NY - Melissa Van Der Linde-Berst, 7 mos, murdered, Buffalo, 28 May 2004 *Insanity*

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Horrified motorists sprang from their cars Friday to stop a woman who was repeatedly slamming her 7-month-old daughter onto a concrete sidewalk, police said. The baby later died of massive head trauma.

Kirsten Vanderlinde, 36, who receives mental health care as an outpatient, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Melissa Vanderlinde-Berst.

Police had checked on Vanderlinde twice shortly before the attack. A neighbor said she had called a crisis intervention center two days earlier, after Vanderlinde, fearing she was a bad mother, asked the neighbor to take custody of the child.

But the neighbor, Millicent Turrentine, said she never thought Vanderlinde would hurt Melissa. "She's never acted anything but loving to the baby," she said.

Witnesses said a woman wearing a nightgown and slippers was holding the baby by her ankles Friday morning and chanting: "Where's my TV? Where's my phone? Where's my peace? Where's my nice home? Where's my justice?"

"She was viciously swinging the baby and smashing the baby into the ground," Police Capt. Mark Morgan said. "I don't even like saying it . . . because it's so hard to think of."

A man ran to the woman and wrested the baby from her. Police arrived and tackled Vanderlinde.

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=54&u_sid=1108939

When are people going to start listening to these women who say they need help? When are people going to start listening to other people who say that something needs to be done because children are in danger? This makes me just sick but it also makes me so darn angry, I hardly know how to express myself! I'm outraged that no one saved this poor, innocent, precious child before this happened to her. Something could have been done. Someone could have done more.

Where was the father?

That's right: where was the father?

BirdieBoo said:

That's right: where was the father?

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Probably no father around! Typical thing happened.........She the mother seek's help.....SHE does........nothing happens.............and she in a nitegown and robe kill's her daughter. It's like getting a restraining order cause you're husband threaten's to you and the kids! Mean's nothing........
AND
In San Diego now, they are turning over the County Mental Health Unit to the Private sector.............so when anyone get's sick (mentally) now........they probably won't be able to afford help. That's because we will no longer be funded by the State..... It was bad before..........it's going to be worse!

xxxxxxxxxxo
mama

From May 2005:

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/may/08/news/adna-baby8

Peter Van Der Linde smiled at the old snapshots of his only child, Kirsten, now grown and sitting a few feet away. Reaching for flowers in one, playing with the dog in another. Building with blocks. These are moments he might have recreated with Kirsten's own baby, Melissa. Instead, Van Der Linde was on the witness stand and Kirsten was on trial for violently killing her baby, just before she was to meet her grandfather for the first time.

Another photo presented at the March trial was one taken by police; it showed 7-month-old Melissa after she had been swung by her mother headfirst into a sidewalk, again and again. After a weeklong trial, Kirsten Van Der Linde would be found not responsible, because of mental illness, for killing her child.

Peter Van Der Linde, 69, knows what mental illness is like. Long before it claimed his granddaughter's life, it consumed much of his own.

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