Tearful mother now says she didn't kill daughter

A Woodridge woman who confessed to killing her daughter recanted Thursday and said she took the rap for her boyfriend out of love for their twin sons.

In four hours of testimony, a tearful Christina Beltran said she lied to police at her boyfriend's urging because he and his family could better provide for the young boys.

Beltran, 24, accused Victor Jimenez of being a violent drunk who often hit her and her 5-year-old daughter, Evelyn, who was not his biological child, shortly after the girl came from Mexico four months earlier.

She said Jimenez became enraged July 6, 2007, after Evelyn defecated on herself. Beltran said she later hid from Jimenez in a closet but heard what she thought was him slamming Evelyn's head into a bathroom wall.

Before hiding, Beltran said she did confront Jimenez.

"I told him that is the last time you will lay a hand on her," she testified through an interpreter. "I was tired of the mistreating he was doing to us."

But is she telling the truth?

A DuPage County jury may attempt to answer that question today.

Evelyn died of blunt head trauma. The little girl had several cuts and bruises covering most of her 41-pound body and new and old injuries that included a fractured arm and ribs. She also had a lacerated intestine from an earlier untreated stomach injury.

Prosecutors Alex McGimpsey and Ann Celine O'Hallaren argue Beltran resented Evelyn because she was the product of a rape. Jimenez has not been charged with a crime. The 27-year-old landscaper earlier testified it was Beltran who in a fit of rage beat Evelyn's head against the front room floor.

The defense team, Jaime Escuder and Robert Miller, attacked the credibility of the police investigation, which was absent of forensic testing of evidence inside the apartment. They portray Beltran as an easily manipulated woman who during her impoverished childhood was beaten and forced to drop out of school after the second grade.

But, in an intense cross-examination, McGimpsey pointed out inconsistencies.

Beltran demonstrated how Jimenez pushed Evelyn by the hair with both his hands. Jimenez, though, had one arm in a sling because of a work-related shoulder injury. Beltran said Evelyn cleaned herself up in the shower but the little girl still was wearing blue underwear filled with excrement at the hospital.

Then there is her videotaped confessions - about 130 minutes in which Beltran told police she'd call Evelyn a 'dirty little pig' and wished she was dead.

Beltran said she was acting for police so that they'd believe the false confession. But, in the second interview, after police left for a short break, Beltran makes more incriminating statements speaking out loud to Evelyn and God while alone in the room.

"Forgive me, my love," Beltran said through tears on the tape. "I didn't know what I was doing. Lord, have mercy on my little girl. Why didn't I control myself?"

Beltran said she knew she was being taped. She is the one who took Evelyn to the hospital. After learning her daughter had died, Beltran suffered an emotional breakdown, tried to strangle herself with a bedsheet and had to be sedated. She spent one week in a mental hospital before being charged with murder.

Beltran said she came to the United States in November 2004 to raise money to buy a home for her daughter and father in Mexico but instead sent for Evelyn after she started a new family here with Jimenez.

"I missed her a lot," she told jurors. "She is ... all my life."

Lawyers are expected to make their closing arguments today. Afterward, the jury will begin its deliberations.