One of two women involved in the notorious ''Baby Lollipops'' murder case was at her parents Hialeah home this week after being released from prison earlier this year.
Under the state's gain-time rules, Olivia Gonzalez-Mendoza served just 15 years of her 40-year sentence for second-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of 3-year-old Lazaro Figueroa. The child was dubbed ''Baby Lollipops'' because of the pattern on the T-shirt he was wearing when he was found under a hedge in Miami Beach in 1990.
Gonzalez-Mendoza was released Jan. 1, state records show. She was the girlfriend of the child's mother, Ana Maria Cardona, 46, who is in Miami-Dade's Women's Detention Center awaiting a new trial, tentatively scheduled for September.
In 1992, Cardona was the first woman in Florida sentenced to death for killing her own child but her conviction and sentence were thrown out a decade later. The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that defense attorneys should have been informed of three statements Gonzalez-Mendoza made early in the investigation admitting that she had beaten the child.
Lazaro's body showed evidence of torture and severe neglect. Police spent several weeks just trying to identify the baby, who appeared to be only 2 years old because he was so malnourished.
When he died he was 33 inches tall, and weighed only 18 pounds -- less than half a child his age should. Evidence showed that he suffered a final injury of a skull fracture from a baseball bat.
BOUND AND GAGGED
At the first trial, Gonzalez-Mendoza testified against Cardona, claiming that Cardona beat the boy, and kept him bound and gagged in the closet in the home they shared.
In a 1992 interview with The Miami Herald, Cardona accused Gonzalez-Mendoza of killing Lazaro. She blamed her cocaine addiction for her failure to protect her child.
''Every time Olivia was hitting him, it was a period of my life when I was getting up and going to bed under the effects of the drugs,'' she said during the 1992 interview.
``Under drugs, I don't react as I would react now. I should not have been under the influence of drugs. I shouldn't have been afraid of her. I should have faced life with courage, even if it meant going to live in a park. But I had neither the courage nor the resolve to do that.''
Cardona's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Edith Georgi, declined to discuss details of the case but echoed earlier defense claims that Gonzalez-Mendoza bore more responsibility for the child's death than she admitted on the stand.
''She was definitely the boss in that relationship,'' Georgi said.
It was not clear Wednesday if Gonzalez-Mendoza would be called to testify again against Cardona, or if she would agree to take the stand.
Back in 1992, prosecutors waited to sentence her until after she testified, guaranteeing her cooperation.
''She admitted her guilt and she agreed to testify truthfully against Ana Cardona,'' Gonzalez-Mendoza's former attorney Bruce Fleisher said.
But with her sentence complete, authorities may have trouble compelling her to testify again.
Gonzalez-Mendoza, 42, was sentenced under the laws that applied in 1992, before the Legislature changed prison gain-time rules to require that convicted criminals serve 85 percent of their sentences.
REDUCED SENTENCE
Before the law was changed, prisoners could serve as little as 40 percent of their sentences after getting credit for good behavior and for working at a job within the prison system.
Gonzalez-Mendoza's release was first reported by WTVJ-NBC 6, which videotaped her unloading groceries at her parents' home.
She could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
