commentary by Patrick H. Moore
It seems like it’s been open season on children lately. But perhaps it’s always been that way. Some historians believe that in ancient Greece it was standard procedure to take unwanted children out into the wilderness where they would be dropped off to be savaged by wild animals or, if they were lucky, expire due to exposure.
Was that perhaps a sensible, albeit cruel, way of dealing with unwanted children? Well, probably not, but the fact remains that a surprising number of mothers in the modern world apparently resort to murdering their children and then trying to cover it up simply because they don’t want them.
Most of these unsuitable mothers are, of course, apprehended soon after the killings, but there are always the select few who escape detection and go on about their business, sometimes only to repeat their criminal acts.
A Michigan woman, Janice Summerfield, 77, may be one of these multiple murderesses. On the other hand, she may only be responsible for the killing of her baby boy, 8-month-old William Earl Summerfield III, in 1961. there’s a slim cghance she’s not responsible for killing anyone.
So how and why has Janice’s confession come about after all these years? Not an easy question to answer but thanks to one of Janice’s surviving children, Paula Gastian, 54, of Battle Creek, Michigan, at least we have a better sense of what may have actually transpired.
William Summerfield goes to prison
Paula reports that she was raised in an abusive home. Her mother Janice used drugs and neglected Paula and her siblings. Their father, William Summerfield, 86, a truck driver, was no knight in shining armor. He was often on the road and was guilty of molesting a child on at least one occasion which led to him being sentenced to prison in September of this year.
Paula and her two surviving brothers have wondered about the death of William III in 1961 and eight and nine years later, the death of their twin sisters, who died as small children.
Trace Christenson of Michigan.com writes:
Beth Summerfield was 3 months and 15 days old when she died May 1, 1969. Her sister, Brenda, was 11 months and 14 days old when she died Jan. 1, 1970.
Both girls died while the family was living in Battle Creek and death certificates for them list bilateral pneumonitis (lung disease) as the cause of death.
Oddly enough, the unveiling of the apparent truth about the death of William III occurred at Janice’s nursing home the day after Paula’s father was sentenced to prison. Paula went to the nursing home that day to talk to Janice because she had been informed by the staff that “her mother had been making statements to nursing home staff about her role in a killing.”
Paula had always been suspicious that her mother was somehow responsible for the deaths of Beth and Brenda. She would have been about 9 years old in 1969 and had always suspected that they had died of neglect. Thus, when she went to the nursing home, she anticipated finding out the truth about how and why her tiny twin sisters had died.
In an interview, Paula states:
“The day after the sentence I told her I want to talk about the babies. I expected it to be the twins. She was quiet and then she said his name. I don’t know how I stayed calm.
“I was not ready for her to tell me that she killed my little brother. I was completely blown away. She said she smothered him. She covered him up with a blanket and smothered him. ‘I killed him.’ It came out of her mouth. ‘I killed him.’”
“I asked if she had told anyone and she said she told my dad. He just told her, ‘Well I haven’t been there for you and I guess life goes on.’”
In their conversation, which Paula recorded, Janice Summerfield said the stress of raising three small children alone was too much.
“She said my dad drove trucks and was gone a lot and she couldn’t take it. My brother was 4, I was 2 and Billy was 8 months old.”
Following Janice’s confession, Paula spoke to Detective Steve Hinkley of the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Department and told her about her mother’s confession.
William III’s tiny casket was then exhumed and his remains are now at a morgue at Western Michigan University to be analyzed.
Detective Hinkley has been fairly tight-lipped but did confirm that the department has opened a homicide investigation pending the results of William III’s autopsy. He also stated that Janice confessed to him that she had smothered her son.
In a further strange but perhaps understandable twist, after her mother’s confession, Paula arranged for her to be interviewed by the Battle Creek Enquirer. The interview took place in the dining room of her nursing home, and at first Janice backtracked, denying that she had killed anyone, stating that she had been “coerced into confessing a few days before.”
At her interview, Janice was initially in denial, telling the Enquirer that “she was taken to a dark, quiet place”:
“The doctor would come in and say open your eyes so you can sign this piece of paper. They made me confess. When I came out of that darkness my mind was not working right. That darkness did something to my brain. I couldn’t stop talking. I talked all the time.”
She then told the Enquirer reporter that she didn’t want to talk anymore that day.
The next day Janice had a change of heart and left messages with the Enquirer admitting she had killed William III:
“What they said is true. Everything Paula told you is true.”
“I killed that baby. My mind wasn’t right. I killed that baby. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Phil Summerfield
The fact that Janice smothered William III is bad enough but what adds to the horror is the fact that she blamed his death on Paula’s older brother Phil Summerfield. Phil, who is now 58 and lives in Huntsville, AL recalls vividly waking up that spring morning and finding little William cold and dead in bed with him:
“After she allegedly smothered the baby she put the baby in bed with me. I was shy of 5 years old. I woke and he was dead. I picked him up and took him downstairs. She told me it was my fault.”
As a little child, Phil of course believed Janice and the guilt has scarred him for the rest of his life. That and the abuse he and his siblings suffered:
“We were knocked down and thrown down steps. That was just another part of the abuse. I learned to survive and I did my best to help Paula survive and then the twins. I was in school when the twins went. I thought I didn’t do a very good job.”
Phil was not the only child wrongly blamed for the death of a child. Paula was castigated for the death of sister Brenda who was found dead on New Year’s Day in 1970.
The proximate cause of Brenda’s death may have been Janice putting the child in a room upstairs without heat. Paula remembers:
Paula Gastian
“She put a hat on her and she was sleeping in a tiny crib. The next morning (mother) went upstairs and she yelled and came stumbling down the stairs and came over to me saying it is all your fault. If you had slept up there she wouldn’t have died. My brother and uncle carried the crib downstairs.
“She was good at blaming other people. She blamed me that morning and I was 10 years old. I blamed myself for years.”
Both Paula and Phil say that they have lost most of their feelings for their mother.
“I am kind of numb,” Phil said. “There was no angry process. I have distanced myself from (her). The last time I talked to her was two years ago on my birthday and she called to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and I hung up the phone. I don’t have any feelings for her. There is no anger. There is nothing.
“I had a dream one night that I was choking her and had my fingers on her throat and her life was leaving her. But I don’t know that I will ever go through an anger stage. We had to learn as children to be void of emotions because they caused a lot more punishment.”
Paula says that her “great fear now is that investigators won’t be able to find the cause of death to support their mother’s confession.”
Nonetheless, Paula doesn’t want to see Janice go to prison:
“I don’t want to see her go to prison. But it needs to be put on record. She needs to be somewhere for what she has done.
“It is just such a relief. I am sick of living with secrets.”
* * * * *
In trying to view this mournful tale objectively, one thing is crystal clear. Janice Summerfield had way too many children. Abortion was decriminalized in the United States in the mid-1960s and the early 1970s and since then, untold numbers of unwanted children have not been born. Some would say this is a crime; others would say it’s a good thing.
This sticky issue can be largely avoided, however, merely by using birth control. And with that I will briefly join Paula and Phil as they once again mourn the lost lives of their loved ones.