Bad Mommy

A Death in White Bear Lake by Barry Siegel

In the early 1960s, Lois and Harold Jurgens of White Bear Lake, Minnesota adopted two little boys, Robert and Dennis. By 1965, Lois had finally tortured little Dennis to death. Robert was still alive but acted like a whipped dog, cowering in corners and crying over spilled milk.

Despite the obvious physical trauma and mutilation of Dennis' three year old body, Lois was never charged with his murder. No one from the child protective social workers to the DA's office ever filed any charges against her. The police department investigated her, but most of their evidence went missing. Lois' brother, Jerome, was the investigative officer and he told two other police officers that he would not let his sister be charged or punished for Dennis' murder.

Lois' large family, along with her brother Jerome, had witnessed her abuse of Dennis in family gatherings but did nothing to stop it. Neighbors had also seen Dennis' chronic bruises and his transformation from an outgoing and cheerful little boy to an emaciated and bruised silent child and did nothing. Her priest, Lois was a very devout woman who had her little boys saying perfect rosary prayers by the age of 2 1/2, wrote letters of recommendation to her Perfect Motherhood. Everybody saw something but nobody did anything about it.

Lois got away scot free and in 1971 adopted four more children. The records and the memory of Dennis' murder did not prevent those adoptions. These children were older and could speak. After three years with Lois, the two oldest ran away and reported her constant abusive rages and acts against them. The authorities finally acted. All of Lois' children were taken away from her.

But Dennis' murder was left unaddressed until his natural mother, Jerry Sherwood showed up in White Bear Lake in 1985 demanding to know why she had borne five children, but the only one that she had given up for adoption, for his own Good as she was told by the Catholic Adoption Agency who placed him in Lois' Hell, was the only dead one. Miss Sherwood demanded that the Law act, and she stayed and hounded the White Bear Lake authorities until they re-opened the case and Lois was tried and found guilty of three counts of murder.

Lois had a husband named Harold. He was nothing.

The book is well written and organized and keeps the reader's interest throughout. This was a good true crime story for every one but poor Dennis and his Birth Mother.