AUBURN – Jurors who will decide whether Sarah Allen is guilty of shaking her adopted son to death heard a 45-minute audiotape Thursday of Allen’s first interview with investigators.

By the end of the tape, Allen, her husband, Jeremy, and one juror were weeping.

The interview took place in a small room at Maine Medical Center in Portland, the morning after 21-month-old Nathaniel Allen was rushed to the hospital with severe head and neck injuries.

The boy was on life support with only hours left to live when his mother, then 28, sat down to talk with a Maine State Police detective, a Department of Human Services case worker and a child abuse expert.

“It happened very fast,” Allen told the investigators. “I’m wracking my brain to remember exactly what happened.”

Allen went on to give a detailed description of what she and her son did on Feb. 14, 2003.

Applesauce

She told investigators that her husband left for a business trip early in the morning. She and Nathaniel went shopping and had breakfast at Denny’s.

“We were dancing to ’50s music and having a very good day,” she said.

Then, Allen told the investigators, the day took a turn. It began in the evening with Nathaniel rubbing applesauce in his hair.

“He’s kind of a passive-aggressive child,” Allen told the investigators.

The boy’s behavior continued in the bathtub, Allen said. She described him as screaming uncontrollably while attempting to claw his way out. Then she told the investigators about the first of several falls she claims Nathaniel took that night.

Allen’s lawyer, Verne Paradie, hopes to convince the jury that the boy was injured and eventually died as a result of those falls, not as result of being shaken by his mother, as the state alleges.

“He went from a standing position and hit the bottom of the tub,” Allen told the investigators.

Then, she said, he fell again, so she took him out and into the bedroom to dry him off. She told the investigators that she had to get “firm” with him and ordered him to sit down.

“He wanted to be held,” she said. “Nathaniel gets his way by getting ornery.”

Spankings

At some point during the “diaper battle,” Allen said, Nathaniel fell a third time and hit his head on the carpet. After that, she continued, he calmed down and fell asleep on her chest for about an hour. When he woke up, she took him to his room, sat him on the floor and accidentally brushed up against him with her hip.

“He literally went forward and landed on his head, like he fainted or something,” Allen told the investigators.

It was at that point, Allen said, that she realized the boy was unconscious and she called 911.

“Now that I look back,” Allen told the investigators, “he hit his head several times within an hour and 45 minutes.”

When the investigators asked if the boy had any bruises, Allen told them that he had some from the previous night when her husband hit his bare bottom with a wooden spoon and she splashed a little water in his face.

She told the investigators they spanked the boy because he was freaking out and he had “a defiant look” in his eyes.

“We save spankings for the last resort,” she said, estimating that they spanked the boy every couple of weeks over the previous three months.

Jeremy Allen was sitting in the back of the courtroom as state prosecutors played the tape. At one point during the interview, he started sobbing and left room. Sarah Allen broke down several times while listening to the interview.

By the end of the tape, a female juror was also crying.

ER doctor

Nathaniel Allen was taken off life support shortly after his mother’s interview with detectives. Two weeks later, police went to Allen’s house on Lincoln Street to arrest her on a charge of manslaughter.

Her trial began Tuesday in Androscoggin County Superior Court. In addition to hearing the tape of Allen’s initial interview, jurors heard testimony from some of the nurses and doctors who treated Nathaniel on the night of Feb. 14, 2003.

Dr. Marlene Cormier, an emergency room doctor at Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick, testified that a toddler could suffer a severe head injury from falling several times in the tub.

“It’s unlikely, but it could happen,” she said.

Allen’s trial is expected to last up to two and a half weeks. Her husband, Jeremy, faces a charge of assault in connection with the bruises found on the boy’s thighs and buttocks. His trial is scheduled for June 28.

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