Cohen Legacy
March 29, 2008 - May 11, 2008

Mary Smith had two children from a previous relationship and in September of 2007 her 14 month old son was taken to the hospital with a broken hip. Terry Legacy would be suspected of causing the injury to Mary's son and was charged with aggravated assault. Mary and Terry had said that the child fell down some steps and that was how he had broken his hip.

Terry Legacy suffered from depression and anxiety and shortly after he and Mary moved in together, he went off of his medication. Mary tried to talk him into getting a job and he didn't do it. Mary did say that he would come home stoned, from smoking marijuana. When she came home one night after working late, he son was crying. Every time he moves, he cried harder and Mary called her mother and they took him to the hospital. At first, doctors said he had a virus and sent her and her son home.

A week later when the child was still crying, Mary again takes him to the doctor where x-rays are done. The results are not back for a few days and when they do finally come in, Mary is told to take her son to McMaster Hospital where she will be met by an Orthopedic Surgeon.

Police and the Children's Aid Society were both called and Mary went to the police station with her mother to make a statement:

When police asked her about Terry's relationship with her children, Mary told them that her children called him Dad and that she had no reason to suspect he would hurt any of them. Terry and Mary go home while her son stays in the hospital for five weeks. Mary begins to think that CAS will remove her children from their home. She asks Terry to tell her what happened to her son and he tells her that he was in the basement doing laundry when the child had stepped away. She says he heard the child cry and found him at the bottom of their short stairway:

"He went over to him, picked him up and then he stopped crying. So he didn't think 
that was what it was."

Just a month after the child suffered the broken hip, Terry was cleared of all charges and it was said that he was not responsible for the injury even though The Children's Aid Society had ruled it was a suspicious injury. Just days after Cohen's death, Hamilton's Homicide And Child Abuse unit made a decision to reopen the case of the child who had a broken hip. 

The Hamilton Police were called to the home of Mary Smith and Terry Legacy on May 11, 2008 and there they found Cohen Legacy had stopped breathing. Mary says they started out with breakfast in bed, that mothers day is a day to enjoy being a mother. At 3:00pm she left to go clean an office, which was her job. When she got home, she cleaned house, made dinner and put the children to bed.

Around 11pm, Cohen woke up and wouldn't eat. Terry changed his diaper and then Mary tried to feed him, he drank the bottle. When he had finished eating, Mary went outside to have a cigarette. When she came back into the room, Terry was walking around with Cohen in the living room:

Mary went back to the kitchen to make another bottle and she heard an odd noise. Terry called to her that Cohen had the hiccups. When the noise was heard again, Terry brought Cohen into the kitchen:

Mary called 911 as formula came out of Cohen's nose. She tells them that her baby is choking and the try to help:

There is a knock at the door and it turns out to be a police officer who made it there before the ambulance. Mary hands her son to the officer and she sits on the floor:

Cohen Legacy was dead.

A neighbor would later say:

Cohen was transported to Hamilton General Hospital. A forensic examination would show that Cohen's injuries were not accidental and his death was ruled a homicide. Dr. William Lucas, Deputy Chief Coroner for Ontario said that he didn't know if Cohen had signs of trauma:

On May 29, 2008, Terry Daniel Legacy was charged with the murder of his son. This would come just two weeks after he had been charged and cleared of the aggravated assault charges.

On the same day that Cohen died, another child in the home was found with what looked like a cigarette burn on his nose:

Mary Smith admits that on the day Cohen died, she had left Terry alone with the children, even after promising that she wouldn't. Mary said that they also suspect that this was the day the other child had the injury they say is a burn. Mary insists it wasn't a burn mark:

Mary said that she was upset with how the investigation into her sons broken hip had gone. She claims to have learned that Terry had given inconsistent statements to the police and they had not told her about it. A video tape would show that Terry first blamed the injury on Mary's mother claiming she was alone with the child on the day he
was hurt. He later changed that statement and said that while he was watching the child, he fell down the steps. Mary says that she should have been allowed to watch the tape and hear that he had changed his story and if she had her son would still be alive:

Sergeant Terri-Lynn Collings of the Hamilton Police said that there was never a time when Mary talked to them about the statements or that she had a problem with the investigation:

Mary claimed that police told her son had suffered some injuries which had happened before the day of his hip breaking, an incident that caused him to be in the hospital for several weeks. A report from that time made by the Child Advocacy And Assessment Program at McMaster Children's Hospital talked about the old injuries that showed up on bone scans and said the scans:

Mary's children, her other son and a daughter, were taken away from her and were being cared for by another family while the Children's Aid Society reviewed all of their notes on the case. The CAS found some concerns about the children that were not connected to Terry Legacy:

A report says that two weeks after his birth, Mary rushed Cohen to the hospital with blood dripping from his mouth. Terry had been left alone in the room with Cohen and was bottle feeding him. Mary said that when she returned to the room, Cohen was bleeding. Mary says that the doctor at the hospital told her that Cohen probably scratched
himself with a fingernail.

Mary, who held her son Cohen in her arms while he died, would come under suspicion herself and an investigation would be made by the Children's Aid Society concerning the things they found in their notes including the fact that she had promised them not to leave Terry alone with the children.

Mary continued to blame the CAS and the detective who had been the investigator in the child abuse case against Terry claiming that if they had not messed up their investigation into her sons broken hip, she  would have known the truth and she would have left Terry. Mary said that her son would have been alive if not for them.

Mary's sister Ashley told reporters that she and her family didn't want to make any public statements:

Hamilton police and CAS are both reviewing their actions in the case of the child with the broken hip. Johnson Fernandes, the case worker who handled the child's case, was the one who ruled it as an accident. The decision he made was being reviewed by agencies outside of the CAS. This is standard procedure by the Pediatric Death Review Committee whenever there is a death of a child while the CAS is involved or up to a year after their cases are closed. Their findings would not be complete until September of 1008.

Mary was upset because Johnson Fernandes would remain as the case worker in her case as well as the case of her surviving children who no longer lived with her. She felt that he didn't do his job right:

Dominic Verticchio says there is no policy within CAS as for what steps to take when a SAC employee is being reviewed. He also said that he had no concerns about this employees performance:

If problems are found within the handling of the case, Dominc says that his status could change. Additionally, he says that CAS staff are involved in the decisions that will be made for Mary's case and for what will happen to Johnson Fernandes:

On July 18, 2008, Terry Legacy was in court for a bail hearing in the second degree murder charge case.

Read E-mails From Cohen's "family"
(I use the term family lightly because in my opinion, no family would allow
their child/grandson to be killed this way)

NOTE: Seems Canada takes a long time to take people to trial. I can't find any updates about this case as of November 4, 2011.

Call this number to report child abuse ANY WHERE in the United States!
1-800-4-A-Child  1-800-422-4453

My sincerest appreciation goes out to Diane Trembly for allowing me to use one
of her beautiful Angels to make the graphics for this set. Please visit her site,
by clicking the link below, to see all of her amazing work.