WOODLAND — Just days away from giving birth in February 2015, Samantha Green was a woman in crisis.
She displayed a roller coaster of emotions in a series of voicemail messages prosecutors played this week in Yolo Superior Court, where Green is standing trial for murder in connection with her newborn baby Justice Rees’ death.
Samantha Green
Alternately furious and distraught, Green left the expletive-laden messages on her fiancé Frank Rees’ cell phone when, according to witness testimony, he would leave the house for hours on end with no clue as to where he was going or when he’d return.
“Hello, mister I sneak out and f—ing don’t watch my kid, leaving my pregnant girlfriend f—ing stranded,” a fuming Green said in one message on Jan. 13, 2015. In others, she weeps, pleading with Rees to return home, or accuses him of cheating on her and threatens to leave the relationship for good.
“That’s it, Frank, I’m leaving, and I don’t want to see you again,” she said on Jan. 21.
“They did argue a lot,” Patty Rees, Frank’s mother, testified Wednesday under questioning by Deputy District Attorney Ryan Couzens. Though she initially denied her son’s frequent absences, after hearing the voicemails she conceded, “I was probably incorrect, yes.”
Prosecutors have alleged that Green was in a jealous rage over Frank Rees’ suspected infidelity and acted with conscious disregard for her baby’s life when, high on methamphetamine, she took Justice into a Knights Landing slough on Feb. 23, 2015. He died there the following day, only 19 days old.
Green, 24, has pleaded not guilty, her attorney, Public Defender Tracie Olson, contending that her fiancé gave her drug injections and filled her head with odd, paranoid stories of doom, leaving her in a drug-induced psychosis when she carried her baby into the slough.
Tensions at home
Frank Rees shared a home in Woodland with his parents and four young children from a previous marriage, adding Green to the mix in the spring of 2014. She unexpectedly got pregnant a short time later.
If the couple was using drugs while under her roof, “I had no knowledge of that,” Patty Rees testified Wednesday.
But the meth abuse became evident when Justice was born with the drug in his system, and the family met with Child Protective Services workers to develop a “safety plan” before bringing Justice home.
Patty Rees’ role, she said, was “to keep an eye on them” for any signs of drug use. “I would check the garage, and I would look around to see if there was any paraphernalia, and I never saw any,” she testified.
Meanwhile, the couple’s tensions continued, with Frank Rees texting his mother at one point, “I don’t want to be with her anymore, Mom. She’s why I’m so depressed.” Green stayed at her sister’s house the weekend before she disappeared, but eventually came back.
“I think she was just frustrated, overwhelmed from all the kids,” Patty Rees said.
But Green also doted on the children, playing with them, keeping tabs on their homework and engaging them in art projects, Rees said under Olson’s cross-examination.
“She was like a daughter to me. She treated me like her mom,” Rees said, smiling across the courtroom at Green, who grabbed a tissue to dab at her eyes. “She was very hands-on with the other kids, and they loved her.”
On the morning Green vanished, Patty Rees awoke to find her having breakfast with her baby and several of Frank’s children.
Justice Rees lived only 19 days. Courtesy photo
“She was holding Justice and singing to him,” she said. “It was very touching, because she was getting the kids ready for school.”
Frank Rees, meanwhile, was still in bed, telling his mother that his “testicles were twisted” and that he needed money — a frequent request from her unemployed son, Patty Rees said.
She recalled that Green left a short time later to take the older children to school, and she didn’t see her again “until they found her” in the slough.
The jury also heard from Frank Rees’ father, William Rees Jr., who on the afternoon of Feb. 23 grew “suspicious” when his son came looking for Green and couldn’t find her. He went to the children’s school to see if Green had picked them up, as scheduled.
“I sat there, and she never showed up,” he said. “That’s when I got the idea that something was really wrong.”
Frank Rees has a new girlfriend now, his mother said, who has moved into the family’s home. His children are in foster care, however, presumably the result of officers finding drugs and ammunition in the house during their investigation into Justice’s death.
Charges in that case are still pending.
Hospital conduct
Earlier Wednesday, jurors heard from several registered nurses who cared for Green and Justice in the days following the baby’s birth at Kaiser Permanente’s Roseville hospital.
Two nurses assigned to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit testified that Green asked to be summoned whenever Justice woke up so she could feed him, but their calls to her cell phone went to voicemail and weren’t answered.
One of Green’s postpartum nurses, Lena Hrdlickova, said staff at one point became concerned that Green was leaving the hospital building, a violation of the safety rules.
On Feb. 7, 2015, two days after Justice’s birth, Green left to visit him in the NICU two floors away — a five-minute walk — but arrived an hour later, Hrdlickova recalled.
“She seemed intoxicated when she came back,” the nurse said. Confronted over her whereabouts, Green said she had gone to have lunch with her mother.
But no one tested Green to confirm whether she was under the influence, and her visits with Justice, though brief, did not raise concerns over inappropriate treatment, Hrdlickova said under cross-examination.
Testimony resumes Monday in Judge David Rosenberg’s courtroom.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene