NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, April 21, 1995
5B
Woman recalls mother's murder
After 29 years, she remembers father did it
The Associated Press
PHOENIX — For 29 years, Lyle Eugene Keidel got away with murder. But his daughter never forgot the night when, at age 5, she saw her father hit her mother, then heard him burying her in their back yard.
Jurors who convicted Keidel of murder this week said they were convinced by the riveting story that a tearful Lori Romanec recounted without the aid of hypnosis or psychoanalysis.
Romanneck, 34, said she kept her secret from Sept. 17, 1966, until two years ago because she was afraid of her father. She testified at her father's trial that she wrote a letter to police because she couldn't live with the memory any longer.
"In spite of my fears, I decided that I'd rather be dead than to keep the secret," she said.
The fact that Romaneck's story wasn't repressed and recovered years later only as the result of a new trauma probably made her a more credible witness than those who claim to remember long-
buried memories, one lawyer said.
However, Tom Hoopes, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor in Boston, did not think that repressed memories made a person a credible witness.
Keidal denied killing his estranged wife and testified that they were in the process of getting a divorce after 10 years of marriage. He also said that she had had a series of affairs and abortions.
Although the couple was living apart, he testified, on the night of the murder, he took his wife and children to dinner, then went to two bars with his wife. He said she made several telephone calls that night, one of which appeared to upset her, then he agreed to let her use his car.
Keidel said he never saw his wife again.
Kiedel faces life in prison when he is sented May 19.
Hanging a prosecution case on a child's memory can be a risky strategy, said Richard Kling, who teaches a course on the admissibility of testimony at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
"It doesn't take a legal expert to be skeptical," he said. "Even if she is 34, the incident was processed in a 5-year-old's brain."
Romanec testified that she saw her parents argue in the family room, saw her father hit her
mother, saw her mother slump against a sliding door and slide to the ground. Then she saw her lying in a fetal position on the deck near the family's swimming pool.
"She is curled up in a ball ... just lying there," she testified. "My father's also out there. He's coming around the corner. He's just moving stuff. ... I can't see him any more. I hear the sound of a
"Even if she is 34,the incident was processed in a 5-year-olds brain."
Richard Kling
Chicago-Kent College of Law
shovel digging in dirt."
She said her father then told his four children their mother had gone away. He suggested to neighbors she ran off with another man.
Romaneck told how, as a 5-year-old girl, she dealt with her mother's disappearance by comparing it to something she knew — hep pet desert tortoise. Touch.
Touche would disappear for days at a time under the backyard sandbox, then emerge unharmed. Romaneck said she thought her mother was sleeping like the tortoise.
Jurors believed the memory, said Bob Kanaga, a computer-network coordinator from Mesa. He was the jury foreman.
"I personally had very vivid memories when I was a child," he said. "But, I don't know. I really believed that what she was saying was true."
Jurors weren't told that two of Romanek's sisters, Karen, 12, and Kelly, 8, died in a suspicious house fire in 1967. Romanek survived with burns over 50 percent of her body because Karen threw herself on top of her younger sister to protect her.
The 1967 investigation linked the fire on a malfunctioning dishwasher that Keidel said he left on while running an errand. Police have reopened the case but have found no new leads.
Romaneck told reporters Tuesday she wanted to get permission to reclaim her mother's remains
— now held as evidence — and
burry them next to her two sisters
Romanneck said that she hoped her father found God.
"And may the Lord have mercy on his soul," she said.
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Race, Immigration and the Rise of Nativism in Late 20th Century America
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Today 2:30 p.m. Smith Hall Auditorium
Dr. Sanchez has written several articles and book reviews in the areas of Latino and Asian immigrants in the United States. His research interests include the study of racial attacks on Latino and Asian cultures and socio-political history and studying the development of ethnic identity among second generation chicanos in Los Angeles. Dr. Sanchez has received several awards from his book, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. The awards include: Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History; Finalist, 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History; 1994 J. S. Holliday Award; 1994 Robert Athearn Book Prize, 1994 Book Award of the Pacific Coast Branch; and the 1993 Theodore Salutus Memorial Book Award.