A police homicide detective said on tape in Denver District Court on Wednesday that a 7-year-old boy who died of starvation last year looked like “a walking skeleton . . . like he was in a concentration camp.”
Detective Larry Moore made the comments during a recorded interview he conducted with the boy’s guardian, Jon Phillips, who is on trial for the death of Chandler Grafner on May 6, 2007.
The taped interview was played Wednesday for the jury in the second day of the trial.
Phillips responded on the tape: “He’s always been thin. He was sick.”
Phillips’ attorneys claim that Chandler died of acute diabetes that had gone undetected. The coroner’s office ruled that the boy died of starvation and dehydration.
Chandler and his younger half brother, Dominick Phillips, lived with Phillips — Dominick’s father — and his girlfriend, Sarah Berry. Both Phillips, 27, and Berry, 23, are charged with first-degree murder, child abuse resulting in death and other charges. Berry’s trial begins next month.
Phillips said Chandler ate two to three cups of oatmeal the day before he died, along with bread and cheese.
Phillips said the two spent the night sleeping in the living room, with Phillips on the couch and Chandler on the floor. Berry slept in one bedroom, and Dominick in another.
Phillips said he woke about 7 a.m., showered and went to work at the Old Chicago restaurant across the street from their Tamarac Square apartment.
About 11 a.m., he lost a contact wiping kitchen steam out of his eyes, so he returned home to get a replacement.
He found Chandler awake on the living room floor, watching television and drinking a bottle of Gatorade.
“I sat down on the couch and asked Chandler if he wanted anything to eat. He said no,” Phillips said. “He was having difficulty breathing, so I gave him a nebulizer treatment (a face mask in which medicine is vaporized), which helped.”
Phillips said he decided not to go back to work in order to tend to Chandler, whose breathing had became labored again a short while later. Phillips gave him another nebulizer treatment.
“I told Sarah he wasn’t breathing. I performed CPR on him, but I must not have done it right,” he told police. He said Berry called 911 on her cellphone.
Moore, holding photos of Chandler from January 2007 and the day he died, became incredulous that Phillips couldn’t see any difference in the boy’s emaciated body.
“His shoulder blades are sticking out like icicles,” Moore said to Phillips. “He has no flesh on his cheeks. He looks like he is in a concentration camp. In five months, he went from a normal, healthy-looking boy to a walking skeleton. How can you say he’s not different?”
Moore asked him what he would think if he saw a boy like Chandler at a swimming pool.
“He looked a little thinner, but that’s from the sickness,” Phillips said.
Moore finally asked Phillips what he would say to Chandler today. Phillips couldn’t answer.
