Acquitted day-care worker talks about last four years

Eva Walton walked into a McHenry County courtroom Tuesday night readying herself for the possibility that from that moment on she would see her children grow up from behind the walls of a state prison.

Two days later the 34-year-old mother of two instead is at home with her family, feeling out from under a dark cloud of suspicion and fear that's hung over her for nearly four years.

Such were the stakes decided late Tuesday when a McHenry County jury cleared the former Huntley day-care operator of charges she brutalized an infant she was watching in May 2005, leaving the boy with a fractured skull, bleeding inside his skull, a broken leg and multiple rib fractures.

Jurors reached the verdict after 7 1/2 hours of deliberations that capped a seven-day trial into claims she harmed the 10-week-old boy by shaking him violently in her home-based day care.

Walton publicly discussed the verdict, and the four years leading up to it, for the first time Thursday, describing her fears of facing a 30-year prison sentence, her distrust of law enforcement and her feelings toward the family of the boy she stood accused of harming.

"I thought I misheard him," Walton said of the moment Judge Joseph Condon read aloud the jury's not guilty verdict. "I really was expecting the worst, and heard the best. I don't think I reacted at all other than tears coming down my face."

Those tears were one of the first outward signs of emotion Walton had shown in court since authorities first charged her May 26, 2005, with aggravated battery to a child, a felony punishable by a minimum six and maximum 30 years in prison.

Asked to describe what the four years since her arrest were like, the first word out of her mouth was "scary."

"Every time we would do something (as a family) - Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas - I just thought in my head, 'I wonder whether this is the last one,'" she said during an interview Thursday at the Woodstock offices of her attorneys, Jamie Wombacher and Mark Gummerson.

"The fear of going to jail for 30 years was there every day," she later added.

Her case hinged largely on the testimony of U.S. Secret Service Agent Brad Beeler, who told jurors Walton confessed to him - both orally and in writing - as he prepared to give her a lie-detector test about two weeks after the boy's injuries were discovered. Walton was arrested on the spot without ever taking the polygraph exam.

One day later, Walton walked into her attorneys' office and told them Beeler had tricked her into writing incriminating statements under the guise of pretest preparations for the polygraph exam. She held firm to that account through the past four years and during more than three hours on the witness stand earlier this week.

"What I testified to is what happened, and I wanted people to know that," Walton said. "I didn't say those things. I never made any statement (to Beeler).

"The whole thing didn't feel right," she said of her meeting with Beeler. "But I did what he told me to do. When I was growing up, I was taught to respect authority and, if I did nothing wrong, to cooperate. That's what I did."

The arrest set in motion a chain of events that included her spending time in the McHenry County jail, the loss of her fledgling day-care business and a five-month legal battle to win normal relations with her then 3-year-old son,

Before her arrest, Walton said, she was unaware that law enforcement could lie to or mislead a suspect in an effort to get a confession.

Today, she said only somewhat jokingly, if a police officer approached and asked the time, she would call her lawyers.

Despite her acquittal Walton knows there are some - particularly the baby's family - who remain convinced she is to blame for the boy's injuries. At this point, she said, there is little she can or wants to say to change their minds.

"I don't know who hurt the baby," she said. "I don't know why (the boy's) family did the things they did, what their reasoning for any of that.

"I don't care," she added. "I don't think I have anything to say to them. I've had them in my life, whether I wanted them or not, for the last four years, and I don't want them in my life anymore."

As for others who believe she is guilty, Walton says, "They weren't there. They don't know. I told my story. I told the truth."

If anything good came out of the past four years, Walton said, it was a realization of who her friends are and who she can trust.

Many of those friends stood by her despite the severity of the charges and were in court Tuesday night or waiting outside her home to greet her after Tuesday's verdict. Though the case cost her a few friends, Walton said most people she knew before the charges were filed believed she was innocent.

"I don't know if I became paranoid, but I was looking for (doubt) in the faces of other people, and was relieved when I didn't see it," she said.

Although the question of how the boy was injured is not completely behind her - his family still has a lawsuit pending against her - Walton said she is looking forward to moving past the last four years.

"I'm just going to take it as it comes," she said.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Audio</h2> <ul class="audio"> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=9&type=audio&item=71">Eva Walton: Reaction to the verdict </a></li> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=9&type=audio&item=72">Eva Walton: I never said those things </a></li> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=9&type=audio&item=73">Eva Walton: I don't know who hurt baby</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>