Caro Ponte found welts and bruises on the boy's back, chest, neck, stomach and legs -- some new, some old. The mother denied all but the one beating.

"The mother was blaming a 3-year-old for the tub overflowing. She wasn't making sense. She kept saying the boy was a con artist," the officer said.

The house reeked of cat urine, Caro Ponte said. The old man had sores all over his body, she said, and slept in a bed smeared with feces. The boy slept with him.

"That was the way the old man wanted it, and the mother didn't see anything wrong with it," Caro Ponte said.

Cat food dishes were in reach of the child. Sometimes, he ate from the bowls. Dinah said she pulled his hand away. The officer said the mother told her cat food was "not unhealthy."

HRS took the toddler from his mother and placed him in a temporary shelter. Thus began the child's life as a ward of the state.

Workers at the shelter initially thought J. was autistic. He did not talk but made odd noises and sniffed the walls. When his mother visited, he sat on her lap almost motionless.

One day, not long after the state took J. away from her, Dinah grabbed her son and took him home, contending he was pale and sickly. Officer Caro Ponte found him asleep with the old man.

When psychologist Simon B. Miranda evaluated J. later that summer, the boy did not utter a single word. At first, Miranda thought he was deaf.

The child "sobbed softly but without tears," Miranda wrote.

The psychologist observed the boy with his mother. They sat apart at first and stared in different directions. Then she showed "mild and timid affection," lightly stroking his head and back.

Though the boy did not speak to the psychologist, he was overheard talking quietly to other children.

Dinah became increasingly frightened of losing her son. She said demons visited her in her sleep. She phoned Caro Ponte and told her J. would die Sept. 19, 1985 -- the day of a court hearing.

In October Dinah again abducted her son, on command of the Angel Gabriel, she said. They made it to Philadelphia. Police there found her and the boy hitchhiking at 4 a.m. Dinah ranted about Nazis trying to kill J. She said his HRS caseworker was a puppet of the Mafia.

HRS flew them back to Miami -- separately. As a Philadelphia social worker put her on the plane, Dinah spat out, "I'll see you in hell."

In Dade the welfare agency put J. with his first set of foster parents, who had no special training to cope with an emotionally troubled child. As many as 2,000 emotionally disturbed children live in foster homes where parents do not have such training, according to a 1989 state audit.

The Mailman Center for Child Development, of the University of Miami Medical School, evaluated J. on Nov. 7, 1985, and recommended he be placed in a preschool program, such as Headstart, so he could play with other children.

"The sooner the better to avoid even more regression of this youngster," wrote social worker Maruja Silva.

HRS did not put him in preschool.

J.'s mother showed up at the Mailman Center the next day. She had a gun and wanted to kidnap her son and his caseworker. Neither was there.

She checked herself into the Jackson Memorial Hospital mental health clinic and was hospitalized. The diagnosis: chronic schizophrenia, paranoid type.

She was released a month later, placed on anti-psychotic medication and given weekly group psychotherapy.