Oct. 27--Two decades ago, in what Cook County prosecutors called a "chilling foretelling" of what was to come, Amanda Ware told a mental-health worker that she wanted to kill herself by driving a car into a lake, they said Monday.
Eight years later, in 2003, her three young children -- ages 6, 3 and 2 -- drowned when the car they were in rolled into a Central Illinois lake.
Ware's then-boyfriend, Marcus LaGrone, was convicted of their murders and is serving a life sentence, but Ware, then known as Amanda Hamm, served just five years in prison for child endangerment. After her release, she moved to Chicago, remarried and had three more children.
The deaths of Ware's first three children again took center stage Monday in a courtroom -- this time in juvenile court in Cook County -- as prosecutors argued that Ware's three living children had been abused and neglected.
Ware and her husband, Leo, who had the children taken by state child-welfare workers last year after learning of her past, are seeking to regain their custody.
Judge Demetrios Kottaras said he will rule Nov. 6 on whether prosecutors have made their case against the couple.
After Monday's hearing, Ware declined to comment, but her husband said they will keep fighting for their children, who are now living with Leo Ware's sister, no matter how the judge rules.
"This whole case is bull(expletive)," Leo Ware said outside court. "We're not going to live in the past -- they're living in the past."
Prosecutors argued Monday that Amanda Ware is still living a troubled life that includes drug use, domestic violence and an unwillingness to follow treatment for her mental illness.
"She has not changed the pattern," Assistant State's Attorney Joan Pernecke said in her closing arguments. "This freight train of evidence is bearing down on three children who must be protected."
But attorneys for the Wares argued the couple's children, two girls and a boy ages 5, 3 and 11/2 , were healthy, exhibited no signs of abuse, and instead cried and took their shoes and socks off in an attempt to prevent state workers from removing them from their Near North Side apartment last year.
Lisa Dedmond, an assistant public defender who is representing Leo Ware, said the children each had their own bed and toys. She noted that no one -- not the Chicago police officer who responded to a 2012 domestic abuse call or even the judge who heard Amanda Ware's petition for an order of protection that same year -- was concerned enough to call the state Department of Children and Family Services.
That changed in 2014 when a doctor at Presence Saint Joseph Hospital in Chicago's Lakeview East neighborhood, where Ware had just given birth to her youngest child, somehow recognized her and called DCFS.
Both parents work, Leo Ware leads drug-rehab support group meetings and his arrests are mostly decades old, Dedmond said.
"What you have here is speculation," Dedmond told the judge. "They must prove that (the children) were abused and neglected."
But Carol Casey, an attorney appointed to represent the interests of the three children, said the three children who died in 2003 were perfectly healthy too.
"She let her children get killed in front of her and the explanation was it was because of abuse by Marcus LaGrone," she said. "This was a horrific and very preventable death of three children."
Casey also spoke of evidence of domestic violence in the Wares' home.
After working her shift as a waitress Sept. 2, 2003, the then-Amanda Hamm went out to dinner in downstate Clinton, near Springfield, with LaGrone and her three kids. The family later drove in her dark-green 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass to Clinton Lake, a popular 4,900-acre fishing spot.
LaGrone drove the car down a grooved concrete boat ramp and parked near the water line. Everyone got out to play.
Prosecutors said Monday the days events were planned. LaGrone had indicated he wanted to be rid of the children, none of them fathered by him, prosecutors said.
Not long before the drownings, the couple "practiced" by going alone to a hotel pool to swim laps, prosecutors said.
On Sept. 2, when it came time to leave, everyone piled into the car. Ware told investigators the car quickly moved forward into the lake, the water hitting the windshield and rapidly filling the car.
Ware said she tried to unbuckle one child, panicked and swam to shore. LaGrone had quickly escaped.
The children were yelling "Mommy! Mommy!" but Ware, who is 5-foot-10, did not help them even though they were in water that was only about 41/2 feet deep, according to testimony at the hearing.
She instead called 911 and waited about five minutes until an officer seven inches shorter than her easily opened the car door and began searching for the children, prosecutors said.
If the judge finds the children were abused or neglected, the case would continue for a hearing on whether it's in the best interests of the children and the public to have them become wards of the court.
He could place them with their parents, a relative or a foster parent.
The next step would be to hold a hearing on the long-term goals for the children.
sschmadeke@tribpub.com
