A mom will explain how her 7-pound girl starved to death. The dad faces the death penalty.

By all appearances that night in the emergency room, Tayla Aleman never had a chance.

The 13-month-old girl was, in the opinion of doctors, starved to death. She weighed just 7 pounds — about a pound lighter than when she was born. Children her age usually weigh about 20 pounds.

An autopsy by the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner cited not only the emaciated child’s “extreme developmental delay,” but also severe infections and pneumonia.

That stood in stark contrast to the portrait presented by Tayla’s parents, who have been the focus of an evolving criminal court case for over four years. Prosecutors recently got the mom, Kristen Meyer, 47, to take a plea deal requiring her to testify against the dad.

Now, the former stay-at-home mother will be the star witness against her husband, Alejandro “Alex” Aleman, and tell a jury about what led to Tayla’s sad demise. The girl’s dad faces a potential death penalty conviction.

Meyer on Oct. 26 dropped what had been an insanity defense and pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter of child.

Circuit Judge Cheryl Caracuzzo then imposed a prison term of 23 years to be followed by seven years of probation. Meyer got credit for the last four years she’s been locked up in Palm Beach County Jail.

The agreement hinges on Meyer helping the state obtain first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse charges against her husband. Prosecutors say Aleman, 42, deliberately killed his daughter, and they want to see him executed for it.

Aleman’s lawyer, Michael Salnick, says that’s a huge reach considering his client was the one out working to support the family.

“It’s very clear that no matter what happened in this case, and no matter whose construction of the case you look at, there was nothing intentional here,” he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “I don’t see this as a death penalty case.”

Meyer’s counsel made the same arguments, before she flipped.

“There is no evidence that Ms. Meyer intentionally withheld sustenance from Tayla for any purpose ... nor is there evidence that Ms. Meyer had a motive to kill Tayla or stood to gain from Tayla’s death,” wrote Public Defender Carey Haughwout. “To the contrary, all the evidence ... unequivocally demonstrates that Tayla’s death was the result of neglect.”

Court records, including evidence reports released by prosecutors, provide a horrific picture of the Aleman home. The files help explain why Tayla died and show authorities missed at least one chance to save her months before her heart stopped.

Wretched odors

On the night Tayla died, on April 1, 2016, Meyer told a detective her girl was a “perfectly healthy baby” until she suddenly stopped breathing in her arms.

Before the tragedy, the couple were raising 10 children in a rented, one-story house in Loxahatchee, just north of Lion Country Safari.

In the hours after Tayla’s death, Meyer and Aleman stood together in the parking lot outside Palms West Hospital. They made it clear that investigators would not be allowed inside their home without a search warrant.

But that wasn’t a problem. Late that night, a judge gave the order.

At 6 the next morning, the reasons for the couple’s reluctance became clear to the detectives based on what they smelled and observed.

It was a sewage plant and a garbage dump under one roof. “The house reeked so bad one can smell the urine and feces from the far end of the driveway leading to the house,” Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Detective Vionide Saint-Jean wrote in his observations from the crime scene. “Once inside the house there were flies, gnats and what appeared to may have been fleas swarming the house.”

At the time of the search, the Department of Children and Families brought a van to take custody of Tayla’s older sister and eight brothers, ages 2 to 14, over the resistance of their parents. A starving dog also was removed.

“I observed the children had what appeared to be either bug bites all over their limbs or some sort of rash,” Detective James Suarez wrote in a report. “They were all in a very deep sleep as if they were completely exhausted.”

Contrary to the mom’s assertions that Tayla had regular feedings, an inventory of the home lists one baby bottle and a half-filled container of formula powder. Tayla apparently had slept near her parents in a “dirty playpen that appeared to convert into a basinet.”

The kitchen had two refrigerators, but one was empty. The other contained “a half-gallon of milk, another gallon of some unknown chunky liquid that appeared to be expired and rotten. There were very limited edible items for the children to eat.”

Investigators said the bulldog, named Achilles, was found in a rusted crate that was filled with the pet’s waste. A report from county animal inspectors said the dog’s hip and ribs were visible, along with pressure sores, overgrown nails, and fur stained yellow and brown.

Home was ‘spotless’

Tayla was a healthy newborn, entering the world on March 7, 2015, at 8 pounds 15 ounces in a Martin County hospital’s maternity suite, records show.

The family moved to the Loxahatchee house three months later. DCF began getting complaints, from neighbors, that the house on 30th Lane looked dirty and the children had “inadequate supervision.”

That October, DCF attempted a surprise inspection but Aleman closed the door.

“Mr. Aleman was upset and he told her he was tired of people calling DCF on him and he wanted her to obtain a warrant in order to give her access into his home,” a report stated.

Confronted with a court order in December, Aleman invited the reviewers inside and blamed the prior run-in as a “miscommunication.”

Less than four months before Tayla’s death, the inspector said the home was “spotless,” going as far as to call the place “a model house” without a whiff of bad air. Most important, “The children appeared clean, with no marks or bruises.”

“The baby was a skinny 7-month-old baby but not skinny to the point where the baby appeared as if she was not being fed,” the inspector concluded.

An ‘avoidable’ death

But there was one concern — the children had trouble speaking: “They all made grunting noises and weird sounds when they would respond to their questions.”

Meyer then said she didn’t have concerns about their speech, explaining that “because she is from Chicago … she speaks extremely fast and that is where the children get it from.”

The mom said she home-schooled the kids, while her spouse was a tow truck driver and a repo man.

Five days after Tayla died, the authorities tried to get answers from her siblings. Only the three oldest children could express themselves. DCF’s Child Protection Team confirmed that the children had experienced “medical neglect, dental neglect, educational neglect, emotional neglect and environmental endangerment.”

The agency, calling it an “senseless and avoidable” death, acknowledged having contact with the family at least four times from 2013 to 2015, and admitted inspectors missed chances to intervene.

“In response to this case, we implemented mandatory additional training for all child protective investigators and supervisors in the region,” then-DCF Secretary Mike Carroll said in a 2016 statement. Supervisors also were given more power to step in and assist children perceived to be in danger.

In laying out seven reasons for seeking the death penalty, Assistant State Attorney Terri Skiles wrote that Tayla’s killing was “heinous, atrocious or cruel,” and the victim was “particularly vulnerable” because Aleman was her dad. The prosecutor also accused Aleman of having “knowingly created a great risk of death to many persons.”

Parents denied responsibility

When Meyer first noticed that Tayla was unresponsive, she called Aleman. He told her to call 911.

A dispatcher walked Meyer through CPR instructions, until paramedics arrived and took the toddler without a pulse to a nearby ER.

A fire-rescue report states that Tayla’s ribs were visible through her skin, and she appeared malnourished enough for the paramedics to ask the mom if the child had cancer or another disease.

Meyer-Aleman said one minute Tayla "was fine and suddenly she just stopped breathing while in her arms and now she is dead,” Saint-Jean wrote about his interview with the mom that night. The investigation took about six months, as detectives waited for a final autopsy report and other records before arresting the parents.

“We all loved her, I treat all my kids the same way,” Meyer said after being booked in jail.

And then another revelation: She said she had recently given birth to another baby — she was pregnant when Tayla died.

Regarding Tayla being so underweight, Meyer said she wasn’t aware about it. “I knew she was small, but as the mother of 10 children, and now 11 ... I never had a problem feeding her ... she never not wanted the bottle ... in my mind I never thought I was doing anything wrong.”

While Aleman’s defense now plans to point the finger at Meyer, he was complimentary of her during his jail interview. He called her a good mother who was “always there for the kids.”

Aleman repeatedly insisted that Tayla was eating plenty, but admitted never holding the baby. “There’s no law that I have to hold my daughter,” he said.

Then a detective shot back: “No, it’s a law that you have to make sure she’s eating and to check in on her and look. And when you see that she’s not looking right and you see that she’s not gaining weight, it is your responsibility and obligation to take her to the doctor.”

Court fight looms

Salnick, the attorney for Aleman, says he’ll try to keep Aleman’s statements from the jury, as well as the detectives' “gratuitous comments.”

He declined to speculate whether his case — tracking toward a possible trial in the spring — faces a more uphill battle now that Meyer is in the prosecution’s pocket.

But Salnick said the defense could try to limit Meyer’s testimony against him, based on a common law standard called “spousal privilege.” This might make private communications between the two off limits.

“That’s an issue we will certainly explore if we are in a position to do that,” he said.

Aleman already lost an attempt to keep a third charge, a misdemeanor animal cruelty count, out of the trial. He argued that the stakes are already high enough before taking the risk that the alleged inhumane treatment of the dog would further alarm jurors.

But Judge Caracuzzo ruled all of the allegations will be heard at the same time.

“If two children had died from lack of proper care, the cases would appropriately be tried together,” she wrote. “The Court sees no difference that an animal who may have suffered from the same lack of nourishment and survived to be legally different.”

Salnick said he’s expecting to soon join a prosecutor for a deposition of Meyer, where she will be required to discuss Tayla’s death and the circumstances surrounding it.

“There is no question that the baby was taken care of at all times by Kristen Meyer,” Salnick said. “Kristen was responsible for the child.”

When Meyer leaves prison, in less than 19 years, she will be required to enroll in a “child development and rearing class,” according to her probation terms. She also will be forbidden from working in a school or having any job that involves supervising children.

Marc Freeman can be reached at mjfreeman@sunsentinel.com and on Twitter @marcjfreeman.

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