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Mom Who Rattled DCF Gets 55 Years In Torture Case

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN

sackerman@tampatrib.com

Published: November 12, 2008

TAMPA - Candice Clark, a small-time thief who snatched her toddler from Florida custody in 2006 and was arrested later in Wisconsin with a dead woman in her backyard and a severely abused boy in her closet, has been sentenced to 55 years in prison.

Clark, 24, pleaded no contest in a Portage, Wis., courtroom Monday to second-degree reckless homicide and guilty to charges including child abuse. She must serve about 47 years before being eligible to apply for early release. The sentence included 45 years of extended supervision.

Clark gained national attention in 2007 after she removed her 21/2-year-old daughter, Courtney, from the custody of a state-appointed caregiver. Clark took the girl cross-country with two other children and a band of identity thieves.

For four months, a Sarasota Family YMCA caseworker failed to report Courtney missing. A tip led Portage police to the girl five months later.

The case exposed massive cracks in the state's child welfare system and changed the way workers report children missing in state care.

"This was one of our darkest hours," said Florida Department of Children & Families Secretary George Sheldon, who was second-in-command at the time. "Everything went wrong in this case. Luckily, Courtney survived."

Clark was charged in the death of Tammie Garlin, 36, who was strangled and found buried in the backyard of a Portage home Clark shared with boyfriend Michael Sisk, roommate Michaela Clerc, and Garlin's two children.

One was an 11-year-old boy who told detectives the gang burned him with hot water, whipped him with a cord and forced him to stay naked in a closet. He testified that the group abused his mother as well. Doctors had to amputate several of his fingertips and three badly burned toes.

Sisk, 26, was found guilty in August of second-degree reckless homicide and pleaded guilty and no contest to nine other charges. He has not yet been sentenced. Clerc is serving 37 years in prison.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144.

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