GUILTY IA - Natalie Finn, 16, starved to death, West Des Moines, 24 Oct 2016

iliketotalk15 said:

Just heard about this. Can someone explain the kidnapping charge to me?

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Whiskers16 said:

If I'm not mistaken she was held in the basement? Presumably against her will. Hope I'm not mixing up cases :/

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iliketotalk15 said:

Oh yes, that makes sense. Held against her will. I was just thinking more of they snatched her from somewhere. Thanks!

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About 250 to 280 Polk County residents will be questioned Friday about whether they can be fair and impartial in the murder trial of Nicole Finn, accused in the starvation death of her 16-year-old daughter Natalie.

Polk County Judge Karen Romano on Thursday denied a second bid by Finn's attorneys to move the trial out of central Iowa, saying she will reconsider the request if juror questionnaires reveal too much bias.

If the trial moves forward as planned after Thanksgiving, Romano said she plans to admonish jurors not to read or watch any media about the case. She will take the added step of asking them to turn off news alerts on their smartphones, she said.

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Whiskers16 said:

Is it typical for people to take out life insurance policies on children?

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West Des Moines school officials watched over Natalie Finn, gave her food, contacted child-protective workers by phone and in writing, and exchanged hundreds of emails with her adoptive mother, Nicole Finn.

But those efforts at the Walnut Creek Campus, an alternative high school, failed to save the malnourished 16-year-old.

Instead, Natalie stopped coming to school in May 2016, not long after she was suspected of stealing $60 from a teacher.

Natalie had used the money to buy junk food that she stashed in classrooms to last her until the end of the school year, witnesses said.

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The social worker for Iowa's Department of Human Services also left Nicole Finn four phone messages and an email, she told a Polk County jury..

West Des Moines police Officer Craig Kincaid, a resource officer at Valley Southwoods, testified that he went to the home several times to check on the allegation.

On each visit, Nicole Finn’s black Honda Pilot sat in the driveway. But she never answered the door, the jury was told.

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Jurors also saw photos Tuesday of Natalie’s skeletal, bruised body as Dr. Francis Garrity, a forensic pathologist, testified.

The retired Polk County medical examiner, who still does work for the county and the state, said Natalie had little soft tissue, muscle or fat when she died.

The 16-year-old weighed just 81 pounds at the time of her autopsy. Normal weight for a girl her height and age would have been 125 pounds, Garrity said.

“She was in the fatal area, the lethal area,” he told the jury.

Defense attorney Jennifer Larson suggested to Garrity that Natalie could have starved herself or had anorexia.

But Garrity said he was given no information that suggested Natalie had tell-tale medical signs of anorexia.

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Three or four days before she died, Natalie Finn became too weak to get up to eat, her brother told a rapt Polk County jury Wednesday in the murder trial of their adoptive mother, Nicole Finn.

“What did your mother do?” prosecutor Nan Horvat asked Jaden Finn, 16.

"She said, ‘Since you’re not going to get up, I’m not going to feed you,'" Jaden responded.

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Jaden said he spent most of the summer of 2016 in that bedroom, leaving only once or twice. He also testified he went as long as two weeks without food.

He said he, Natalie and Mikayla used to sneak out their window to beg for money for food. But he said his mother discovered pizza boxes and other waste outside that window, so she and her ex-husband, Joe, boarded it up.

Nicole Finn also installed an alarm on the three siblings' door to alert her when they tried to leave.

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JusticeWillBeServed said:

'Since you're not going to get up, I'm not going to feed you,' Nicole Finn told daughter too weak to stand, son testifies

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kdg411 said:

Jaden told jurors his mother, who had lupus and fibromyalgia, spent most of her time smoking outside, sleeping in her bedroom or managing her pet rescue on a computer at a desk in the garage.

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