ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 5, 1996 TAG: 9608050104
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WINCHESTER
SOURCE: Associated Press
The short life and violent death of Valerie Smelser outraged neighbors, prosecutors and legislators and led to changes in Virginia's child welfare system.
Wanda Smelser is scheduled to go on trial today, accused of standing by while a live-in boyfriend rammed her 12-year-old daughter's head through a wall last year.
The high-profile trial will afford a new glimpse of the secret horrors within the Smelsers' ramshackle house where, prosecutors say, Valerie was chained like an animal, fed scraps and forced to use a tin can as a toilet.
But the trial may not answer two basic questions: Why was Valerie so horribly mistreated? And why didn't anyone outside the household do something?
Wanda Smelser, 43, faces up to life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder. She is also charged with abduction because prosecutors say she imprisoned the child for weeks before the fatal beating.
Smelser's attorney has hinted he may pursue a battered-woman defense - arguing that Norman Hoverter bullied his client into allowing her daughter to be abused.
``There's so many unknowns, and all of the secrecy of the closed world they lived in,'' said Frederick County Commonwealth's Attorney Lawrence Ambrogi. ``The big mystery remains - why this child? I don't know if we'll ever know that.''
LENGTH: Short : 38 linesby CNB