TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online
Email
Print
Woman Pleads In Torture Case
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: July 4, 2008
MADISON, Wis. - MADISON, Wis. - A female member of a gang of drifters accused of helping to kill another woman in the group and torturing the dead woman's young son pleaded no contest Thursday to reckless homicide.
In a plea bargain, Candace Clarke, 24, formerly of Clearwater, also pleaded guilty to child abuse and other charges. She had been scheduled to go to trial Monday.
Police found Tammie Garlin, 36, buried behind the gang's rented house in Portage in June of last year. Her 11-year-old son was found in a closet, naked and severely abused.
Columbia County District Attorney Jane Kohlwey said Clarke pleaded no contest to second-degree reckless homicide, reduced from being a party to first-degree intentional homicide.
She pleaded guilty to child abuse, causing mental harm to a child, false imprisonment and other counts, as well as no-contest to a related count. Several other counts, including hiding a corpse, were dropped.
Clarke's attorney, David Geier, didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.
Investigators said Clarke and her boyfriend, Michael Sisk, led a band of scam artists that traveled across the country.
Garlin, her son and her daughter were part of the gang. The group tortured the boy for bad behavior and at some point turned on Garlin and murdered her, according to a criminal complaint.
Sisk is scheduled to go on trial next month.
Investigators searching for Clarke's missing 2-year-old daughter, Courtney, whom they believed Clarke abducted from foster parents in Lake County, tracked the gang to the rented house in Portage.
Police found the girl at the house in Portage, as well as Garlin's body buried in a shallow grave in the backyard and her son locked in the closet, naked, starving and severely burned.
Pediatrician Barbara Knox testified at a hearing last year that the boy looked like "a concentration camp survivor." Doctors had to amputate several fingertips and three of his toes because they were burned so badly.
The tale of Garlin's death and the boy's suffering shocked Portage, a town of 9,700 about 40 miles northwest of Madison. It also spurred the Florida Department of Children & Families to reform its system and assign specific workers to track missing children.
Clarke told reporters in jailhouse interviews last year that the boy deserved to be punished severely because he acted so badly.
She denied killing Garlin, but said Sisk and another member of the gang, Michaela Clerc, Garlin's former lover, turned on her. They were angry after Garlin admitted to having sexual fantasies about Clarke.
According to a criminal complaint, Clarke told detectives Garlin's daughter and Clerc kicked her on June 4, 2007, and Clerc dropped Garlin on her head in the house's bathroom.
Sisk went into the bathroom and closed the door, Clarke said. He came out a few moments later saying Garlin was dead.
Kohlwey dropped homicide and hiding a corpse charges against Clerc.
Email
Print
TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online Member Agreement | Privacy Statement | Work With Us
