PEABODY - A Peabody woman arrested in Maine could be back in Massachusetts as soon as tomorrow to face charges she shook her 9-month-old daughter to death last month.
Jennifer Ward, 37, was arrested Friday night, just hours after an Essex County grand jury indicted her on murder charges in the Nov. 21 death of her daughter, Jocelyn Ward-Anderson. She was to be arraigned today in Biddeford District Court on fugitive-from-justice charges.
If she waives extradition, she could be arraigned tomorrow or Friday in Salem Superior Court on the murder charge, said Steve O'Connell, a spokesman for the Essex County District Attorney's Office.
Ward, who faces a life sentence without parole if convicted of first-degree murder, is being held at the York County Jail in Alfred and will remain there, appearing in court for the fugitive charge through a video hookup, a sheriff's office supervisor said Monday.
If she decides to fight extradition, prosecutors here would seek a governor's warrant to have her returned to Massachusetts, a process that could take more than a month.
Ward was arrested at her parents' home in Kennebunk on Friday evening, O'Connell said.
The case has raised new questions about the Department of Social Services, which was involved with Ward and her daughter from the time of the child's birth.
In separate cases, two young children have died in the past two years, one from being beaten in a foster home and the other of a prescription drug overdose, and a 12-year-old girl was beaten into a coma in 2005. The DSS also was involved in the case of Mary Jean Armstrong, a Beverly mother now in prison for allowing at least two men to have sex with her 9-year-old daughter in exchange for cocaine.
On Friday, a DSS spokesman told The Salem News that Jocelyn had been removed from Ward's custody twice - immediately after her birth, when both Ward and her newborn tested positive for drugs, and then sometime after that, following a report of neglect.
On Monday, DSS spokesman Richard Nangle issued a statement saying that in fact the child had been removed only after the neglect complaint and had in fact been sent home with Ward despite the positive drug tests.
Nangle has declined to say when the child was removed from the home or for how long, so it is not known how long the baby was in Ward's care before the girl's death on Nov. 18.
Nor has Nangle been willing to disclose the specific drug found in Ward's and her baby's blood.
Ward completed drug treatment and a parenting education class. Nangle said on Friday that DSS believed the case was a "success story" and that Jocelyn's death "stunned" the agency.
It was Ward herself who brought the baby to the Lahey Clinic in Peabody on Nov. 18. The baby died on Nov. 21 at Children's Hospital Boston of abusive head trauma, prosecutors have said.
