Published: 10:26 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012
A 36-year-old woman died in May from a head injury she suffered as an infant in 1976, and the cause has been ruled a homicide, Austin police officials said Thursday. But investigators said they were not notified of the incident that led to her death until after the Travis County medical examiner's office performed an autopsy.
Linda Gatica, who as a child had been under the supervision of Child Protective Services, died May 9 at a care facility in Manchaca, about 14 miles south of Austin.
"It is a little bit strange that there was no police involvement in this," said Austin police Sgt. Brian Miller with the homicide unit. But police, CPS officials and victims advocates said such a case should no longer be possible in Texas, where CPS now sends a copy of every case it handles to law enforcement and where every adult is required by law to report suspected child abuse to authorities.
Investigators said the victim's grandmother, Martha Gatica, was probably to blame for the abuse. But she died in the 1980s, and a review of the case by the Travis County district attorney's office has determined it will not be prosecuted, police said.
Linda Gatica received a blunt-force blow to the head on Feb. 27, 1976, at an East Austin home on Holly Street, according to an Austin police report. She was brought to the hospital by her mother with injuries that appeared suspicious, the report shows.
CPS conducted an investigation at the time, and the 4-month-old girl was released into the agency's custody after she was discharged from the hospital. She was placed in foster care.
But Austin police detectives retracing the CPS investigation found the mother, Mary Jane Gatica, who was 20 at the time, had given CPS caseworkers multiple accounts as to how the child might have been harmed, saying Linda Gatica could have fallen off the bed or slipped on a toy, police records show.
Mary Jane Gatica did not tell anyone that she suspected that her mother — who was then 68 — had hurt the baby until last month, when police investigators visited her home, the documents show. In an interview, she first told detectives the baby had been hit by her 1-year-old brother but later broke down and said she saw her mother shake the infant.
Gatica told police that she herself was a victim of abuse from her mother while growing up, and had "never considered reporting the abuse because it was not done back then," the report said.
Mary Jane Gatica and her three young children had lived at the time with her mother.
CPS spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales said the agency probably does not have information on the incident because its electronic database does not store records from that time and other documents are disposed of after a certain period.
Gonzales said that under Texas code adopted in 1989, the agency notifies law enforcement of all its reports.
"The system is set in place so that they receive information on every one of our intakes," she said.
Linda Gatica had been under the guardianship of Family Eldercare while living at the Villa at Marbridge nursing home facility in Manchaca. Bob Lontkowski, a care manager in the guardianship program, said he was aware that Linda Gatica might have suffered shaken baby syndrome but that he did not know police had never been notified. He declined to comment further because he did not have the authority to speak on the case.
Eloise Hudson, a spokeswoman for CASA of Central Texas, a group that trains volunteers to be court-appointed special advocates for abused and neglected children, called the case unusual.
"But the overall lesson we learn from every child abuse case is that there is always room for improvement to keep children safe," she said.
Contact Jazmine Ulloa at 445-3763
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