Mom arrested in California nearly 20 years after daughter’s death in Florida, cops say

A grand jury has indicted a mother in the 2002 killing of her 2-year-old daughter after cold case investigators discovered that a mistake had been made when the child’s cause of death was originally determined, according to a Florida sheriff’s office.

Mary Jean Mansker, 38, whose last name was previously Liza, was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder on Nov. 18, 2022, according to a Jan. 3 news release from the Office of the State Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit of Florida.

Mansker’s daughter, Marselina Liza, died in a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, on Dec. 31, 2002, according to an arrest warrant from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.

A medical examiner ruled her death a homicide from blunt force head trauma at the time, the warrant says. The child had been brought to the hospital on Dec. 30, 2002, after she had a seizure and became unresponsive, according to the warrant. Investigators found she had multiple injuries, including 18 bruises all over her body.

When investigators interviewed Mansker on Nov. 6, 2003, she told them that she may have “blacked out” due to anger and done something “unintentionally” to her child, the warrant says.

Months earlier, the Department of Children and Families had temporarily removed the toddler from her parents’ custody because of “unexplained injuries,” including a burned foot, according to the warrant.

As detectives continued to investigate the case, they decided to ask the medical examiner to conduct another autopsy because they believed a mistake had been made in the child’s original cause of death determination, according to a video summarizing the case on the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.

A revised autopsy report showed that the toddler’s death was homicide caused by “subdural and subarachnoid hemorrhages consistent with ... Shaken Baby Syndrome,” the warrant says. Shaken baby syndrome is a serious brain injury that can be caused by “forcefully shaking” an infant or toddler.

A spokeswoman for the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office told McClatchy News she could not elaborate on what caused investigators to want to reexamine the child’s cause of death.

Investigators said Mansker abused her child on Dec. 30, 2002, and caused injuries that led to her death, according to the warrant.

Mansker was arrested in Yuba County, California, on Sept. 23, 2021, according to Yuba County Sheriff’s Department records.

A spokeswoman for the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office did not know the date Mansker was extradited to Florida, but Okaloosa County jail records show she was booked into the jail on Dec. 6, 2021, and released on Dec. 23, 2021, on a $10,000 bond. She is awaiting scheduling of a pretrial conference, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the First Judicial Circuit of Florida.

Okaloosa County is in the Florida panhandle about 160 miles west of Tallahassee.

This story was originally published January 4, 2023 at 5:23 PM with the headline "Mom arrested in California nearly 20 years after daughter’s death in Florida, cops say."