While Kristie Haas admitted something similar to her father, whom she called after her arrest, prosecutors said she never told Brandon Haas about the fire.
“When Brandon heard during his interview, apparently for the first time, that Defendant had burnt Emma’s body – ‘she was burning?’ – he began screaming and crying,” prosecutors wrote. “‘The (expletive) for? What’s the reasoning for that? … What’s the reason for doing that?’”
For the last three years – and even longer for Emma Grace’s former guardian, Tanya Axsom Conley – the toddler’s extended family has questioned whether the girl’s death could have been prevented.
Most agree that the system designed to keep children safe failed, at least while Emma Grace lived in Indiana. That’s where Kristie Haas is originally from and where the toddler lived for the first 20 months of her life.
Kristie Haas, who was in the throes of addiction and struggling to care for her other three children when Emma Grace was born, had given the baby to Conley to care for shortly after her birth in January 2016.
An Indiana judge formally appointed Conley as Emma Grace’s guardian later that year, while Kristie Haas’ other three children went to live with their father. (Emma Grace does not share the same father as her siblings.)
Yet about a year after Conley officially assumed guardianship over Emma Grace, in the spring of 2017, Kristie Haas texted her saying she wanted the toddler back. In June 2017, she filed a petition with the courts to terminate the guardianship.
At the time, Kristie Haas was living in Delaware, where she’d moved after meeting Brandon Haas in a Florida drug treatment program. Brandon Haas, who is originally from New Castle County, and Kristie Haas had married by then. The woman’s ex still had custody of the three other children.
In a “hastily” convened hearing in Indiana in early August 2017, Kristie Haas made her case for reunification with Emma Grace. Conley was angry at the time – Kristie had been back in Indiana three to five times between February 2017, when she moved to Delaware, and the hearing, but didn’t once try to see Emma Grace.
A FAILURE: How a judge’s decision, a parent’s will and a legal presumption failed Emma Grace Cole
Even when she arrived in Bloomington, Indiana, for the court date, she didn’t ask Conley if she could see the girl.
At the hearing, Conley and her attorney argued that these weren’t Kristie Haas’ only opportunities to see Emma Grace though.
In July, Kristie’s mother, Belinda Johnson-Hurtado – a well-known attorney in Bloomington – took the other three children to Delaware for a nearly two-week visit. At the hearing, Belinda testified that she “was not asked to take Emma along.”
She would later tell a court-appointed child advocate she “would have loved to have invited Emma to join them” but “there was not enough room in the car,” according to a report filed in mid-September.
At the end of the August hearing, Indiana Judge Stephen Galvin made no ruling on guardianship but directed the child advocate to file a report by the next hearing regarding the termination request. It would be reviewed and discussed at the next court date, slated for late September 2017.
A judge’s decision and Emma Grace’s fate
In the September report, the child advocate noted that Kristie Haas’ therapist had cited “some marital issues that needed to be addressed” between her and Brandon Haas. But the most pressing issue, the advocate wrote, was Emma Grace’s attachment to the Conley (then Stroud/Axsom) family and a lack of bonding between her and Kristie.
Emma Grace had already shown behaviors consistent with separation issues, the advocate had learned, and Kristie Haas didn’t know Emma Grace’s schedule or needs.
Given these circumstances, the advocate wrote in her report and then testified during the September hearing, in an ideal world, Kristie Haas and Emma Grace would visit together every weekend for two to three months before the guardianship was terminated.
However, because of the “considerable distance and expense and stress” associated with having to travel from Delaware to Indiana, she recommended one or two more parenting sessions, including an overnight visit.
RECOGNIZING EMMA GRACE: She was known only as a toddler found dead in a ball field. A year later, someone recognized this sketch
Yet after a brief discussion, Galvin made up his mind. He was terminating the guardianship.
Despite this decision, the judge appeared to be conflicted, court transcripts show.
Before making his ruling, he told the courtroom: “I don’t like what I’m about to order.”
Then, he said that it was “difficult for the court to find that it’s necessarily in the child’s best interests,” seemingly acknowledging that his decision flew in the face of the advocate’s recommendations and what experts say are best practices for child reunification.
“But,” he added, “I am doing (so) in the sense that it is always in the child’s best interest to be in the care – at least the Indiana law presumes so – if the parent is able to fulfill their duties as a parent. And it is clear that Ms. Haas is able to fulfill those duties at this time.”
Later that day, in the September heat, Emma Grace was returned to Kristie Haas. She screamed as she was plucked from Conley’s arms.
Could Emma Grace’s death have been prevented?
Conley has been angry since that hearing almost six years ago and was even more devastated when she learned of Emma Grace’s death. She and others, including Kristie Haas’ sister, blame Galvin for his decision that day, saying it set in motion the toddler’s abuse.
Yet they also question what those in Delaware knew, and whether authorities had any way of learning of or stopping the abuse.
The sentencing memorandum provides some answers, including that Delaware child protective services were called in June 2018 by a neighbor, who said they’d seen three of the four children outside of the Newark home Kristie and Brandon Haas were renting.
They were unattended, the caller said, with one naked and another in only their underwear. The reporting party was also concerned about the “strong odor of marijuana” coming from the house and loud music blasting from the home.
“The caller felt the children were small for their ages and recounted a situation where one of the children was dropped off from school and no parent was present,” prosecutors wrote in the memo.
The caller, who knew the Haas’ landlord, also said the couple was six months behind in rent and that an inspection of the house had revealed holes in the walls, two puppies, and four cats. The home also smelled of urine, the caller said.
The children were all living in one bedroom in the three-bedroom house, the caller added, and another bedroom was used only for storage.
Yet by the time Delaware Division of Family Service workers tried to make a home visit a month later, Brandon and Kristie Haas had been evicted and moved to Smyrna. The caseworker didn’t find the family for almost four months.
In October 2018, the caseworker obtained medical records for the four children and “noted no concerns,” prosecutors wrote, aside from a single no-show doctor’s appointment for Emma Grace.
“But underneath the surface,” prosecutors wrote, “this single no-show appointment, on August 13, 2018, was the beginning of a long pattern of selective medical neglect of Emma at Defendant’s hands.”
Records show that after May 2018, Emma Grace had no medical appointments. Meanwhile, Kristie and Brandon Haas were abusing and starving her.
Still, Emma Grace and her siblings weren’t cut off from the world completely.
The toddler’s two sisters attended school that fall, though they had numerous attendance issues, prosecutors wrote. In one instance in late October, one of the children also came to school without a winter coat, prompting her teacher to try to find one for her from the lost and found.
It’s unclear what became of that incident.
In December, however, district staff conducted a home visit as a result of the truancy issues. While it’s also unclear what resulted from that visit, by January 2019, Kristie Haas had been granted permission to begin homeschooling the eldest girls.
As the outside world slowly lost contact with the children, so too did Brandon Haas’ mother, prosecutors wrote.
Up until late 2018 or early 2019 – when Emma Grace began appearing noticeably thinner, according to photos of the girl – Brandon Haas’ mother was “robustly engaged” in the children’s care. She and her partner had even offered to take Emma Grace from Brandon and Kristie Haas’ care and raise her for them, prosecutors wrote.
A TIMELINE: The life and death of Emma Grace Cole: A timeline — and what’s next
Yet the Haases declined the officer, and later, “due to a perceived disagreement” with her son and daughter-in-law, Brandon Haas’ mother told investigators that “Emma and the children were isolated away from her.”
Over the summer of 2019, she told investigators she “had no further interaction with Emma, with whom she had a prior close and loving relationship.”
With most, if not all, authorities shut out, there was no one to step in and advocate for Emma Grace or her siblings. To make matters worse, after the girl’s “disappearance,” the children were instructed not to mention their youngest sister, prosecutors said.
“When (she) would try to ask KH about Emma, KH would shake and get scared and tell not to talk about Emma,” the doctor wrote in her report.
By the time Kristie and Brandon Haas were located and arrested in a hotel in Pennsylvania, Emma Grace’s siblings were thin and suffering from malnutrition, with “significant dental decay.”
While they have since recovered physically, Kristie and Brandon Haas “inflicted deep psychological trauma on Emma’s siblings,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memorandum, adding that her “acts destroyed more lives than Emma’s alone.”
As for Emma Grace, prosecutors said Kristie Haas had options − none of which she chose to take.
“She could have turned to her family’s or Brandon’s for help. She could have surrendered Emma. She could have offered her for adoption,” prosecutors wrote. “Instead, she starved her, beat her, tortured her and deprived her of medical care.
“Her campaign of abuse caused the death of an innocent three-year-old girl.”
Kristie Haas remains in prison, while Brandon Haas is out on bail. They will be sentenced jointly next month.
Got a story tip or idea? Send to Isabel Hughes at ihughes@delawareonline.com. For all things breaking news, follow her on Twitter at @izzihughes _
