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Drexler's defense is likely to turn on questions of whether the baby was alive at birth and the mother's state of mind. Defense expert Margaret Spinelli, Ph.D., a New York City psychologist who has studied women who hide their pregnancies and sometimes kill their infants, refuses to discuss specifics of Drexler's case but answers the "How could she?" question in general terms. Most such women, she says, "describe things like watching themselves deliver from across the room." Dissociation can become so intense that some women deny their pregnancies even to themselves. "When they deliver, the pregnancy is a shocking reality: they think they're going in to have a bowel movement, and they have a baby," Spinelli says. "Yes, it's hard to believe, but things happen all the time that are hard to believe." --Reported by G. Patrick Pawling/Lacey Township
THE COSBY MURDER Songs in the Key Of Life
At his lastest pretrial hearing, in November, reporters noticed that Michael Markhasev had bulked up a bit--not exactly to Schwarzenegger size but far from the scrawny figure the Ukrainian emigre cut when he was taken into custody last spring. With a trial set to begin Feb. 17 in Los Angeles on a charge of murder in the death of Ennis Cosby--the real-life son of beloved TV-life father Bill Cosby--observers could come to only one conclusion about Markhasev's newfound passion for weight lifting: he's getting ready for life inside.
Not that the prosecution's case is a slam dunk: there is no physical evidence tying Markhasev to the murder last January on a freeway off-ramp near Brentwood, Calif., and the only eyewitness failed to identify Markhasev in a police lineup. Most of the case will rest on the easily impeachable testimony of various drug-taking and drug-dealing associates of the defendant's, and a friend who fingered him for a $100,000 bounty offered by the National Enquirer (the friend led cops to a wooded area where Markhasev supposedly hid the gun; police indeed found a pistol, but one lacking any fingerprints). Sources say the relative weakness of the case was the primary reason the district attorney chose not to seek the death penalty. Still, few expect Markhasev to receive much sympathy from a jury in such a well-publicized case and with such a sympathetic victim. Markhasev's reported habit of making incriminating statements to his jailers will probably not help either.
In memory of Ennis, the Cosby family has chartered the Hello Friend/Ennis William Cosby Foundation to aid people who suffer--as Ennis did--from dyslexia. Verve Records has just released a jazz album produced by Bill Cosby, with part of the proceeds to benefit the foundation. The disc features an all-star band playing standards--and an original penned by Bill himself that's actually pretty good, with a kind of mid-'60s Bluenote thing going on. --Reported by James Willwerth/Los Angeles