Ursula Sunshine Assaid
June 5, 1977 - September
25, 1982
Ursula Sunshine Assaid was proudly name by her father
to spell out
USA. Ursula lived only five short years before
her mother stood by
and watched as her boyfriend tortured and beat
Ursula until she died.
The torture took place over several days and her
own mother did NOTHING to stop the man from hurting her.
Susan Assaid watched as Donald McDougal forced her
daughter to go
a week without water, food or sleep. Ursula was
forced to sit outside
and not eat, drink or use the bathroom. If she
had an accident, she
was beaten and forced to walk around the house
with her soiled
clothing on her head.
Ursula was fed sandwiches made of two pieces of
bread with soap in
the middle. She would be forced to march around
the the house and
recite the alphabet over and over. If she missed
a letter or hesitated
in any way, she would be beaten again. At the end
of the week long
torture, Ursula would be beaten to death.
After she died, her little body was stuffed into
a duffle bag along with
some weights and tossed into a drainage pond. Neighbors
wondered
where the child was and when they asked, they were
told that she was with her father. People had no reason not to believe
that. Eventually,
the body was discovered and the horrible truth
was revealed.
Donald McDougal would later talk about how he had
been abused by
his father who used to drive him around in the
car all day and not
allow him to use the bathroom.
Donald McDougal was arrested and charged with second
degree
murder. Susan Assaid was arrested and charged with
manslaughter.
Each of them was convicted and Donald was sentenced
to only 34
years in prison and Susan was sentenced to 15 years,
of which she
would only serve five years would then live in
California.
In 1988 legislation was introduced
that would specify that child abuse
resulting in death, would
be punishable by death. In 1992, the
States Attorney, Mr. Wolfinger,
became aware that Donald was about
to be released due to prison
overcrowding. Mr. Wolfinger and some
residents of the community
campaigned to and were successful in
stopping him from using sentence
reducing credits to get out. The
rule was changed by the Department
of Corrections and affected
about 6,000 prisoners:
''McDougal was the poster
boy"
Mr. Wolfinger said
of the effort.
When the possibility would come around, through
parole hearings,
that Donald could be released from prison the town
was outraged by
the fact that he could be set free. On a radio
show called "The Russ
& Bo Show", Russ Rollins, who admits that show
is usually about beer and women, changed it up and talked about the death
of Ursula. It
had been 14 years since she was murdered by Donald
and for several
hours the show talked about it.
Taking phone calls and speaking about the torture
Ursula had suffered through at the hands of Donald, Russ decided to have
a moment of
silence for the little girl at 8:50, the time of
her death:
"Dead air on a radio
program is strong"
Russ Rollins
Donald had been placed in
protective custody at the Avon Park
Correctional Institution
after it was reported that someone had called
the radio show and offered
$1,000. to anyone who would kill him.
The radio station as well
as hosts of the show insisted there was never any such offer. Donald was
released from protective custody after five days, at his own insistence.
Arba Earl Barr was listening
to the program that night, he was doing 114 years for assault and robbery.
On October 1, several days after the show aired, Arba was in the prison
yard with over 200 other
inmates. After dinner, Arba
took the steel post which was usually used in games of horseshoes and beat
Donald McDougal to death with it.
Years later, a book would
be written about the case. "Death From Child Abuse . . . and No One Heard''
was written by Eve Krupinski and Dana Weikel. A couple of years later after
a woman named Valerie Baumgart read the book, her concern about the child
caused her to
do some checking and she
found that Ursula's ashes had never been
claimed by anyone and they
had gone unburied. Now a Sheriff's
Deputy, Valerie started a
campaign to get Ursula buried in the local
cemetery:
''She had been abandoned
in life and abandoned in death
and it was like she
kept haunting us. It was like she was
saying to us, 'Don't
forget' ''
Valerie Baumgart
Arba Earl Barr was in court
and the public defender said that he didn't
know if the broadcast had
influenced him in killing Donald. Eve
Krupinski said that to blame
the radio station for the death would be
ridiculous:
"Russ and Bo and Dirty
Jim get a little far out, but it wasn't
their words or the
words of the callers which killed that
man. They were just
a vehicle for airing the anger''
Eve Krupinski
Valerie Baumgart said that
the interest in the case of Ursula had been
popular long before the radio
show had aired:
''This is an old case
and not about talk radio. He should
have been executed
legally, but maybe this, what
happened, was Ursula's
cry to us all along.''
For information about preventing child abuse in the
state of Florida, click the links below. If they can't help you, ask for
someone who can. NEVER give up looking for help for an abused child!
Department
Of Children And Families
 ....
Call this number to report
child abuse ANY WHERE in the United States!
1-800-4-A-Child
1-800-422-4453
  
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