Baby Sitters

After a courtroom confession that was disputed by prosecutors, an Owings Mills woman was sentenced to 18 years yesterday for battering and shaking to death an infant she was watching in her home. Thu Thi Le, 31, was sentenced by Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge John G. Turnbull II in the July 1999 death of 4-month-old Kimdang Thi Le. Le, who is not related to the victim, was convicted Feb. 14 of second-degree murder and child abuse. Le had been Kimdang's baby sitter for about three months when she called the parents July 2, 1999, to report that the baby seemed ill, according to testimony.

In a case that pitted church members against one another, a 31-year-old Columbia man was sentenced yesterday to 18 months in prison for sexually abusing little girls he was paid to baby-sit. William Glenn Engle, known as Glenn, pleaded guilty to fondling two girls between 1991 and 1998. As part of the plea agreement, the state dropped a third, similar charge. Despite testimony from a psychologist who said Engle suffered from severe anxiety and would not fare well in prison, Howard County Circuit Judge Diane Leasure refused to suspend all of Engle's 15-year sentence.

A 4-year-old Harford County boy drowned yesterday in the Gunpowder River after his baby sitter left him and two other children on the shore as she set up a picnic lunch nearby, officials said. James Spicer, of Edgewood, had come to Gunpowder Falls State Park in northern Baltimore County with his younger sister and a third child, all under the care of Jeanette Muehleisen of Edgewood. Two other adults and Muehleisen's teen-age daughter accompanied them. About 1 p.m., Muehleisen left the three children on the beach while she prepared lunch, said Susan O'Brien, spokeswoman with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

A half-dozen seventh-grade girls at Pine Grove Middle School in Carney are sitting around talking and quickly discover they have something in common: A sudden burst of popularity among families with young children.Five have been recruited to baby-sit on what could be the biggest party night of their lives, New Year's Eve on the cusp of 2000.Most received their offers by mid-October -- and from more than one family.Three expect to earn at least $50 for a few hour's work.But the winner, the girls quickly conclude, is 12-year-old Nicole Benham of Perry Hall.

A Baltimore County grand jury indicted an Owings Mills baby sitter yesterday on charges of first-degree murder, child abuse and reckless endangerment in the death of a 4-month-old girl who died last month of a fractured skull.The indictment of Thu Thi Xuan Le, 28, of the 300 block of Kendig Drive in Owings Mills occurred one month after the baby was taken to Sinai Hospital with a severe head injury.Assistant State's Attorney John Cox, who heads the county's child abuse and sex offense division, said the baby suffered a blow to the head and brain damage stemming from severe shaking.

CENTREVILLE -- Facing two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the accidental suffocation deaths of two infants at her Stevensville home day care last spring, Stacey W. Russum pleaded guilty yesterday to lesser charges in a plea arrangement she hopes will keep her out of prison.Russum, the first child care provider to be prosecuted on criminal charges for violating Maryland day care regulations, entered an Alford plea in which she admitted no wrongdoing but acknowledged that pros- ecutors probably had enough evidence to convict her on two counts of reckless endangerment.

Baltimore County prosecutors will seek the death penalty against John Albert Miller IV, who was indicted yesterday on first-degree murder, attempted rape and other charges in the strangulation death last month of a 17-year-old honor student and tennis star from Eldersburg.The body of Shen Dullea Poehlman, a Liberty High School graduate who had been headed to Florida State University on an academic scholarship, was found July 29 in the back seat of her blue Honda the day after she had accepted a baby-sitting job from Miller in Reisterstown.

Paul Stephen Riggins -- the man Howard County police say is their only suspect in the disappearance of his wife -- told a circuit judge yesterday that he made a terrible mistake when he began a lengthy sexual relationship with the family's 15-year-old baby sitter.That four-year-long mistake netted him 18 months in jail for child abuse as the former baby sitter, now 20, and a courtroom filled with friends and family of his missing wife looked on yesterday."It never should have gone as far as it did," said Riggins, 40. "Whatever I can do to prove I am not really as bad as it seems I will do."

For the first time since Nancy Lee Riggins vanished a little over a year ago, Howard County police have publicly labeled the case a "possible homicide."Police consistently had termed the Elkridge woman's disappearance a suspicious missing-person case. But in a hearing Friday in Howard County Circuit Court, Cpl. Mark Miller testified that detectives in the violent crimes unit approached the investigation as a possible homicide.The hearing was held to determine whether taped conversations could be used as evidence in a sex-offense trial scheduled to begin Monday against Riggins' husband, Paul Stephen Riggins Jr.Riggins, 40, is accused of having an illicit long-term sexual relationship with his daughter's baby sitter that began in 1992, when the girl was 14 or 15 and Riggins was 34.The conversations between Riggins and the baby sitter were taped by police beginning days after Nancy Riggins' disappearance on July 1, 1996.

Howard County prosecutors revealed yesterday that police arranged to secretly tape conversations between Paul Stephen Riggins and the teen-age girl with whom he is accused of having an illicit sexual relationship.In addition to the sex offense charges that Riggins faces, he has been the center of controversy since his wife, Nancy, mysteriously disappeared more than a year ago.Although police have never publicly labeled Riggins a suspect in her disappearance, Riggins acknowledged under oath last fall that he was the target of a homicide investigation.