commentary by Patrick H. Moore
A few weeks ago I wrote that the recent unbelievably cruel child abuse death of Gabriel Garcia in an outlying area of Los Angeles County was perhaps the worst case of child abuse in Southern California history. Just yesterday I came across a case out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania which, although many details have yet to be revealed, appears to be equally awful, although there does not necessarily appear to have been the same degree of outright malice on the part of the parents of the deceased child as in the Los Angeles County case; rather, the abuse seems to have consisted of extreme and appalling neglect — largely sins of omission rather than “sins of commission”, if you will.
In this case the victim was an autistic boy named Jarrod Tutko Jr. At the time of his passing (and in his case dying could be seen as an act of mercy because his life was so painful), Jarrod, who was nine years old was 42 inches tall (3 and ½ feet) and weighed just 16.9 pounds.
To put this in perspective, our little miniature schnauzer Oreo weighs about 17 pounds, half a pound of that is fur, and the little guy is about two pounds overweight.
The average 6-year-old child is about 42 inches tall and weighs almost 50 pounds.
At present, Jarrod’s parents, Jarrod N. Tutko Sr., 38, and Kimberly A. Tutko, 39, have been arraigned before District Judge Barbara Pianka on criminal homicide charges. They have been denied bail. With a preliminary charge of criminal homicide, any one of a number of charges can still be brought ranging from manslaughter to first-degree murder, which in the state of Pennsylvania can result in the death penalty.
Although it’s unclear who tipped them off, the police went to the Tutko home on August 1 based on a report that there was a dead child there. Once they got there, they discovered a true chamber of horrors in and around poor Jarrod. Feces were reportedly smeared on his body and on parts of his bedroom. It was one of those appalling cruel scenes where the door to the bedroom was “rigged so it could be opened only from the outside.”
Jarrod’s mother, Kimberly Tutko, tried to stonewall it at first telling the “police initially that she had not seen her son for several years”, but she caved, possibly under the duress of intense questioning, and eventually admitted that she had seen Jarrod in the days before his death and that her husband had told her that he had been dead for several days in his third-floor bedroom.
According to law enforcement, four children from Tutko’s first marriage were taken away by the courts, and that Jarrod and the five living children found at the house of horrors were from her current marriage to Tutko.
It appears that neither parent was working and the family reportedly subsisted on a variety of benefit checks that they received monthly.
Thus, is seems apparent that whatever degree of malice was present in this matter, this family was completely unable to cope with the responsibilities of parenthood, and it is very unfortunate that the authorities did not get wind of the neglect/abuse until it was too late for Jarrod. Furthermore, I can’t help but think that Katherine Tutko likely suffers from some form of mental imbalance or deficiency.
I have long had moments of dread in which I imagine something going badly wrong in my life and in the lives of those close to me, the problem serving as a sort of catalyst which creates a domino effect in which the problems compound one another until a tipping point is reached after which there is no going back and no way to regain any sort of equilibrium.
This is what appears to happen in families such as the Tutkos; fixtures and forces conspire to kick the disastrous snowball effect into high gear and it’s Katie bar the door. A workable analogy might be what happens to a body whose cells have been invaded by a virulent form of cancer; parts cease to function properly and connections break down; eventually the organism is doomed.
What is odd about human families, however, is the fact that when the breakdown takes the form of child abuse, one child is often mistreated far worse than the others. If the family is seen as an organism (or body), the abused child can be viewed as a weak or unwanted part of the body/organism that is neglected and/or abused until it dies.
Jarrod was an autistic child who also suffered from the fragile X genetic syndrome. The National Fragile X Foundation provides the following information on the relationship between fragile X syndrome and autism:
Whereas autism is a behavioral diagnosis, fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a medical or more accurately, a genetic diagnosis. When associated with FXS, the autism is caused by the genetic change or mutation in the Fragile X gene. This is similar to other conditions such as Down syndrome. Individuals with Down syndrome can also have other conditions, including autism, hearing loss, diabetes and other behavioral and medical conditions. If a child is diagnosed with autism and then diagnosed with FXS, he or she still has autism, it is just that the cause of their autism is known. It is no different than someone with FXS also having ADHD or any other behavioral symptom of FXS.
Although he was horribly neglected in life, both a pathologist and a forensic dentist appear to have given Jarrod due consideration in death.
The pathologist, Dr. Wayne Ross, discovered the boy had almost no body fat at the time of his death.
David DeKok of Reuters writes:
“He indicated that the lack of body fat was a sign of starvation,” police said in an affidavit filed in the case. “Dr. Ross noted signs of dehydration and malnutrition.”
Dr. Andrew T. Stewart, a forensic dentist, discovered that Jarriod had two badly abscessed teeth that would have caused him terrible pain. There are no records of the boy having ever seen a dentist.
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I’d like to think that Kimberly Tutko, and possibly her husband, did the best they could do based on their lack of the essential qualities decent parents must possess. And if I were in a harsher mood, I would be condemning her vigorously. The longer I explore these cases, the more I realize that my responses are often based on fleeting whims and chimeras that change like the moon waxes and wanes.
It may be fortunate that my insufficient response will have no bearing on the outcome of this case. On the other hand, if I were working on the case, I would have access to Discovery and would be able to interview people which would help me assess, at least to some degree, just what kind of a “deck” Kimberly was playing with, which would lend some insight into whether she was operating sadistically (with malice aforethought) or was merely incredibly incompetent based on any number of negative factors.
Update:
At a preliminary hearing in late October, Kimberly and Jarrod Tutko, Sr. were been bound over to stand trial in Dauphin County Court on murder and child endangerment charges. Jarrod Tutko also faces a count of abuse of a corpse.