THOMASVILLE ? For the nearly two decades that Barb Sipe has lived in the Chesapeake Estates on the western end of York County, the trailer park has been a quiet ? even bucolic ? community.
The residents of this sprawling complex, which abuts a soybean farm, keep tidy gardens dotted with gnomes and lawn ornaments. In spite of the large number of children who live here, the community was tranquil.
Sipe said all that changed about three-and-a-half years ago, when Regina Lester, a young mother of three children, moved in two doors down.
Practically overnight, the quiet community was transformed
Something was always going on at Lester's trailer, Sipe and other neighbors said Thursday. Lester had an inordinate number of visitors, they said.
The visitors ? as many as six or seven at a time, women and men, but mostly men ? parked their cars along the dead-end street in front of Sipe's house. Neighbors described the men as "rough-looking guys."
They came and went at all hours of the night. Some stayed only a few minutes. Others, it seemed, stayed into the early hours of the morning.
"The crowd that hung there shouldn't have been there around little kids," Sipe said. "She would have six or seven men in her house all night long. Next day they are gone."
It wasn't unusual to see Northern York County Regional Police cruisers staking out Lester's home from across the way.
Neighbors said there was usually some kind of commotion going on at 265 Chesapeake Estates, the home Lester shared with her small daughter and son. Another son came and went; he lived with his father and grandmother.
"Ever since she moved in, it was hell down here.
This block was hell," Sipe said. "They would wake me up every night....door slamming, people cussing."
Neighbors said they could hear Lester screaming and the kids crying. They said that people who looked to be government officials visited her house from time to time. They took them to be county children welfare officials.
In spite of the yelling and the incessant stream of visitors, Lester's children ? 3-year-old Isabel Rose Godfrey, a boy who started kindergarten, and the older one, who neighbors think is in first grade ? seemed to be cared for. Neighbors said the children, who were always dressed and seemed clean, played with other kids in the neighborhood.
Sipe, a grandmother, said her heart would just melt at the sight of the little girl playing with her wagon in front of her house, her cherub face framed by golden curls.
'I swear she was adorable. I swear she was an angel... a real angel," said Sipe, who never knew the child's name.
On Wednesday night, Sipe had her double door opened to let in the unseasonably cool June breeze
when she heard unusually loud screams coming from Lester's home.
Troubled by the tone of the screams, Sipe peered out her front door and saw a woman on the ground. She was screaming and thrashing about, and she was naked. Sipe said two men were on top of her. She soon learned that the woman was Lester, and that the men were trying to restrain her.
Sipe ran back in to call police, but there was no need. Someone had already called them to say a mother had just killed her child. A police cruiser pulled up just moments after Sipe first saw Lester naked on the ground, a mere few feet from her front lawn.
On Thursday, a fresh breeze rustling the leaves of the trees, neighbors were in disbelief at the events of the previous evening.
Police found Isabel dead on the floor of the kitchen. Lester, 30, was arrested and taken to York Hospital for pre-detention treatment. She remained there as of mid-day Thursday and has been charged with criminal homicide, endangering the welfare of children and terroristic threats.
The once-quiet community was again quiet, but this time, neighbors were left to wonder in total amazement at the tragedy of the previous night.
Neighbors said they never saw Lester doing drugs, but they had their suspicions.
"It was just the way she acted at times," said Carlton Ness, who along with his wife, Delight, lives next door to Lester. "She would come outside and she was slamming doors and cursing, you would think there were six or seven cars out there, but it was just her. She was very loud."
"She just had too many people in and out," Delight Ness said. "It wasn't no good for someone to live that way ... not for little children, anyhow."
Lester seemed to have had a job at a restaurant, judging by the fact that she would leave the house dressed with a black apron. But lately, she seemed not to be working and spent most of her time at home.
Lester had accused Sipe of causing trouble for her, Sipe said. Sipe said she was just disgusted by the sight of Lester's stream of visitors to her house at all hours of the night. She worried about the children.
"If I wanted to cause trouble, I would have called drug enforcement or something," Sipe said.
On March 18, Northern York Regional Police charged Lester with making a false report and summary criminal mischief. The false report charge was withdrawn and the criminal mischief charge dismissed on April 27.
Not long ago, Delight Ness said, police and an ambulance were summoned to Lester's house.
"They took a man out on a stretcher," she said.
The Ness house is so close to Lester's, they would often hear her on the phone. The most they ever exchanged with Lester, they said, was a friendly hello.
They said they never saw Lester hit her children, but enough people in the
community talked about her slapping the little girl across the face.
On Tuesday night, Lester's phone conversation was particularly loud ? and long. Delight Ness said she was on the phone outside until well past 2:30 in the morning.
"I could hear her talking... it was loud," she said.
Lester kept a stash of toys and kiddie push cars on the side of the house under the shade of a large tree. From their kitchen window, Carlton and Delight Ness often saw the boys playing outside, but they seldom saw the little girl.
Tuesday afternoon, when they got home around 4 p.m., was an exception. Lester's little girl was outside on the other side of her mother's car. Carlton Ness could see her, though he didn't see her mother.
The next time they saw Lester, she was lying on the street, Police had covered her naked body with a blanket or something, and the little angel-faced girl was dead.
On Thursday, a neighbor had started a makeshift memorial on the lawn. The gusty wind buffetted the few balloons and stuffed animals placed there. A deep pink poster left as part of the memorial read: "Bella Rose fly baby girl."
"It's real sad," Delight Ness said. "I just can't imagine a child going like that.... I don't know what would make a mother snap like this."
Originally Posted by bowieluva
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