June 25, 2008, 11:47PM
Dad implied youths killed accidentally, police say
Pasadena police contend the man gave a statement to Quanell X that implicated him
The Pasadena father charged in the deaths of his two children, whose badly burned bodies were dumped near a railroad trestle, implied to an activist he had accidentally killed them.
Randy Terrell Sylvester implicated himself in the grisly crime by making a statement to Quanell X, Pasadena police said Tuesday.
"He implied he did by virtue of that statement," said Capt. A.H. "Bud" Corbett.
Sylvester was arraigned in a downtown Houston court Wednesday morning as state District Judge Jim Wallace ordered that he remain in custody without bail on capital murder charges.
Sylvester did not speak, hanging his head as a prosecutor read the probable-cause statement aloud in court.
The statement includes investigators' assertion that the body of 3-year-old Denim Sylvester was in a blue suitcase and the body of her 7-year-old brother, Randy Sylvester Jr., was in a wooden chest when they were burned.
Sylvester's alleged words to Quanell X, the activist who helped convince the father to lead police to the children's bodies early Saturday, belied his claims of innocence to a Houston Chronicle reporter.
"You know how it went down. It was an accident," Sylvester reportedly told Quanell X — a conversation the activist later repeated to police.
During a jailhouse interview with the Chronicle later, however, Sylvester said someone else killed his children because he owed money.
"I didn't do it," he said Sunday. "I told Quanell, I told the police, I told everybody that it was about the money. They (alleged killers) used it to get to my kids."
How the children died has not been determined. Forensic anthropologists, who specialize in skeletal remains, will try to help solve that mystery — an effort expected to take longer than usual because of the bodies' condition, said the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office.
The children vanished on Father's Day from the family's apartment complex at 4025 Burke in Pasadena. Their mother, Jerilynn St. Cyr, said she last saw them that afternoon as they played about 20 yards from her door.
'Looking and waiting'
When St. Cyr called 911 that night to report the kids were gone, a police dispatcher asked why she waited hours to call for help, according to a recording released by Pasadena police Tuesday. "I've been looking for 'em," St. Cyr answered. "I've been walking around, looking and waiting."
After a nearly weeklong search, Sylvester led police early Saturday to the children's burned remains. They had been dumped in an isolated area near Texas 3 and Allendale in southeast Houston.
Quanell X has said the children were killed in their father's apartment — an apartment where Sylvester lived separately from St. Cyr, but located at the same complex.
The activist's attorney, Stan Schneider, said he advised Quanell X to no longer talk about any conversations he had with Sylvester or the police.
Sylvester has a long criminal history. Before he and St. Cyr moved to Houston from the New Orleans area about two years ago after Hurricane Katrina, Sylvester had nine arrests in Orleans Parish, according to the parish's Criminal Sheriff's Office.
No details were available, but the arrests include battery on a police officer and domestic violence in 2003, officials said.
Sylvester, on probation for a drug arrest in Harris County when his children vanished, also is accused of failing to abide by conditions imposed on him by a state court after he was granted deferred adjudication.
Yet the Harris County Community Supervisions and Corrections Department never filed a motion to revoke his probation until after he was arrested June 17 on traffic warrants and officially named a suspect in his children's disappearance, court records show.
Unable to revoke probation
Harris County probation officials failed to bring Sylvester's alleged probation violations to the court's attention before his children vanished, said crime victims advocate Andy Kahan. Some of those violations occurred as far back as December, court records show.
"Whether the court would have taken any action, such as revocation, that's going to be a question that will haunt this community forever," Kahan said. "The court was never given that opportunity to make that discretionary call.
"That's something I think a lot of us will be pondering for the rest of our lives. Could it have made a difference? We'll never know."
Probation officials would not comment Tuesday, saying they cannot discuss the issue since a defendant's probation file can only be disclosed with the court's approval.
State District Judge Roger Bridgwater, who presides over the court that handled Sylvester's drug charge, did not return a call seeking comment.
But the judge's attorney said all the publicity surrounding the children's disappearance prompted his court to ask if Sylvester was complying with the terms of his probation.
"The judge has to rely on the probation department to bring things to his attention," said Kelly Smith, who serves as general counsel for Harris County's state district judges.
Court papers allege Sylvester violated probation by failing to present written verification of employment for five months, failing to attend a drug awareness program and not undergoing an evaluation of his educational skills.
Sylvester also failed to perform community service and was late in paying his supervision fees and a laboratory processing fee, court papers show. He also never paid a $100 fine imposed by the court.
Chronicle reporters Rosanna Ruiz and Ruth Rendon contributed to this report.
dale.lezon@chron.com
peggy.ohare@chron.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5854732.html