauffman examined the skull. It belonged to a child.

The basement was dirty, musty and hot. Kauffman had three detectives hold flashlights over her shoulder as she worked.

The skeleton was intact. It was wrapped in a soiled sheet. The corpse had decomposed completely - this was why Kelly had not smelled it.

Peeling back the sheet, Kauffman looked for broken bones or other signs of how the child might have died.

A T-shirt with orange and white stripes covered the torso. Slacks with a Pocahontas print covered the legs. Bones protruded through the clothes. Kauffman found a few tufts of black hair. A blue plastic barrette.

The barrette indicated the child was a girl. From the hair, Kauffman deduced the girl was black. The bones suggested the victim was about 5 years old.

Kauffman searched the rubbish. She found a bucket near the skeleton and tossed it aside. Strewn around were dozens of chicken and pork bones. Kauffman sealed them in a large Zip-Loc bag. Two technicians from the medical examiner's office wrapped the skeleton in a clean sheet and placed it in a body bag.

Kauffman led the technicians outside. A large crowd had gathered. There was a wail as people saw the chicken and pork bones in Kauffman's Zip-Loc bag. They thought it was all that remained of the victim.

At the medical examiner's office, Kauffman's deductions about the age, race and sex of the dead child were confirmed.

In her autopsy report, she wrote "homicide by unspecified means." But from medical records and Denisha's testimony, Kauffman deduced the girl starved to death:

First, she would have lost weight. Her muscles would have wasted away. She would have grown withdrawn. She would likely have developed diarrhea, hastening the loss of weight. Finally, she would have lapsed into unconsciousness. Her immune system would have failed.

Death could have come in three days or two months. It would have been painful.

In the summer heat of the basement, the corpse probably decomposed in about two weeks. Charnae had died some time between July 16 and Sept. 2.

§

In the second floor hallway of her sister's house in Norristown, Charlene Wise debated her options. Denisha could not be trusted with the secret. She would tell police about Charnae, tell them gleefully.

It was morning. They were probably coming for her now. She dressed quickly and left the house.

Fleeing was all the 35-year-old had done the last few weeks. Terrified by the thought of Charnae in the basement, she had abandoned Harper Street and taken her other children to the Salvation Army shelter in Norristown.

She had returned once to dig a grave in the backyard and hide Charnae, but had lost her nerve and fled again.

"I'm in trouble!" she now said, bursting in on Sam Holden, a friend who lived nearby.

"What did you do?" he asked. "Kill somebody?"

Charlene's heart lurched. She needed a lawyer. She needed help. Holden offered to call a lawyer he knew, but Charlene's mind was on something more pressing.

"Can I have some money?"

He gave her all he had - $40. She went out and bought some crack. Like a faithful friend, the drug offered her respite. She brought the "rocks" back to his apartment.

She didn't have her drug paraphernalia - she'd pitched her pipe when police came to question her the previous evening at the shelter. So she cut a piece of wire mesh from a window. She burned the metal down to a small, hard ball. She rolled some aluminum foil around a pencil and put the ball at the end. When she pulled out the pencil, she had a makeshift pipe. She put the crack in, lit up and puffed.

But she knew she wouldn't have enough. She wanted to stay high until she was arrested. The drug allowed her to push trouble away to a distant place. So she disguised herself with dark glasses, a cap and a heavy coat and slipped outside.

She had left $300 at the shelter. When she got there, she saw police. She ducked into a back alley and raced back to Holden's apartment. He was asleep.

She turned on the TV. It was noon. The news was on and to her amazement they were showing her house on Harper Street.

Police officers were swarming around. Denisha was there, too. Charlene snapped off the TV.

She picked up the phone and dialed Denisha's number. Her daughter's boyfriend answered. Only then did Charlene realize that Denisha couldn't be home - she had just seen her on television at Harper Street.

Outside, police cars cruised by. Charlene hurriedly smoked her remaining crack. As her children well knew, she hated being rushed or bothered when she was using drugs. That spoiled her "get-high."

But now, knowing police were coming for her, she puffed hard.

* They came that afternoon. Charlene calmly picked up her bag and went with them.

She was held briefly in Norristown and then driven to Philadelphia. Homicide detectives wanted to talk to her. One officer turned to her as they drove:

"After we finish questioning you, how are you going to get back to Norristown?"

Charlene's heart jumped. They were going to let her go! She mumbled something about taking a train.

She fantasized about picking up her $300 and getting high. She imagined the sense of utter well-being as the drug washed over her. At the Police Administration building, when officers began to question her, she focused on just one thing: matches, pipe and some rocks.

She gave them a statement willingly. She waived her right to be silent. She signed everything they put before her. Yes, she would talk. No, she didn't want a lawyer.

"Will you tell us how the remains of your daughter Charnae got in the basement?" the detectives asked.

"I put her there," she replied.

"Was she dead or alive when you put her, Charnae, in the basement?"

"She was alive."

"Tell us how your daughter Charnae got into the basement and what happened to her."

Charlene gave them an account of drugs and abuse. When she finished, they charged her with murder and locked her in a cell.

Meanwhile, social workers took 7-year-old Donte Wise, one of Charlene's other children, to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: He had 18 lacerations and bruises. Withdrawn and apprehensive, the boy refused to make eye contact.

To Angelo Giardino, a pediatrician and child-abuse expert, the injuries were the signatures of childhood for many youngsters. The loop-shaped mark on Donte's left thigh was caused when he was struck by a rope that had been bent backward on itself. The ligature marks on the boy's arms indicated he had been tied up. There were pinpoint scars on his face: He had been struck with a hairbrush.

§

The Rev. Tom Cairns lived two blocks from where Charnae Wise died.

Two blocks! As the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church at 27th and Poplar Streets, he saw his life as a mission, the neighborhood as his responsibility.

Nine days after Charlene was arrested, Mr. Cairns led a candlelight prayer vigil outside 3017 W. Harper St.

Writing down his thoughts beforehand, he asked himself what kind of mother would kill her own child?

He was furious at Charlene Wise. In some child-abuse cases, mothers took out their anger against an ex-boyfriend or husband by hurting his child. Is that what had happened?

Hundreds of people showed up for the vigil. Mr. Cairns offered to reach out to all who needed help.

As he walked home that September night, a disturbing thought crossed his mind. It was the sort of thought he had come to associate with the voice of God: There was someone in crisis who sorely needed his help.

§

Cell number 49 at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center in the Northeast has a window about three feet high and a fist wide. It looks out over a lawn ringed with barbed wire. In the distance Charlene could see a tiny sliver of the Delaware River.

She paced between the door and window, 10 feet back and forth. She felt she would burst. She punched the walls. In the middle of the night, other inmates' screams echoed through the prison: "Get me outta here!"

She missed her children. She craved her crack.

She stared out the window and asked herself, "What could I possibly do to get out of this place?"

After two weeks, a guard told her she had visitors.

Denisha? It seemed impossible after all that had happened.

The guards strip-searched her before leading her to the meeting room. A large sign said: No Kissing.

The door opened and in walked two strangers, a white couple.

"They ain't coming to see me," Charlene thought.

But they were. They were members of a church in her neighborhood.

"Why did you come?" she asked.

Mr. Cairns said: "God sent me."

Soon she was sobbing.

"Do you need a friend?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to be forgiven?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to be saved?"

A thousand times, yes.

"Whatever happened, God loves you," Mr. Cairns told her. "He wants to help you - if you let him."

Mr. Cairns spoke from personal experience: At 16, he had contemplated suicide. He took a kitchen knife to his wrist but didn't know whether to slash lengthwise or crosswise. So, instead, he visited a church for solace. He thought the minister was speaking directly to him.

Mr. Cairns had prayed, "God, if you're really out there, help me change my life."

When Charlene got back to her cell, she eased herself down beside the bunk, knelt and clasped her hands. Her faith was rusty. To her, God was someone floating in outer space, not the kind of God that Mr. Cairns was talking about, real and tangible.

She prayed for forgiveness. When she got up five minutes later, she felt no different.

Outside the prison, Mr. Cairns and his church colleague bowed their heads and prayed aloud:

"Lord, prepare our hearts and minds to minister to Charlene. Make us good listeners. Help us be compassionate, yet honest."

§

Mr. Cairns visited Charlene every two weeks. They met in a room divided by a waist-high partition. Guards watched them.

She was younger than he was but felt older. How would he ever understand all she had done, all she had been through? His earnest intensity made her feel ashamed.

She decided to tell him some things and hide others.

She was born in Norristown. She was a shy child. In school, she ate lunch alone in the bathroom. At home, no one hugged or said, "I love you."

No one ate dinner before Charlene's father. Sometimes the children ate at 11 p.m., sometimes they went to bed hungry. She remembered being beaten with an extension cord. Social workers figured among her earliest memories. They put her in foster care. They moved her to a group home.

When she was 13, a man whistled at her on the street. He told her she had a nice-looking body. He was attentive and charming. He was more affectionate than anyone in her own family.

He was 38.

He invited her over for dinner. They had sex. She got pregnant, but miscarried.

At 16, Charlene got pregnant with Denisha. At 17, she was pregnant again.

During her second pregnancy, she moved in with another man. He was 40. They had three children. He taught her how to drive, how to cook, and how to conduct herself. He said he loved her.

She also remembered he once jammed a gun to her temple.

She shook with fear.

He angled the gun away slightly and pulled the trigger. The roar was deafening. The bullet made a hole in the roof.

It was definitely not a story to tell Pastor Cairns.

§

The more Mr. Cairns got to know Charlene, the more she seemed to him like a lost soul.

She stared people down and appeared remorseless because the only choices she knew were predator or victim.

She projected a hostile prison swagger, but could also be extravagantly courteous. She responded to affection, blossomed under attention. She was moody. When upset, she withdrew into brooding silences. She could abruptly turn flirtatious, steal glances out of the corner of her eye, and cover her smiles with a bashful hand. She was shrewd, but her street smarts were layered with naivete. She had given birth to eight children, yet something of the child remained in her.

Once she got to know Mr. Cairns, she talked and talked.

For all the talk, Mr. Cairns sensed there was a great deal she wasn't telling him. Secrecy meant she was in denial. Without honesty, there was no forgiveness.

She kept referring to Charnae's death as "the crime I am accused of."

When he reminded her that she had done a terrible thing, she flared up.

"I did not murder my child."

"But what you did do was very bad."

She would change the subject.

Mr. Cairns wanted her to say: "I'm Charlene Wise. I killed my daughter."

§

"I've got some stuff I want you to try."

In 1988, when Charlene was 26, a sister's boyfriend cooked some cocaine, put it in a pipe, and handed it to her. She took a puff. It felt good.

"If you want more, you'll have to pay for it," he said.

The bags cost $5 and $10. She started smoking once or twice a week. Soon, she was "copping" her own stuff - buying from dealers on the street.

Her drug use compounded her other troubles: She used public assistance to feed her habit even as she raised five children. She hadn't finished high school.

When she moved to Pottstown, she and her partner allowed other addicts to use their home to get high in exchange for drugs. The children's playroom was converted at night into a crack den. They called it their "get-high" room.

In March 1990, police raided the house, found bags of crack, and arrested them. Her partner was jailed.

Interrogated and released, Charlene rushed home. She headed straight for her 3-month-old baby, Donte. Hidden inside his bottle of talcum powder was her stash of emergency drug money.

Montgomery County social workers, who once had taken Charlene from her parents' home, now came to take her children.

She was disconsolate. Her children were all she had. She screamed and wept.

"Don't act stupid now," the social workers told her.

Back in Norristown, addicted and desperate, Charlene stole. She crushed aspirin tablets and sold it to unsuspecting users as crack. She picked up men in bars, brought them home for sex, and took their money.

To Charlene, it wasn't prostitution: Prostitutes stood at street corners and flashed their legs.

She preferred older married men. Sometimes, she would take them to her bedroom, shut off the lights, and take off their clothes. She would say she needed to go to the bathroom. There, she would empty their wallets. When she came back, she would say she didn't feel like sex and kick them out. Then she would race through the house and slip out the back door before the duped men could come back to protest.

When her partner was released from prison, Charlene had sex with him, too.

In spring 1991, she found that she was pregnant with her sixth child - Charnae.

§

Two months after Mr. Cairns met Charlene, she took an important step.

"I gave my life to Christ and asked him to forgive my sins," she said.

The pastor embraced her. They clasped hands and prayed.

He urged her to read the Bible every day.

She had many questions from her Bible study. Mostly they were about one subject:

"Do you have to die to be forgiven?"

No, he would reply. Faith would save her. Christians were saved by faith alone.

Each question brought her closer to the confession that Mr. Cairns sought.

"What does it mean when it says, 'When someone slaps you on one cheek, show him the other?' "

He explained the passage from the Sermon on the Mount. He read aloud:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.' "

Charlene marked passages that she didn't understand. Breaking prison regulations, she kept a yellow fluorescent pen. When guards came to search her cell, she hid the pen inside her bottle of talcum powder.

Every time Charlene's case came up in court for a pretrial hearing, TV news aired her mugshot. Each time, inmates taunted her:

"Basement girl!"

"Baby-killer!"

They threatened to poison her. She ate as little as possible.

As Mother's Day approached, she refused to leave her cell even for recreation.

Without Mr. Cairns, she felt she would have gone mad. When the taunts grew loud, she read her Bible and turned the Christian radio stations on her headphones full blast, fighting the wrath of her fellows with voices that called down the wrath of God.

§

In the 18 months Charlene spent in jail awaiting trial, none of her many relatives in the area visited her. Except Denisha; mother and daughter had made up again.

Charlene worried about her eldest child: At 20, Denisha already had three children.

"I see Denisha going down the same route I did," Charlene thought to herself.

Once, when she gave her daughter advice about a dispute with a boyfriend, Denisha responded: "What do you know? You're in jail!"

Charlene tried to get in touch with her son Timothy, who was a year younger than Denisha. But he seemed to have vanished. She prayed for him and asked God to make it possible for her to see him.

As she was being taken to court one day, an incredible thing happened: She was in a prison holding area, and there was Timothy, right in front of her!

It turned out Timothy was in the same jail - on the men's side. He had been arrested for assaulting a police officer.

Surrounded by prisoners and guards, mother and son had an emotional reunion.

§

The prosecution offered Charlene a sentence of 30 to 60 years in exchange for a guilty plea to several charges related to the murder of Charnae and abuse of the other children. Charlene turned it down.

Sixty years! What had happened was a mistake, she had not intended to kill Charnae. Surely the jury would understand. Besides, she was no longer a drug-crazed person. With Mr. Cairns' help, she had undergone a personal transformation.

"It's not as bad as you think," she told Denisha confidently on the eve of the trial. "I'll be home."

Assistant District Attorney Yvonne Ruiz had Charlene's children - Denisha, Kadedra and Donte - testify. Nine-year-old Donte told stunned jurors he had gone to the basement and felt Charnae's still heart.

Ruiz had Detective Lawrence McGuffin read to the court Charlene's graphic confession. The prosecutor told jurors it was not their business to understand why Charlene had killed her daughter. The fact that she had killed her was enough to convict.

Charlene's attorney, Anthony McKnight, said she hadn't intended to kill Charnae.

The jury convicted her of third-degree murder. It surprised the judge, who had expected a first-degree verdict.

§

As she waited for her sentence, Charlene paced in her cell, a universe of 10 feet whose every inch she would remember as long as she lived.

She prayed first thing in the morning and the last thing at night: "Please God, give me patience."

On sunny days, she saw daisies on the lawn and sailboats on the Delaware River. She envied people on those boats. She looked forward to rainy days when no one would be outside with the sun on their faces.

She thought about all she had done, all she should have done, and all she wished she'd done. Slowly, a change came over her.

She had spent her first days in prison blaming everybody, her parents, her family, the drugs. She had blamed social workers, even little Charnae, who had been a difficult child. But now she knew that Charnae's death was her fault.

"I'm sorry my daughter's life had to be taken for this," she told Mr. Cairns, as tears slid down her face. "She's in a better place than here on Earth. She's in heaven; she's one of God's little angels."

"It used to be that your body was free and your heart was in prison," he told her. "Now your heart is free. It's much better this way."

§

As he prepared to sentence Charlene, Judge James A. Lineberger ordered a psychiatric evaluation. Charlene was summoned to the Criminal Justice Center.

She was put on a bus at the prison, handcuffed to another prisoner. As soon as the bus began to move, a group of inmates began taunting her.

"That's the bitch who was on the news."

She stared straight ahead.

Suddenly, an inmate came up from behind and slammed a fist into Charlene's face, snapping her neck to the left.

"Baby-killer!"

Tears of shock and hurt and humiliation rolled down her cheeks, but she did not retaliate. She climbed off the bus and went for her psychiatric evaluation.

Later, she told Mr. Cairns about the incident, adding that she had not hit back.

"Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath," he had read to her from the Bible. " 'It is mine to avenge, I will repay,' says the Lord."

Mr. Cairns wrote a letter to the judge about Charlene before the sentencing:

"Only God can be completely certain about a person's sincerity and depth of faith, but after 21 years of Christian ministry I'm as sure as I can be that her faith and conversion are genuine."

The foster mother of three of Charlene's children also wrote to the judge. She described how traumatized they were.

The court psychiatrist's opinion was that Charlene's "prognosis for significant change or progress was guarded."

In May, citing the "horrendous nature of the crimes," Judge Lineberger gave Charlene 28 to 56 years in prison.

§

Charlene peered through the narrow bars of her cell. A full moon shone, and the Philadelphia sky looked strange.

"Maybe the world will come to an end," she told her cellmate. "But I'm not worried. I'm going to heaven."

"Don't be so sure," the cellmate scoffed.

Instead of fighting, Charlene prayed for her "cellie."

When she told Mr. Cairns about the discouraging remark, he said: "You know whose voice that was."

"Satan's."

Mr. Cairns nodded.

"Your eternity is secure."

She was sent to the state prison in Muncy. The first question she had was about chapel services.

Inmates crowded around her: "What did the judge give you?" "The judge ain't give me nothing," Charlene said. "God gives me one day at a time."

§ READ PART II BELOW §

Dec 6, 1999, Pg. A01

PART II: How a Child Died in her Mother's Basement

By Shankar Vedantam

Charlene Wise was sitting at a kitchen table in Norristown when her water broke. It was just after midnight and her sixth child was about to be born.

What concerned her, however, was that she and her sister, Darlene, were running out of crack.

A burst of pain cut through her drugged haze. She lay down.

"Do you want me to call 911?" Darlene asked.

Charlene suggested that her sister go "do some prostitution," and buy more crack.

The pain got worse and Darlene called an ambulance.

"Don't push!" paramedics shouted as they rushed to the hospital.

The baby girl was born on Sept. 19, 1991, blue in the face, with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. The doctors and nurses were angry with Charlene. "You knew you weren't supposed to get high," they told her.

In the morning, they asked her to choose a name for the baby.

Charlene wanted a name that sounded like her own.

"Charnae," she said.

She never got to hold her baby.

When social workers checked Charlene's case history, they found that her five other children had been put in foster care after she was caught living in a crack house in Pottstown. They decided to place Charnae in foster care, too.

On the way out of the hospital, Charlene peered through the nursery window. There were cards attached to the cribs. One pink tag read, "Baby Wise."

A beautiful baby. Charlene felt bad about losing Charnae. But she felt worse that she had not gotten high in many hours.

Six years later, after Charnae died in a horrific case of child abuse, Charlene would remember the day of the birth as the first of many occasions when she had failed her daughter.

§

Charnae was almost 3 when she was returned to her mother.

Charlene had desperately wanted her children back. She convinced Montgomery County social workers that she had turned her life around. She found a home in Philadelphia at 3017 W. Harper St. and struggled through a drug-rehabilitation program.

Denisha, her oldest, came back around Thanksgiving 1992. She was 13. Kadedra, 5, and Gwendolyn, 4, followed.

Several months later, social workers told Charlene it was time for Donte, then 4, and Charnae to return.

Charlene felt she hardly knew them. She had visited the children in their foster home. Charnae was impaired by the crack her mother had smoked while pregnant. Social workers said Charnae and Donte were slow learners and aggressive.

Charlene wasn't sure she could deal with them just yet. She had just had another baby, her seventh. With Charnae and Donte, she would have six children at home - her eldest son, Timothy, 12, was not returned.

"I can handle only so many kids," she told social workers.

"It's like this, Ms. Wise," one replied. "You either take them now or we put them up for adoption."

"I'll take them," she said.

§

Charnae, who had been slow to walk, now wouldn't sit still. If Charlene gave her dolls, she would rip their hair out and yank off their clothes. Donte was the same.

To calm them, Charlene banned candy. She tried the time-out method. She yelled. She had neither partner nor extended family to help her. The house on Harper Street rang with her screams:

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

Donte and Charnae defeated her at every turn. Donte would prop a chair against the kitchen cabinet, climb onto the stove and take candy out of a jar. Then he'd race upstairs and share the loot with Charnae.

She was the quiet one. Charlene called her a "sneaky little beaver."

Charlene did not have the patience or the skill to deal with them. She slapped them, hit them with shoes and hairbrushes, pummeled them with her fists.

That only made things worse. Charnae and Donte wet their beds and soiled the mattresses. Charlene banned them from drinking water after 9 p.m. - and jammed shut the tap on the bathroom sink. Donte responded by twisting his head under the bathtub tap. Charnae drank from the toilet.

Denisha was another worry. At 15, she became a mother, making Charlene, at 32, a grandmother. In 1995, Charlene gave birth to her eighth child - with a fifth father.

Through it all, she smoked crack.

She had a 9 p.m. bedtime rule for the children. At 11, she would slip out of the house and buy some "get-high."

Depending on her money situation - she was receiving welfare checks for three children and Social Security checks for three others - she would go out for crack many times a night. Sometimes, she would still be smoking when the children woke up in the morning and asked for help going to school.

Too tired to get out of bed, she would tell them to stay home and watch television.

§

If anyone outside the house had cared to look, there were numerous signs that the family was headed downhill.

On Feb. 23, 1996, Charnae was rushed to Hahnemann University Hospital with a severe scalp infection. She was withdrawn and apathetic. Hospital records show that staff worried Charlene was using drugs.

In October, the city Department of Human Services (DHS) - responsible for ensuring the safety of Charlene's children - received word that Donte had gone to school with a black eye. The boy said that Charlene had hit him with a broom.

Another report said Kadedra was injured after she put her leg on a hot plate to warm herself. Her pants caught fire and she suffered second- and third-degree burns.

On Christmas Eve 1996, Charlene and Denisha had a huge fight. Charlene did not give Denisha's son the Christmas toy she had promised. On Christmas Day, Denisha, then 17, took her son and moved out.

That left six children in the house on Harper Street alone with Charlene. The oldest was Kadedra. She was 9.

§

Charlene's addiction had its rituals. Each night, after the children were in bed, she would lovingly organize her drugs, her cigarettes and her beer.

She was chasing what drug users call the "ghost," the euphoria she'd had when she first started using.

She needed absolute quiet because the drugs made her paranoid. She called it "bugging." If she thought she heard a car on the street, she thought the police were coming for her.

Like an athlete preparing for a race, she needed to concentrate.

And then she would hear a creak - Charnae and Donte creeping around in the back bedroom again. They seemed to have a sixth sense about when she was getting high.

If she yelled at them to stop, the high went away.

If she leapt up to hit them, the feeling vanished.

If she slapped them and made them cry, her mood disintegrated.

One day in 1997, blind with anger, she grabbed them both and pushed them into the basement. She didn't shut the door, but the basement was dark and dirty and they were terrified. When she let them out a little while later, they had cried so much that they went right to sleep.

She had found a way to get high in peace.

§

Charlene found it easy to fool social workers. She yelled at them when they paid surprise visits and demanded they give her advance notice. She cleaned the house and stocked the refrigerator before the scheduled visits.

She recalled receiving compliments from them on her housekeeping.

They did not spot her drug paraphernalia. Charlene burned incense to mask the smell of crack.

She recalls one asking, "Ms. Wise, are you getting high?"

"No."

"We're going to start giving you random drug tests."

But they never did. In spring 1997, she started barring social workers from the house. She was smoking heavily and wasn't ready even for scheduled inspections.

The Juvenile Justice Center, a private Germantown agency that the Department of Human Services contracted to provide services to the family, referred the case back to the city.

"We can't push our way in," executive director Richard Chapman said. "If cooperation is not forthcoming, we write to DHS and say we can't ensure the welfare of the children."

Charlene remembered DHS workers knocked on her door. She refused to open it. They called her on the phone and threatened to call the police. She gave them an appointment to visit.

A social worker visited June 4. Charlene opened the door. All she wanted to do was get high and sleep. She told the social worker that she had stopped letting DHS into the house because she was leaving town.

Shortly thereafter, DHS closed its file on Charlene Wise.

According to DHS's own rules, cases cannot be closed without assessing whether the children are living in a safe home.

That assessment was never made.

§

The basement had no fan or air conditioning, and its window was nailed shut. Putting Charnae and Donte down there in the summer heat troubled Charlene.

But after a few times, it got easier. It helped that social workers no longer bothered her and she stayed high all day and all night.

Charnae and Donte seemed to get used to the basement, so Charlene shut the door and left them there longer. Sometimes she could hear them playing together and laughing.

The punishment had a marked effect on Donte, who grew quieter. Charlene decided to stop punishing him. Now when Charnae misbehaved, Charlene put her in the basement by herself.

Each hour the little girl was shut away meant an hour of peace. Each night she was locked up meant a good "get-high." Each time Charnae came out of the basement unharmed, after longer and longer periods of confinement, it seemed less and less like a terrible thing.

Charnae would knock on the door when she wanted to go to the bathroom. Charlene would let her out, bathe her and feed her. Charnae would play with her siblings. Then she would go back down.

The novel punishment became routine. The abnormal became normal.

The balance tipped noiselessly: Charnae wasn't being put in the basement now and then. She was being let out now and then.

Then even that stopped. Charlene would leave a plate of food on the top step as she cleaned up or fed the other children. Sometimes the food would be gone when Charlene returned; often the plate would be untouched.

In July, Charlene went all the way down to the basement and saw that Charnae was using a bucket as a potty.

On Aug. 21, a month before Charnae's sixth birthday, Charlene opened the basement door. The little girl was sitting on the top step.

"Tub time," Charlene said.

Charlene bathed Charnae and combed her hair.

Charnae didn't look good. She stumbled as she walked.

The thought of taking her to a doctor frightened Charlene because no one outside the house would understand; the basement punishment was a family secret.

"What's the matter with you?" Charlene asked.

Charnae was silent.

Charlene steeled herself - there was nothing wrong with the little girl. She never did walk straight. She was just tired; she probably needed sleep.

Charlene led her back to the basement. There was no thought of punishment anymore - Charnae hadn't done anything wrong. The basement had simply become the place where she stayed.

Charnae went quietly. Charlene shut the door behind her.

§

Frank Wise's car broke down a few blocks from his sister's house one July evening while Charnae was dying. He was with his fiancee. They decided to walk over to Charlene's for the night.

His niece Gwen opened the door. The children were excited to see Uncle Frank. His mind was on the broken-down car as he slept that night on the living room couch. He didn't think to make a head count and didn't ask where Charnae was.

He did recall that the house was quieter. He knew that Charnae was a difficult child.

The next morning, Frank saw Gwen and Kadedra, but he was worried about his car and didn't wonder about Charnae.

Other family members dropped by that summer, marching up Charlene's front steps, past the boarded-up basement window, a few feet from Charnae.

At a July 4 family get-together, Charlene's 17-year-old son, Timothy, who had long been on his own, told Charlene, "I bet if I go down to the basement, I would find Charnae."

"Go ahead!" Charlene dared him.

He didn't go.

Many of Charlene's relatives had troubles of their own. Frank had been on probation for attempted theft. Barbara, Charlene's sister, was on probation for holding up a fast-food restaurant. Charlene's sister, Darlene, a fellow crack addict and prostitute, was to be found unconscious in a city shelter on April 23, 1998. She later died and was taken to the morgue, where city officials waited to hear from worried relatives.

No one called.

The family had never been close. Children came and went in an unceasing cycle of foster care, group homes and social workers. Children were born, children were taken away, children returned.

A concerned neighbor, Tammy Dennis, invited Charlene to church one Sunday. Charlene promised to attend with her children. But when Dennis came to pick them up, no one answered the door.

Dennis, who grew up on the block, remembered a time when children ran freely in and out of one another's homes. Then crack arrived. People became secretive. They closed their doors and windows. Dennis, a poised and collected woman, returned to the block in 1996 after two years in Indiana. She had to learn a new, unspoken rule: "You see what you see, but you see nothing."

Charlene herself lied about what was happening, but she lied poorly. She told her cousin Len Margarita Wise that Charnae was at Harper Street. She told Len's mother that Charnae was with relatives in North Carolina.

In the late summer, she phoned Denisha, then 18, who had last seen her younger sister in May. Denisha had thought Charnae looked malnourished.

"The foster care people have come to take her away," Charlene said on the phone. "They are pulling out in their car now. . . . Charnae is looking out of the window and is waving at me. . . . Look at all those nosy neighbors looking."

A few days later, Denisha casually asked her mother which neighbors had seen Charnae being taken away.

"No one."

§

Charnae was dying. But Charlene couldn't bring herself to articulate the thought. On Aug. 22, 1997, she sent Kadedra and Gwen down to check on their sister.

She was too afraid to go herself.

The two small children had not seen Charnae in a while. When they returned from the basement, they were hysterical: "Charnae is real bad off."

Charlene calmed them down. She told them to say nothing about it - it was a family secret.

A little while later, Charnae knocked on the basement door.

"Mommy, can I have some water?"

Charlene opened the door and gave her a glass. Charnae looked weak. Charlene shut the door.

On Aug. 23, Charlene carried a plate with hot dogs and spaghetti halfway down the basement stairs. She handed the plate to Charnae.

"Thank you."

"I'll be back," Charlene said. She was going to a birthday party for her grandson at Denisha's house.

"OK."

Charlene dressed and got ready to leave. On her way out, she shouted, "I'll see you when I get back, baby."

If Charnae replied, Charlene didn't hear.

At the party, she took Denisha aside and said she had something important to tell her: Charnae wasn't going to make it till next week.

Denisha drove Charlene home that night. She demanded to see Charnae. Charlene refused and had Denisha drop her off a block from home. She walked the rest of the way.

Once home, she turned on all the lights. The thought of Charnae in the basement had clung to her all evening like a shroud.

She threw open the basement door.

"Charnae," she called out. "Charnae, you down there?"

Silence.

Charlene scrambled down the steps. The little girl was lying on the floor in the fetal position. Charlene bent down and touched her. Charnae felt cold and hard.

Charlene jerked her hand back. She spun around and ran up the unsteady stairs. She didn't stop when she reached the landing, didn't stop until she reached the bathroom on the second floor. She slipped inside and jammed the door shut behind her.

Call 911. The thought terrified her. She couldn't. She just couldn't.

The children need me, she thought.

She turned on the tap so that the other children would not hear her cries. And then, muffled by the sound of rushing water, she wept. For the child who had died, for what she had done, and for all she was going to have to pay.

§

On Sept. 16, 1997, police found Charnae's skeleton, arrested Charlene and charged her with murder.

Joan Reeves, commissioner of the Department of Human Services, called Charnae's death "unimaginable" and ordered an internal investigation of the case.

The results were never made public. The agency declined all requests for interviews for this article, citing pending litigation.

The following year, a state review of the DHS internal investigation found a string of serious lapses in which the agency had not followed its own policies for child safety: There were times when no social worker was assigned to the family. A required risk assessment was not conducted in February 1997. There was no record-keeping during the crucial period between February 1997 and Charnae's death. Long-term family plans were not made. The case was arbitrarily closed.

In a statement about its responsibility, DHS told state investigators "at no time was there a determination that acts of commission or omission by the department or its agents could have predicted or prevented the tragedy that befell this child."

In March, Charlene was convicted of third-degree murder. Judge James Lineberger sentenced her to 28 to 56 years in prison.

In July, Denisha Wise decided to sue the city and state on behalf of her dead sister, charging that DHS had failed in its duty to protect Charnae.

"DHS and the state were grossly negligent and recklessly indifferent," said Neil Perloff, Denisha's lawyer.

"If I come into money, it would be for my siblings," Denisha said. "I will make sure they have a nice education like I never had. I will get Charnae a headstone. We had no money to get Charnae a headstone. Whatever is left for me, I don't care."

§

On a scorching summer afternoon, Darnell Harris took one lunging step to the left of a gravestone marked "Perkins."

The grave-digger then took two steps down and drew his boot across the grass to mark the spot of Charnae's grave. He looked up to see whether it aligned with the haphazard markers strewn around. He then revised his estimate by two feet.

"Here," he said confidently.

Actually Charnae's grave was a little to the left of Harris' calculation - Denisha had placed a small marker on the ground that read "Sister."

At the Merion Memorial Park in Bala Cynwyd, no stone marks Charnae's final rest. No epitaph describes her days. For a life so short, so brutal and unloved, what would it say?

§ § §