Jury hears mom's videotaped confession in girl's murder

A DuPage County jury heard Tuesday the prosecution's most-powerful evidence against a Woodridge mother accused of murder - her own words.

In two videotaped police interviews, Christina Beltran admits beating her 5-year-old daughter July 6, 2007, after the little girl soiled herself in their apartment.

On the tapes, played in court, Beltran said she often slapped, pulled hair, threw, and spanked her daughter, Evelyn, using her hands, shoes, toys and a belt after the child misbehaved.

Beltran, 24, told police she began beating Evelyn about six weeks after the girl's March 2007 arrival from Mexico. Beltran said she struggled raising Evelyn because the little girl was the product of a rape.

"There'd been several days that I got mad and hit her," Beltran said in a July 7, 2007, interview in Spanish, which was translated for the jury. "I would say, 'Oh Evelyn, you're so stupid.'"

Later, she said: "It's my fault because I didn't know how to love her."

Investigator Robert Holguin, a 30-year police officer, interviewed Beltran for 45 minutes July 7, 2007, at Edward Hospital in Naperville, where she was admitted for a mental breakdown after learning of Evelyn's death.

The second 85-minute interview was conducted that July 13 after Beltran was released from Linden Oaks Hospital, also in Naperville, where she received further treatment.

Though Beltran confessed in both interviews, she later recanted and insists her live-in boyfriend, Victor M. Jimenez, 27, is the one who beat Evelyn.

The defense portrayed Jimenez as an abusive drunkard who never wanted Evelyn to move here.

In earlier testimony, Jimenez admitted physically disciplining Evelyn, but he denied ever using enough force to seriously harm the girl. Prosecutors have not charged him with a crime.

Jimenez testified he watched in horror - but did nothing - as Beltran beat Evelyn's head against the floor the night she died. Jimenez said he intervened but, by then, Evelyn could barely stand. Christina Beltran is expected to testify after the prosecution rests that Jimenez manipulated her into taking the blame because he, unlike her, was in the country legally and could better care for their twin infant sons.

On the tapes, she tells a different story.

"Victor told me lots of times not to treat (Evelyn) like that because she was my daughter."

So, Holguin asked, why did you do it?

"I don't know," she said. "I had a dream the whole time. I felt like something came into my body. Something talked to me and said, 'Do it! Do it! Hit her! Hit her!'"

The trial before DuPage Circuit Judge George Bakalis continues this morning.