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After Tammy Marquardt's conviction her two other children were adopted. She is keeping her name in the hopes they will be able to find her if they choose to contact her.

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Tammy Marquardt, the Ontario woman who was wrongfully imprisoned for 14 years in the death of her two-year-old son, says she hopes to find her two other sons, who were put up for adoption after her arrest.

Marquardt, 38, lost custody of boys Keith and Eric after she was convicted of murdering her son, Kenneth Wynne. That conviction was quashed in 2010, and on Tuesday, Marquardt was completely exonerated, after the Crown decided not to re-try her.

Marquardt says she has put her name on an adoption registry in hopes that her sons will be able to track her down if they come looking for her.

"I hope they will find me but I'm not going to force myself on them because the last time they seen me, they were babies. They're teenagers now. Who would I be to just jump in their lives?" she told CTV's Canada AM Wednesday.

Marquardt was convicted based on the testimony of now-disgraced pathologist Charles Smith, who decided that the young mother likely smothered her son. But she always maintained her innocence.

After a public inquiry revealed that Smith repeatedly offered misguided court testimony that sent several innocent people to jail, Marquardt's case was re-examined.

At least five experts have since repudiated Smith's findings, suggesting Kenneth likely died from an epileptic seizure and entanglement in his sheets. The experts concluded the cause of death should have been recorded as "unascertained."

Marquardt blames Smith for her wrongful conviction but also for the loss of her sons, one of whom was born while she was in Kingston's Prison for Women and seized from her within hours of his birth.

"For me, I feel like Keith and Eric were kidnapped in a sense, because had he (Smith) not done this to me, I'd have my boys," she says.

Marquardt says she hopes Smith suffers the way she has.

"I hope you live your own personal hell for what you put all of us through," Marquardt said when asked what she would say to Smith if she had the chance.

Smith was stripped of his medical licence earlier this year, after pleading no contest to charges of disgraceful conduct. Most of the convictions from cases in which he testified have since been overturned.

While Marquardt says she blames Smith, she also blames the police and court system.

"It wasn't just him. We can't just blame the one person. It was the whole system. They're the ones who were brushing me under the carpet," she said.

Marquardt says she still can't believe her 17-year-long ordeal is finally over.

"I don't think the reality has actually sunk in yet. I'm still a little afraid I'm going to wake up and still be in my nightmare," she said.

Marquardt, who was released from prison in 2009, now has a nine-month-old daughter, named Tiffany, and is engaged to be married. But she says she still grapples with terrible emotional pain.

"The only way I can describe the feeling of it is to have your heart ripped out and have someone hold it in front of you, basically, until it stops beating. The pain is so deep that there are no words," she said.

With the worry of being tried again now lifted and her name now cleared, Marquardt says she wants to focus on the future.

"I wouldn't say I can get my life back, but I can move on from here. I can't really pick up the pieces that were lost," she said.

"I'm really hoping to move forward."

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Tammy Marquardt, an Ontario mother who was exonerated of second-degree murder in her child's death, appears on Canada AM, Wednesday, June 8, 2011.

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Marquardt wants to find sons put up for adoption

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Tammy Marquardt, the Ontario woman who was wrongfully imprisoned for 14 years in the death of her two-year-old son, says she hopes to find her two other sons, who were put up for adoption after her arrest. Marquardt, 38, lost custody of boys Keith and Eric after she was convicted of murdering her son, Kenneth Wynne.

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This article explains some of the experiences endured by Tammy Marquardt during her time in prison. Tammy was re-victimized by being wrongfully convicted of the death of her child.

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John Chipman's book Death in the Family delves into the lives of four of the families devastated by a child's death and then victimized by Dr. Charles Smith, Ontario's top pediatric forensic pathologist. Years later Smith would be found guilty of professional misconduct.
Scarborough native Tammy Marquardt spent 13 years in prison for murdering her 2-year-old son, Kenneth Wynne. She lost another son to adoption through Children's Aid, then entered prison pregnant. Her conviction in October 1995 was quashed in 2011 because it relied on flawed testimony from Smith that pointed to asphyxiation. A new trial was ordered, but the Crown withdrew charges.
Tammy and the other new prisoners were first taken to Admissions and Discharge. Everyone was strip-searched, then given their prison kit: two pairs of sweatpants, two sweaters, two T-shirts, five pairs of underwear, five pairs of socks, two bras, four towels, four facecloths, two sheets, one pillow, one pillowcase, a blue blanket and some basic toiletries and personal hygiene products. All of her worldly belongings could now fit inside a pillowcase.

After intake, the new inmates were taken to see the OIC, or the officer-in-charge, and he had some words of advice for Tammy. "If you want that child to live," he said, pointing to her stomach, "you don't tell anyone what you're in here for."

It had never occurred to Tammy that none of the other inmates would know what she was in for. She asked McGinnis what she should say if people asked.

"Tell them you killed your husband," he said.

It was good advice, crucial advice; advice he didn't have to give her. She was never sure whether he told her for her baby's sake, for her own safety or to save himself the trouble of dealing with the aftermath if an inmate tried to beat her to death.

P4W was a multi-security prison, since at the time it was the only women's penal institution in the country. The prison was made up of two ranges, called A and B, a segregation unit and a separate area called the Wing. New inmates - the "fresh fish" - were housed in A range; B range was for the troublemakers, the inmates who liked to start fights and otherwise stir up trouble.

Protective custody was in the segregation unit; it was for the baby killers and "goofs" - the pedophiles. The protective custody-special needs unit housed the mentally unstable. The Wing - split into North and South sections - was for minimum-security inmates, or lifers. Inmates were given slightly more freedom down on the Wing, where the cells looked a bit more like rooms than concrete boxes. The Wing was the carrot; if you behaved yourself, that's where they'd put you.

Charles Smith on his last day of testimony at the Pediatric Forensic Pathology Inquiry, known as the Goudge Indquiry, in 2008. It followed a review that found mistakes in 20 child-death investigations. (Aaron Lynett)

Tammy started out double-bunked on A range. A and B ranges were long, two-tier corridors that ran parallel to each other. Though the walls were concrete, sound travelled through them as if they were paper. Each range housed more than 50 cells, tiny boxes that barely measured nine feet by six. Jammed inside each was a metal bunk bed with mattresses that weren't much thicker than a folded-up blanket. There was a tall cabinet for personal belongings, a metal desk, a metal drawer, a sink on one wall. The toilet was mounted on the back wall, behind the bed.

It was such a tight squeeze that the front of the toilet was under the lip of the bed, making it almost impossible to sit on the toilet properly. You had to either sit sideways or straddle the toilet and then carefully slide your feet under the bed frame and your knees up against it in order to sit down. Tammy was barely five feet tall and 85 pounds and even she couldn't sit on it properly.

And there was no hope of privacy. Prisoners were allowed to hang a blanket across the metal bars of their cells, but the door itself always had to be kept clear. Inmates and guards, female and male, could see inside as a prisoner squatted in the back corner.

And then there was her roommate. Tammy would be sharing the tiny cell with another pregnant inmate. When she couldn't hold it any longer, Tammy would have to s--- in the open cell with her roommate within arm's reach.

But that indignity didn't last long. Lifers weren't supposed to be double-bunked. At her first meal that evening, Tammy met the chair of the lifers group, who immediately started petitioning for her to move down to the Wing, where living conditions were more passable. The cells there had locks on the inside. The guards could still open them, but it gave the inmates some privacy from other inmates. Tammy was transferred down to the Wing after a month.

She'd been living on the Wing just a couple of weeks when another lifer called her into her cell. Her name was Agatha, and she was pushing 70, Tammy figured. She was a nice woman who'd taken Tammy under her wing. Agatha reminded her of Tweety Bird's Granny: matronly, but fierce when someone she cared for came under threat.

Agatha asked Tammy if she watched the news. Tammy shook her head. Agatha said she'd seen a story that she thought might be about Tammy, and asked her point-blank what she was really in for.

Tammy started to sob. She hadn't meant to lie, she admitted, but she'd been warned she'd have to if she wanted her baby to live. Agatha only cared what Tammy had been convicted of.

"They said I killed my son."

Death in the Family tells four stories, from child's death through to forensic analysis to the legal system and finally the inquest into Dr. Charles Smith.

Agatha said she would get the guards to move Tammy into protective custody, or PC, a separate unit that was a sort of prison within the prison, meant for inmates who couldn't live in the general population because their crimes made them targets - crimes like killing your child.

As if on cue, inmates began banging on Agatha's cell door, screaming obscenities. "Get that f---ing baby killer out of here!" "She's just having that kid so she can kill another one!" "We're going to f---ing kill her! We're going to torture her!" "Let her out, you bitch! You're harbouring a baby killer!"

The screaming continued for several minutes; it felt like hours to Tammy, cowering in the cell while inmates pounded on the bars and threatened to beat her to death. Prison guards finally arrived to clear the hallway and take Tammy away. They took her first to segregation. She was strip-searched again, and that's when she realized she was covered in blood. The baby was in distress.

The guards rushed her to the health-care unit, which then rushed her to Kingston General Hospital. There, the obstetrician gave her a quick examination and an ultrasound. The baby was fine, she said. No need to worry, just some spot bleeding.

Back at the prison, Tammy was returned to segregation. Her bleeding slowed but didn't stop. After a couple of days, she was transferred to the protective custody unit. This was actually two units: protective custody, and protective custody-special needs. Tammy ended up in the special needs unit at first. The cell was just outside the guards' office, and she was under constant supervision. She wasn't allowed out except to shower. She was then moved to protective custody.

It would be her home for the rest of her time at P4W, locked away from the other inmates for her own protection.

"Basically, you had a price on your head [in protective custody]. You were targeted the second you walked in there," Tammy recalled years later.

She would be living alongside baby killers and pedophiles, the mentally unhinged and "psychos." She'd be living in the same unit as Karla Homolka.

Tammy remembers watching Homolka bounce down the stairs, her hair pulled back in a girlish ponytail. She reminded Tammy of Marsha from The Brady Bunch.

"Hi, I'm Karla," a bubbly Homolka said outside Tammy's cell. "If you need anything, just holler up and I'll get it for you."

Tammy only nodded. She couldn't bring herself to respond.

They didn't become friends. Tammy kept her distance, and the serial killer didn't push it. But some interactions were unavoidable. Karla was the prisoner representative for the protective custody unit. Any complaints Tammy had about life in PC needed to be funnelled through Karla, who would bring them to the inmate committee and eventually the prison administration. So although some conversation was inevitable, Tammy said she did her best to keep it to a minimum.

Despite the close quarters, there weren't that many opportunities to interact anyway. There were no shared meals in a mess hall. In PC, inmates ate their meals alone, locked in their cells. The unit was on almost constant lockdown, not because of disruptions there but because both of the two PC guards needed to be present if the cells were to be left open. But one of the guards was frequently called away to help quell disruptions in other parts of the prison, leaving only one on duty - and leaving everyone locked in their cells.

Teresa and Lauralie were the only other women in protective custody. Tammy wasn't sure what they were in for, but the talk among inmates was that they had killed their children. Lauralie was tight with Karla, at least when Karla was within earshot. Otherwise Lauralie would complain that she couldn't stand her. Teresa was large, aggressive and moody.

They had occasional access to the adjacent protective custody-special needs unit as well, but it wasn't a place you'd want to visit. That's where the mentally unstable prisoners were housed, the ones who likely should have been in a hospital rather than a prison. They wailed and screamed, banged their heads against the metal bars of their cell doors. Several tried to kill themselves. One woman threw her own feces at other inmates if they got too close to her cell.

And that was Tammy's world: two alleged child killers, Karla Homolka and a ward full of the mentally unhinged.

Author John Chipman.

Moving around the prison was a problem. P4W was a violent, dangerous place - especially for convicted child killers. But Tammy needed to get around - she was pregnant. She had regular pre-natal appointments in the health clinic, plus she had prison-mandated sessions with a psychologist. But getting from her cell to her appointments could be dangerous.

As a convicted child killer, Tammy was always escorted by a prison guard, who would take her down to a basement tunnel to move her about the prison. "The tunnel was the danger zone," Tammy explained years later. "There were little hidden corners, little breaks in the walls. I had coffee thrown at me. I had shoes thrown at me. I had bodily fluids thrown at me.

"I had one girl come up behind us and hit me with her coffee cup."

There was a blind corner at the end of the tunnel. The lighting was poor, the shadows were long, and you had no idea who was waiting around the corner. And sometimes Tammy's escort turned away.

"That was the extreme danger zone," she said. "That's where I got jumped more times than I care to remember. The guard would just walk away or turn around." One time, four women were waiting for Tammy. At first she fought back, but she soon realized it was pointless - it was far from a fair fight. So Tammy learned to go down quickly, turtling on the floor, her arms protecting her head, her legs pulled up tightly to protect her abdomen as a torrent of fists and feet pounded her.

"It was only after I was down on the ground that I guess the guard figured, 'That's enough. Don't actually kill her.' Then she would step in."

Eric Anthony Steven Marquardt was born on June 20, 1996, at Kingston General Hospital. Tammy gave birth in shackles and handcuffs. The prison guards refused to take them off because she was a maximum-security prisoner. As well, Tammy was appealing her conviction, which made her a flight risk.

The restraints meant she couldn't get her feet into the stirrups for the birth. She pulled her feet up and in, pushing her knees out to the side, her legs contorted into a diamond shape. The obstetrician draped a blanket over her legs and did the best he could. Labour lasted a day and a half.

After the birth, the guards undid her handcuffs so she could hold her newborn. But they kept the shackles on and chained one arm to the wheelchair. She did her best to breathe in her son, to memorize the lines and creases of his face. Then the social workers bundled Eric up and took him away. Tammy shuffled into the prison transfer wagon and headed back to P4W.
Excerpted from Death in the Family by John Chipman. Copyright © 2017 by John Chipman. Published by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved. Correction - February 21, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Barry McGinnis was the officer-in-charge (OIC) at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in 1996 when Tammy Marquardt began serving a life sentence for murdering her 2-year-old son. In fact, McGinnis was not working at the prison at that time and was not the guard who pointed at Marquardt's stomach and said, "If you want that child to live, you don't tell anyone what you're in here for."
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Falsely convicted, in maximum security and pregnant | Toronto Star

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John Chipman's book Death in the Family delves into the lives of four of the families devastated by a child's death and then victimized by Dr. Charles Smith, Ontario's top pediatric forensic pathologist. Years later Smith would be found guilty of professional misconduct.

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A short clip regarding Charles Smith, who was an expert witness in many cases and a description about some of the cases where the individuals were wrongly convicted.

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Smith begins testifying in child deaths inquiry

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Discredited child pathologist Charles Smith has started testifying at a public inquiry probing systemic errors in pediatric forensics in Ontario.

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Photo of Tammy Marquardt and her toddler she was convicted of killing

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A brief overview of Tammy, her life and the events leading to her wrongful conviction. The narrator describes how tunnel vision led to the wrongful conviction of Tammy due to her abusive partner. Police investigators did not proceed with an open mind.

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Uploaded by Stephanie Moore on 2016-11-30.

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Tammy Marquardt's comments after being released from prison after 14 years in prison for a crime she did not commit. Tammy comments on pathologist Charles Smith and her two other children.

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Tammy Marquardt, Another Innocent Victim of Charles Randall Smith aka "Randy Smith".flv

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Tammy Marquardt being comforted by friend William Mullins-Johnson after being granted freedom. William had also been convicted for a crime he was not responsible for and had spent 12 years in prison. Dr. Charles Smith was also apart of his case and contributed to his wrongful conviction. Pressure from the media and the public contributed the wrongful convictions of these two.

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Tammy Marquardt testimony largely rested on Pathologist Charles Smith- he states the toddler has been strangled or smothered. This man was trusted as an informer, he gave false information in court which put an innocent person behind bars for 13 years.

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This article details the consequences of Charle Smith's actions once he was found incompetent by the courts for information that aiding in convicting innocent people. Charles Smith received a $3650 fine, had his licence revoked which he may eventually be able to reapply for and a formal public dressing down. Compared to the years spent behind bars and the grief experienced this does not seem like a fair punishment for the individuals effected.

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Charles Randal Smith is a doctor no more.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the governing body for the province's doctors, has stripped the former disgraced pathologist of his certificate to practice, fined him $3,650 in costs, spanked him in the sternest language and summoned him to a formal public dressing-down next month.

If it sounds like punishment on a grand scale, it isn't.

Mr. Smith can't be compelled to appear for his paddy-whacking, the revocation decision is effective only in Ontario (however, the rulings are sent to governing bodies across the country) and after a year, he could even reapply to be certified as a doctor again - though he would bear the onus of showing why.

Bill Mullins-Johnson, who wrongly spent 12 years in prison because of the ex-pathologist's testimony at his first-degree murder trial, pronounced the college action "a slap on the wrist" and "a spit in the face of myself and the public of this province."

Mr. Mullins-Johnson was one of six people - three of whom were jailed in large measure because of Mr. Smith's ostensibly "expert" evidence - who submitted victim-impact statements to a disciplinary hearing Tuesday held at the college in downtown Toronto.

At least one other victim, Maria Shepherd, whose conviction in the death of her stepdaughter has been reopened and who is now seeking exoneration in the Ontario Court of Appeal, joined Mr. Mullins-Johnson in a call that Mr. Smith face criminal charges.

"I would like to see this man face prison," the 40-year-old mother of five told reporters after the hearing, "and to walk through the halls holding the gear [prison-issued clothing]as you become an inmate in protective custody."

The impact statements speak not only of the terrors of prison, but also of shattered if not ruined families and the nightmare of being branded as baby killers in the broader community.

The hearing came almost three years after the release of the so-called Goudge report, a public inquiry headed by Mr. Justice Stephen Goudge which reviewed Mr. Smith's 20-year career as the country's go-to forensic pathologist - despite the fact that he was not one at all, but rather a pediatric pathologist.

Pathology is the study of natural disease in people; pediatric pathology the study of disease in children and adolescents.

Forensic pathology is the study of suspicious or unnatural death and is where science and the law often intersect, since the forensic pathologist often performs postmortem examinations critical to determining whether a death is homicide, accident or disease and testifies in court about those findings as an expert witness.

Mr. Smith, who admitted to the Goudge inquiry that his forensic training was virtually non-existent, nonetheless rose to become in 1992 the first head of the Ontario Pediatric Forensic Pathology Unit based at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

As early as the year before, when a judge was harshly critical of Mr. Smith's work and evidence, alarm bells were beginning to ring around the province about the bespectacled, gentle-seeming man who saw himself as a lonely advocate for dead youngsters and sometimes wore cartoon-character ties to court as a reminder, as he once told me, of his humanity.

This lack of neutrality, coupled with his woeful lack of forensic training, was compounded by Mr. Smith's sloppiness and failure to complete reports on time, reply to Crown attorneys and coroners who were increasingly badgering him for answers and by his inability to even keep track of key evidence.

In short, Mr. Smith had a disastrous effect, as the disciplinary committee said in its findings, upon the administration of justice, particularly upon those who either pleaded guilty (on the advice of lawyers who correctly feared Mr. Smith's testimony at trial) or were wrongly convicted on his say-so.

As Judge Goudge said in his report, Mr. Smith was not above even deception in his efforts to repel what was a growing legion of critics. The judge also said that Mr. Smith "made false and misleading statements to the court" on occasion.

"I was held accountable for things that didn't even happen," Mr. Mullins-Johnson said both in his furious impact statement and to reporters after the hearing. "On the other hand, he was allowed to practice unsupervised by the college and Sick Children's Hospital ... his actions are no less than perjury and obstruction [of justice]"

Mr. Smith pleaded no-contest to the charges of misconduct and incompetence leveled against him by the college; it means he agreed to the facts as presented, albeit for the limited purpose of the disciplinary hearing. He didn't, and wasn't required to, turn up in person, and even his lawyer, Jane Langford, had but a few sentences to say.

Under Section 36.3 of the Regulated Health Professions Act, nothing that was used or said at the hearing, or the decision itself, is admissible in a civil proceeding such as a lawsuit.

Too little too late; a day late and a dollar short: It all amounts to a tongue-lashing - the formal one delivered perhaps to an empty chair, if Mr. Smith chooses not to show up - and a theoretically temporary defrocking.

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Charles Smith's punishment deemed 'a slap on the wrist'

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Charles Randal Smith is a doctor no more. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the governing body for the province's doctors, has stripped the former disgraced pathologist of his certificate to practice, fined him $3,650 in costs, spanked him in the sternest language and summoned him to a formal public dressing-down next month.