Suspect in baby’s death says he lied to protect mom

A man on trial in the beating death of a 17-month-old girl denied hurting her and repeatedly said he lied to police to protect her mother.

“I was scared because the detectives were trying to say I did something I didn’t do,” Philanders Lamont Bowie testified Wednesday in Clayton County Superior Court. “I was trying to protect Candace from going to jail. I loved her and I didn’t want her to go to jail.”

Bowie, 27, took the stand on the sixth day of testimony in his murder trial. He is charged in the July 6, 2005, beating death of Makala Denise Valley, who died while he was babysitting for his girlfriend, Candace Jakes.

Under cross-examination by prosecutor John Turner, Bowie said he lied to police and to Jakes about tossing the baby repeatedly into a child-sized plastic and metal rocker seat in an effort to explain bruises on the baby. He also denied shaking her to the point she suffered a brain bleed.

“Her eyes were in the back of her head so I picked her up and shook her but not aggressively,” he said.

When she died, the baby was covered in bruises on her face, head, belly, arms, legs and back. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Associate Medical Examiner Dr. Lora Darrisaw said the autopsy showed the baby had evidence of old blunt force trauma to her belly and that “there was a lot of physical damage” done to the child before death.

But Bowie and Jakes both told police they didn’t see any bruising on the baby in the hours before she died.

“I wanted her [Jakes] to tell the truth,” Bowie said. “It didn’t make sense at the time but I said things I shouldn’t have said and didn’t say things I should have. Candace knew the bruises were there. I would never do anything like that to her kids.”

Jakes was not charged in the death. During her videotaped police interview, Jakes admits lying about not noticing the bruises hours before her daughter died.

“What’s your side of the story? What happened?” Clayton police Detective Stefan Schindler is seen asking Jakes the taped interview showed to the jury Wednesday.

“I have no idea,” Jakes said.

But after Schindler demands she tell the truth, Jakes acknowledges seeing bruising daily in the week before her baby died. Her brother, Malcolm Jamal Johnson, then 13, was visiting from Chicago and frequently roughhoused with Bowie and Jakes’ three children.

“I honestly did not think — it crossed my mind one time that something wasn’t right,” Jakes tells Schindler. “I asked them [Bowie and Johnson] about it one time. No one would tell me how she got them.”

Johnson returned to Chicago two days before the baby died. The medical examiner said the baby died no more than 24 hours after her last beating.

Johnson is expected to be called as a witness Thursday.

Defense lawyer Stephen Frey has argued that the baby was beaten before Bowie arrived at 5 p.m. July 6, 2005, to babysit while Jakes was at work, and that she simply died while in his care. Previous testimony showed Bowie called 911 about 10 p.m. to report the child was not breathing and was already dead when medics arrived.