It took a jury about half a day Friday to find a Kemmerer babysitter who “snapped” and beat a 5-year-old girl to death guilty of first-degree murder and child abuse.
Cheri Marler, who is about 53, now faces life in prison for brutalizing one of the young girls in her charge, including smashing the girl’s head between her hands, hitting her with kitchen utensils and kicking her.
The verdict followed 4.5 hours of jury deliberation and was the culmination of a weeklong trial in Lincoln County District Court in which grisly evidence about the abuse inflicted on 5-year-old Annabelle Noles’ bruised, broken, scarred and hemorrhaging body.
The jury didn’t seem to believe Marler’s version of events when she testified on her own behalf Thursday, including a claim that she confessed to police not because she was guilty, but because she wanted to end the interview.
Four doctors testified to the severity of Annabelle’s injuries. A brain expert who investigated her scans around the time of her Nov. 26, 2022, death said her brain bore injuries of force similar to those seen in a car wreck or shaken baby syndrome.
A child abuse expert who evaluated Noles when the little girl was flown to Utah concluded that her injuries resulted from child abuse — and they weren’t likely caused by a fall down the stairs.
Down The Stairs
But when Marler first called 911 on Nov. 25, 2022, after Annabelle became dazed, limp, then unresponsive, Marler told authorities the girl had fallen down the stairs.
Kemmerer Police Sgt. Jake Walker arrived and performed CPR on the girl, whose pulse was undetectable. He was startled at her bodily and facial bruising, reportedly, and also noticed her hair had bald patches.
Emergency personnel arrived and rushed the girl to the emergency room.
Annabelle was then flown to care in Salt Lake City, Utah. She survived about another 15 hours before dying the next morning. Her little sister, a preschool-age girl also in Marler’s care, told police that Annabelle had fallen down the stairs.
This Interview
While Annabelle was still fighting for her life, Kemmerer police asked Marler to come to the police department for an interview.
Marler had reportedly taken her regular pain medications, oxycontin and gabapentin, shortly before going to the station. She also testified she was in pain from falling down the stairs herself earlier.
The interview dragged on for five-and-a-half hours with multiple police officers.
Kemmerer Police Chief Mike Kahre and others had doubts about the veracity of Marler’s story because a box sat neatly at the bottom of the stairs, and a dog water bowl at the top of the stairs sat undisturbed.
Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation agents who later surveyed the scene did not find any blood, flesh or torn hair on the stairs, according to court testimony.
Kahre urged Marler to tell the truth.
She confessed to him, telling him frantically that she was a “f***ing horrible person for hitting a f***ing child,” but that the girl had been a terror: bullying the other little girls in her care, messing up the furniture, stealing, lying and climbing on things.
“I smacked her too hard,” said Marler at the time.
Marler said she’d beaten the girl with kitchen utensils and smacked the girl’s head between her two hands repeatedly. The little girl came to her to apologize for being difficult, and Marler kicked her in the chest to get her away, according to evidence presented in court this week.
At some point, Annabelle went limp and mucous oozed from her nostrils.
Marler wiped the mucous off her face and called 911, and tried to perform CPR on her but didn’t know how.
Except …
About a year into Marler’s prosecution, she claimed that her lengthy police interview was in fact an interrogation, and she asked Lincoln County District Court Judge Joseph Bluemel to exclude her confession from the trial evidence pool.
Judge Bluemel refuted Marler’s claims of coercion and kept her confession in the evidence.
Marler and her attorney, Elisabeth Trefonas, presented that argument to the jury.
Marler testified Thursday that she lied and made up stories because Kahre led her toward those conclusions and that she was desperate to get out of the police station because she was in pain and felt pressured.
Prosecutors countered, pointing out the comforts police offered: sodas, smoke breaks, the reassurance that she could leave if she wanted to.