What Really Happened to Baby Christina?

Twenty-six years ago, Barton McNeil called 911 to report that his three-year-old daughter had died in the night. It was the worst thing that could ever happen to any parent. Then a new nightmare began.

- MATTHEW BREMNER

It was the beginning of one of those long summers in Bloomington, Illinois, the air so heavy you could chew it.

The evening before, he and his girlfriend, Misook Nowlin, had broken up. They'd gone out to Avanti's, a local Italian restaurant, and gotten into it yet again. The previous year, Nowlin had been convicted of domestic battery against McNeil, and he was due in court the next day to testify at her sentencing hearing.

Nowlin wanted McNeil to speak on her behalf, and at first he'd planned to. Even though he'd testified against her at trial, he felt sorry for her and didn't want her going to prison. But at the restaurant his feelings had changed. She'd confessed that jealousy had driven her to snoop around his garbage and his phone records, convinced he was having an affair. He ended the meal early and left, furious. Besides, it was his night with his threeyear-old daughter, Christina, and he had to pick her up at his ex-wife's house.

Mulling the fight over in the morning, McNeil couldn't shake the image of Nowlin trembling with anger as they paid the check, or of her pleading with him to talk it through as he rushed from the restaurant. She'd even followed him out of the parking lot. When he stopped the car and demanded to know what she was doing, she said she wanted to warn him his tailpipe was smoking.

McNeil, medium height, lanky, and balding, stretched out on the sofa and felt his lack of sleepafter the fight, he'd been up late online chatting with a woman in the Philippines. Now he heaved himself upright and stumbled to his desk to check his email. Nothing of interest.

McNeil traipsed to the bathroom and called out to wake Christina in the bedroom next door. It was time to get up and get dressed. She didn't stir.

McNeil, a prep cook at the nearby Red Lobster restaurant, had less than an hour to drop Christina off at daycare and get to work.