IN HER ISOLATION CELL at the Monterey County Jail, with all the time in the world on her hands and not much else to occupy her mind, the woman began making plans.
Her kids, 12-year-old twins and a 15-year-old, had been placed into foster care when she was arrested. Her trial was at least a year, and maybe a lot longer than that, from starting. She was pregnant when she was locked up in December 2015 and she wasn’t naive about what was going to happen. She knew there was no way she was going to be allowed to raise the baby growing in her womb.
But she thought she could have some say in the matter and arrange for relatives to take the baby.
So she began to plan. She worried about going into labor in her cell, and nobody hearing her calls for help, so she consulted with her assigned doctor at Natividad Medical Center and they scheduled a C-section. She requested multiple times to meet with a medical social worker – something that under state code is supposed to happen within seven days of an inmate making a request – to make arrangements for the birth and the baby’s care, but she says those requests went unanswered for months.
They went unanswered, she says, straight up until the day she was scheduled to give birth, when social services was finally called in.
Then came that day, July 22, 2016. Deputies took her to Natividad, doctors gave her an epidural, numbed her from the chest down and delivered her baby, a girl. She was taken to a recovery room and handcuffed to her bed. She says a social worker who came to the hospital for the birth told her she had the right to hold her child and care for her child in the hospital – something normally afforded to any inmate who gives birth at Natividad – but deputies refused to allow it.
From there, according to a claim the woman filed against Monterey County, the sheriff’s office and the jail, things moved quickly.
At the hospital, “all of a sudden, [deputies] made several calls to social services, over the course of several hours, but I had asked for 7 and ½ months and noone (sic) could make the calls for me in all that time. It makes me believe and feel that there was some kind of conspiracy to keep me from having access to the social workers,” the woman wrote in her claim. “I tried so hard [but] I was denied being able to see, hold, breastfeed or touch my baby at all.”
Social workers took the baby away from the mom, away from the birth father’s family who waited at Natividad in the hopes of taking the baby home, and placed the newborn into protective custody and foster care.
And that act, as well as the later termination of her and the birth father’s parental rights, are now the subject of a jaw-dropping case before the Sixth District Court of Appeal, where the birth mother, birth father, baby and county each have a stake in the outcome, and taxpayer-funded attorneys to represent their interests.
There are two narratives to this story, depending on who you believe.
In the first, the system worked perfectly to protect the baby girl that Tami Joy Huntsman gave birth to while in custody and provided her with foster parents who cared for her, came to love her and want to adopt her.
In the second, Huntsman is the victim of a scheme that started with sheriff’s deputies who denied her rights and ended with bad lawyering in dependency court, where hearings take place in closed court because the cases involve the private lives of children – and the horrible things that sometimes happen to them at the hands of people who are supposed to protect them.
FOR A MINUTE, just maybe, you may have been feeling a little sympathetic to this woman’s plight. An incarcerated mom gives birth in custody and has her baby whisked away, never to be seen again by her, the father or their families? It’s more than a little Dickensian.
But then comes the name: Tami Joy Huntsman. And you may be wondering, “Why does that name sound familiar?”
It sounds familiar because in December 2015, Huntsman became the centerpiece of one of the most notorious cases in Monterey County history, a case that’s still pending in Monterey County Superior Court with charges that could bring Huntsman the death penalty if she’s convicted, as well as a possible life sentence for the baby’s father and her co-defendant, Gonzalo Curiel Jr.
It started on Dec. 11, 2015, when Huntsman, then 41 and a former East Salinas resident, and her teenage companion, Curiel, were arrested after a witness in Plumas County called police to report a badly abused girl had been left in a car outside an apartment building in Quincy where the two were staying.
Officials there got the child medical help and began investigating. Two days later they found the little girl had two younger half-siblings who were nowhere to be found.
Until they were found, both dead. Police located the badly abused bodies of Shaun Tara, 6, and Delylah Tara, 3, wrapped in plastic and shoved into plastic bins in a storage facility in Redding. The little girl who survived also showed signs of malnutrition and prolonged abuse, including multiple broken bones that went untreated and healed deformed.
“They hit me a lot,” she told police, according to court records from the Sixth District Court of Appeal. She reported that Huntsman, whom she referred to as “aunt” (although Huntsman is cousin to the girl’s stepfather), sprayed her with cold water and hit her siblings with golf clubs. And Curiel, she told them, watched her bathe, touched her in ways that made her “uncomfortable” and stuffed clothes in her mouth to muffle her screams, according to the court documents.
She also told police that she was rarely fed and often had to sneak food at night.
At the hospital, doctors found she had broken fingers and shoulder bones, a dislocated jaw and weighed only 40 pounds. The average healthy weight for a 9-year-old girl is 64 pounds.
It’s safe to say that Tami Joy Huntsman and Gonzalo Curiel Jr. are nobody’s idea of characters worth a modicum of sympathy. They allegedly beat, tortured and starved the Tara children to death, and allegedly beat, tortured and starved the surviving child nearly to death. While the children were found in Plumas County, the case was transferred to the Monterey County system because officials say the children were abused and killed in Huntsman’s Salinas home.
Then the baby was born, and taken away. Why should anyone care, especially if the baby was placed with a qualified foster family?
Because under the state Welfare and Institutions Code, the birth parents have rights, despite the criminal charges pending against them, and maybe more importantly, the baby has rights too. Those rights include the consideration of any family member who steps up and is willing to become the baby’s guardian, before the baby is adopted by strangers.
Go back in time, and there’s a story, maybe even a sympathetic one, of who Huntsman and Curiel were before they got together – and before the Tara children’s mother was hit and killed by a car and before their father, en route to prison, asked Huntsman to care for all three kids while he was locked up.
Curiel, a friend of Huntsman’s teenage son, grew up motherless in East Salinas and with a father who worked long hours in construction to keep a roof overhead. With his father’s permission, he moved in with Huntsman’s family at age 16 – his father actually signed a letter authorizing Huntsman to have some parental rights and make decisions about Curiel’s education. Curiel was still a minor when Huntsman began having sex with him.
Huntsman herself, meanwhile, was raised by her grandparents, unsure of her father’s identity and with a mother who was mostly absent from the picture. The court documents currently available paint a picture of chaotic upbringings for both, but nothing that would indicate a propensity toward violence, or that they had been victims of violence themselves during childhood.
The criminal case against the two is expected to begin in March. It’s never been a who done it (although it may be who done more or who done worse). It’s always been a why.
And as for the what – the details of the case and what those children endured – it was enough to make veteran law enforcement officers weep.
“It’s one of the worst cases, if not the absolute worst, that I saw in 33 years on the job,” says Kelly McMillin, who was the Salinas Police chief when the call came in from Plumas County. “I don’t think anyone associated with that case ever took it as just another child abuse case, not that there is such a thing.”
AFTER HUNTSMAN TOLD the jail intake nurse she was pregnant, Monterey County Sheriff’s Capt. Jim Bass told her he would arrange for her to see a medical social worker so she could plan for the baby’s care. Months passed, more promises were made, but the medical social worker never appeared. Meanwhile, Huntsman obtained a document called “power of attorney to provide care for a child,” and named Curiel’s uncle as the baby’s caretaker.
She told social worker Linda Castillo, who came to the hospital the day the baby was born, that was her intent. Castillo informed her the family would have to undergo a background check and screening. Castillo spoke to the family waiting in the hospital, talked to the doctor and the charge nurse and allegedly told Huntsman there was no reason for the Monterey County Department of Social Services to be involved with the baby and she wouldn’t be opening a case.
But the next day, as the hospital prepared to release the baby, a second social worker, Joshua Hammond, appeared and put the baby into protective custody. Huntsman said goodbye to her daughter through a glass window.
On July 26, the Social Services Department filed a petition in juvenile court seeking to formalize the foster-care arrangement. Huntsman was appointed an attorney, Paddy Grinstein, while Curiel was appointed attorney Richard West. The baby was represented by attorney Douglas Tsuchiya.
The court ordered that the baby remain in protective custody and in foster care, and set a hearing for September. Huntsman claims Grinstein was unreachable after the hearing, and enlisted her criminal defense attorney and investigator to help her reach Grinstein.
In the background, Social Services says it sent letters to various Huntsman relatives, offering them the chance to be screened and take in the baby. Among those contacted were Huntsman’s brother, Wayne, who is serving 20 years in prison for setting the King Fire near Sacramento in 2014. The department didn’t send letters to the relatives Huntsman asked them to contact.
Meanwhile, Curiel’s father tried to communicate with Social Services, but was refused because his son’s paternity hadn’t been proven. Once it was proven, Curiel’s father again contacted the department and began the screening process, but was allegedly told by a social worker that “under the circumstances, [the baby] would be better off with strangers than family.”
These allegations are all laid out in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus – literally, an order to produce the body, in this case, the baby – filed by Huntington Beach attorney Leslie Barry in the Sixth District Court of Appeal. The 45-page document lays out in great detail one purported misstep after another: attempts to thwart family from being cleared to take the baby, sheriff’s deputies ignoring Huntsman’s rights, Grinstein only giving Huntsman paperwork on the day of the custody hearing – and then not offering any argument when they appeared for that hearing before Monterey County Superior Court Judge Sam Lavorato.
On that day, Sept. 13, 2016, Lavorato declared the baby a dependent of the court and ordered her final removal from parental custody, effectively terminating Huntsman’s and Curiel’s rights. (Later, those rights were formally terminated.) Barry claims Lavorato didn’t advise Huntsman she had a right to appeal his ruling, and also claims Grinstein didn’t explain it to her either.
But Grinstein gave Huntsman documents at that hearing that may have explained what was happening with her baby. In a strange and unexplained twist, those documents were confiscated by sheriff’s deputies, who claimed Grinstein called them and asked them to get the documents for her, the writ states. It’s not clear what happened to those documents, or why deputies took them.
In January 2017, according to the writ, Grinstein visited Huntsman and told her the foster family caring for the baby was going to adopt her “and there was nothing [Huntsman] could do at that point.” About a week later, Grinstein declared she had a conflict of interest in the case and was replaced by Michael Atteridge, an attorney and court investigator.
In March, Atteridge filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging Grinstein had provided Huntsman with ineffective counsel.
In May, that writ was denied. Next, the appeal process began. While all of the documents in the county case are filed under seal because they involve a juvenile – the baby – Barry filed the appellate writ as a separate case in September. That filing became public record and was made available at the Sixth District clerk’s office in San Jose.
Grinstein and Atteridge both declined to comment, as did county Social Services Director Elliott Robinson. County Counsel Charles McKee, whose department represents the Sheriff’s Office and the Social Services Department, said he was unfamiliar with the specifics of the appellate writ but promised to look into it. In a later email, he said he couldn’t comment on the specifics of the case, but added, “We will vigorously oppose the writ petition.”
That vigorous opposition arrived in a 50-page response filed in the Sixth District by the county on Nov. 27. In that document, county counsel maintains that “court intervention, supervision and an out-of-home placement were necessary to protect the baby.” It says criminal defense counsel instructed social workers and the Social Services Department not to speak to Huntsman or Curiel, and acknowledged that Huntsman wasn’t allowed contact with the baby, “due to the seriousness of her criminal charges.”
It also says that while Social Services had no authority to keep Huntsman from caring for the baby in the hospital, social workers deferred to the sheriff’s department and the doctor, who purportedly said he was going to seek permission to write a medical order not allowing Huntsman to have contact with the baby due to the seriousness of the criminal charges. (In the document, that doctor is not identified.) It adds that while Curiel’s family began the process of seeking clearance to obtain custody of the baby, they never followed through. And, it adds, the baby’s attorney said he was concerned about placing the baby with Curiel’s family because he didn’t know what role – if any – that family had played in the lives of the dead children.
The county’s response paints Huntsman’s life as a slow-motion domestic horror show, one that includes a history of arrests for possession of meth with her then-3-year-old daughter in the car in 1998, arrests for driving a getaway car in a burglary with the same daughter in the car, and 53 referrals to social services within Huntsman’s family in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Riverside and Monterey counties.
THAT BRINGS US to the present; Curiel was appointed an appellate attorney in November, as was the baby. The baby’s attorney, Julie Braden, has filed her brief, while a brief from Curiel’s attorney, James Haworth, is pending.
The foster family who took Huntsman’s baby in has begun the process of adopting her. They faced a hitch when it was discovered that Huntsman’s likely father is a registered member of the Cherokee Nation, which means Huntsman has Cherokee heritage as well, according to the brief filed by the county.
The Cherokee Nation intervenes in cases where babies with Cherokee heritage are adopted into white families and tries to ensure placement with families of Cherokee heritage. The social worker sent notice to three federally recognized Cherokee tribes in June; the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians indicated the baby was not a Cherokee child.
Braden declined to comment for this story. In her brief, though, Braden writes that the dependency court judge – Lavorato – failed to follow the directive of the California Legislature to consider relatives, by blood or affinity, or extended family as the baby’s caretaker.
Braden writes that Grinstein provided Huntsman with ineffective counsel. Had counsel been effective, the attorney would have argued other relatives should have been considered – including a cousin by marriage, who is a federal employee married to a supervisor of a state firefighting crew who came forward in November after learning of the baby’s birth.
“The fundamental liberty interest in maintaining biological relationships arises from the right to privacy,” Braden argues, adding that fundamental right is reflected in the state Welfare and Institutions Code, which in part states that social workers must identify and locate adult relatives to a child removed from their parents within five degrees of kinship.
“Due to ineffective representation by the mother’s counsel, the [baby] lost the opportunity to have part of her fractured familial rights retained,” Braden writes. And the Social Services Department stated that the baby being adopted by a stranger would “afford her the opportunity of anonymity concerning the circumstances she was born into.”
What the Sixth District will do is anyone’s guess. They could opt to do nothing, meaning the baby’s current foster family will move forward with the process of adoption. They could find Huntsman received inadequate counsel, and still opt to do nothing as far as the baby’s placement. Or they could overturn Lavorato’s decision and order a re-hearing while providing him direction on how he should handle it, making the baby’s future family less clear.
With all of the briefs in play, the county is expected to respond on Jan. 11. At that point, Huntsman and Curiel will be about eight weeks away from standing trial in the Tara children’s deaths and the abuse of the surviving girl.
And the baby girl Huntsman gave birth to in custody will be 19 months old.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the following clarification. An earlier version stated that the Cherokee Nation had not responded to an inquiry about placing the baby; that statement was based on incorrect information included in Monterey County's court papers, filed in November. The Cherokee Nation did respond in September to say no records were confirmed identifying the child as being of Cherokee heritage.