Parents Could Face Death Penalty in Girl's Fatal Beating

By: Carlos Sadovi

The parents of a 12-year-old girl who died after being hit more than 100 times with an electrical cable could face the death penalty.

Constance Slack, 41, and her husband Larry Slack, 41, were ordered held without bond Tuesday (11/13/01), by Criminal Court Judge Neil Linehan in the death of their daughter Laree early Sunday.

The parents, who are Jehovah's Witnesses, allegedly claimed in videotaped confessions that they beat their daughter with an inch-thick section of rubberized electrical cable filled with strands of wire while they were exacting a biblical punishment of 40 lashes minus one, three times, investigators said.

"This is a capital case with extreme physical pain", Assistant Cook County State's Attorney Beth Pfeiffer said in court.

The girl died of internal bleeding from the beating, which began at 6 pm Saturday. She was taken from their home on the 7900 block of South Brandon to South Shore Hospital where she was pronounced dead just after midnight, Pfeiffer said.

Larry Slack, is a 23-year employee of the CTA [Chicago Transit Authority].

Pfeiffer said the girl was "tortured" at the hands of her parents - her father, who weighs 350 pounds, and her mother, who weighs 210 pounds. During the beating, the parents ordered two of their teenage sons to tie their daughter to a futon frame, gag her mouth and turn her body, Pfeiffer said.

Laree's siblings were taken into state custody and placed with relatives.

The group known as the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses disavowed corporal punishment as an acceptable way to discipline children, said J.R. Brown, a national spokesman for the Jehovah's Witnesses.

"It has nothing to do with the religion", Brown said. "It isn't even biblical teaching... Taking the life of another is a sin. Being cruel and abusive is a sin."