LAKELAND, Fla. -- The truth is that 2-year-old Bradley McGee was almost potty trained. At his grandma's, relatives clapped for him. "Yeah Braddie," they cheered.

But at home July 27, the little boy had an accident. His mother and stepfather murdered him for it, police say.

His stepfather grabbed Bradley by the ankles and plunged him head first into a toilet. The wailing toddler staggered to the living room, where both parents hit him in the head with pillows.

The child's ghastly death is riveting public attention here in Central Florida on how the courts and the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services protect neglected and abused children.

HRS first took responsibility for Bradley when he was abandoned and neglected as a baby.

"Who controls HRS when HRS is out of control?" asked Pam Kirkland, the dead boy's foster mother. The state made her give the child back to his biological mother.

Bradley's death is not an isolated case. Within the past eight months, three other small children have died in the Tampa area. HRS admits it should have protected them.

It also admits serious mistakes in Bradley's case. But it refused to make its records public.

"Confidentiality follows a child from cradle to grave," said HRS spokesman Tony Edwards.

The foster mother, who stood at Bradley's graveside Thursday, said, "HRS hides behind this confidentiality. We want the story told so another Brad won't die."

Bradley's story can be told. In an unusual order, Polk County Juvenile Judge Carolyn Fulmer opened the court file. She felt the public should know the facts.

This account of the boy's short life is based on those documents, as well as police records and interviews.

The boy's stepfather and mother, Thomas and Sheryl Coe, ages 22 and 20, declined to talk. They are being held without bond at the Polk County Jail, charged with first-degree murder.

Bradley Gene McGee was born June 6, 1987. He was four months old when his mother, Sheryl McGee, then unmarried, abandoned him.

It was a chilly day in October. Bradley was wearing only a wet diaper. The baby, his mother and her boyfriend, Thomas Coe, were living in Coe's truck. They were out of work and out of money.

The mother gave the baby to a woman who sold pretzels at Lakeland Mall. The woman, Loretta Baker, wasn't a total stranger. She had noticed the Coes before, and once gave them a meal at the pretzel stand.

"I couldn't say no," Baker told a reporter. "They were living in a car with no clothes. I had a home with electricity."

The next day, a friend of Baker's took the boy to the hospital because he was wheezing and congested.

HRS was brought in. A caseworker made some calls and talked to Sheryl's brother, Bill McGee. He told the caseworker Sheryl had been doing drugs and living off him. She was not bathing the baby or caring for him, he said.

The brother said his sister messed around with different men and got engaged at the drop of a hat. She was planning to marry Coe. She'd known him less than a month.

The boy's biological father lived in Illinois. Sheryl alleged he had raped her.

A Polk County juvenile judge ruled that Sheryl had neglected her son and made Bradley a ward of the state.

On Oct. 23, 1987, HRS placed Bradley with his Uncle Bill. But in March, Bill McGee said he could no longer care for the baby.

"Mother not present," court records noted at the time. "Whereabouts unknown."

Even so, Bradley's HRS caseworker, Margaret Barber, wrote a plan for the baby, approved by the court, which set Bradley's return to Sheryl as its goal.