Original subtitles

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

On February 4, 1997,

8-month-old Matthew Eappen is rushed to the hospital

while in the care of his British nanny, Louise Woodward.

Matthew is unconscious and has stopped breathing.

Doctors suspect child abuse.

Attention immediately turns towards

the 18-year-old Woodward.

As the story unfolds in front of a worldwide audience,

the question becomes,

was this just a tragic accident or is it murder?

What really happened?

[ Telephone ringing ]

Dispatcher: 911, what's your emergency?

Van Susteren: On February 4, 1997,

an 18-year-old British au pair called a 911 dispatcher.

She said the 9-month-old baby she was caring for

had stopped breathing.

It only takes a moment for something tragic to happen.

It's the worst nightmare.

This is every parent's biggest fear when they leave their child

with a babysitter or a nanny.

The caregiver on the end of that phone was Louise Woodward.

The child, Matthew Eappen.

Debbie, Suni and Matthew and Matthew's older brother,

Brendan, were a very tight-knit family.

Deborah: On May 24, 1996,

we gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

We named him Matthew, gift from God.

Matthew was a beautiful baby with black, silky hair

and rich, chocolate eyes.

He was a real butterball.

He was so content.

He made his needs known,

and when they were met, he was happy again.

Sunil was an anesthesiologist. Deborah was an ophthalmologist.

Coakley: Both worked very hard,

were trying to develop their careers,

raise their family.

Life was good for them until February 4th.

Karas: Matthew Eappen's parents were both at work

when Louise Woodward notified them that he was injured.

Deborah: I got a page to our home number followed by 111,

and that was a sign to call right away.

She said, "Debbie, it's Matthew.

I think he's choked on his vomit."

Sunil: Then Debbie called me and told me

that Matthew was going to be brought to Children's,

and I ran over there and actually beat the ambulance

into the bay.

Matthew was unconscious. He was blue.

Whitfield-Sharp: His brain was swelling uncontrollably.

The pediatric neurosurgeon at Children's Hospital

had to perform emergency surgery.

I spoke to Louise when Matthew was in surgery.

Louise: She asked me to search my mind,

think really, really hard.

Was there any time that day or the day before

that he may have hit his head?

Deborah: "Did he fall down the stairs?" "No."

"Did he fall in the tub?" "No."

I was looking for any possible accident or explanation.

I just couldn't believe it.

Karas: Doctors were examining Matthew Eappen,

who was nonresponsive.

They weren't quite sure what happened to him.

There was no obvious, like, external bruising.

So they called in the police to help them reconstruct

the last sort of minutes, hours of Matthew Eappen's life

before he was brought to the hospital.

I knew that Louise had to be interviewed.

Leone: When the police first arrived,

they were thinking horrible tragedy

that occurred on this teenager's watch.

Louise: I went downstairs to go speak to the police.

I saw Sergeant Byrne.

I asked her to explain to me what she did from the time

she got up in the morning to be responsible to watch the kids,

right up until she eventually had to call in the ambulance,

and she explained to me

that Matthew had been cranky that day,

crying in the morning.

Louise told the police that this wasn't the norm for him.

Usually, he was much easier to care for.

He had woken up crying, and he pretty much cried all morning.

Not eating and being lethargic.

Also, he fell asleep in the morning, which he never did.

Part of the day involved her giving the child a bath.

Louise: I was going to go put him down for his nap.

Debbie had asked me to give him a bath before his nap.

Byrne: She explained that she had laid a towel

down in front of the tub

and that she gently laid him down on the bathroom rug.

I asked if it was a chance that maybe the child bumped its head,

and she said no.

Louise: And I wrapped him up, and I put him into his crib.

Jenkins: When she went back later, he was unresponsive.

His eyes were blank.

Louise: I found him unresponsive in his crib,

and he wasn't breathing properly.

He was gasping for breath.

When I picked him up out of the crib, he vomited on me.

I tried to help him myself.

I tried to give CPR.

She tried to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,

she said, and she tried to page Sunil, the father,

but was nervous and couldn't dial the numbers.

That's when she panics and calls 911.

At this point, I'm thinking that this young girl has tried

to do everything to save this child.

♪♪

[ Monitor beeping ]

Karas: Matthew is in a coma.

The doctors are working on him,

and the more they're working on him and looking at him,

the more suspicious they become.

Leone: Well, Matthew was suffering from bruising

in and around his brain

and a crack in the back of his skull,

which was 2 1/2 inches long,

which essentially, according to Dr. Madsen,

who performed the surgery,

caused the brain to swell out of his skull.

Coakley: He took a piece of Matthew's skull out,

and he said, "The brain came out,

rose out like a loaf of bread."

It had been so badly impacted and was so swollen.

Deborah: It looked like there was bleeding in his eyes,

and I knew what that meant, and...

I just couldn't believe it.

She said, "Oh, my God. She's shaken my baby!"

She had a fussy 8-month-old baby boy on her hands that day

and a 2 1/2-year-old downstairs to care for as well.

She said that, at some point, that she had been angry.

This was no accident, and there's only one person

that could have possibly been responsible.

Louise: Around 3:30 on February 4th,

I found him unresponsive in his crib.

[ Siren wailing ]

Karas: That baby was 8-month-old Matthew Eappen,

a child that Louise Woodward had been caring for.

I'll never forget her.

I think it was, like, 8:35 the next morning,

walking into the office, and we were directed immediately

right out to Children's Hospital.

Walked into the room where the baby was and saw the baby

and all sorts of different medical tubes, bandages.

Karas: What doctors found was that Matthew

had a massively swelling brain,

bleeding in the eyes and a fracture,

a 2 1/2-inch fracture on the back of his skull.

Leone: The initial reports were child abuse.

This was a case of shaken impact syndrome.

Although I had heard the terminology before,

I had never dealt with a case like this.

When a child is shaken, and particularly slammed,

a couple of things happen.

The brain goes back and forth.

The impact with the skull against the hard surface

causes the swelling, but it also causes a shearing

of those very delicate blood vessels

between the eyes and the brain.

Byrne: I asked to show me

how hard a child would have to be shaken

to see the injuries apparent with Matthew,

and I just remember his face going back and forth

in his hands, and I said, "I understand now."

Coakley: We know he was fine that morning.

He was fine later in the afternoon.

We have a fairly small window of time when, all of a sudden,

we have a child who's almost dead,

and we only have one person

who had custody and control of him during that time.

And that was Louise Woodward.

Louise Woodward came to the United States from England

in June of 1996.

She wanted to take a year off before going to college.

I knew that I wanted to take a year out

before I went on to university.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.

Before she came to the U.S., she was living in Elton,

which is Southeast Cheshire, a blue-collar community,

people just working and getting by,

and she came to the States

looking for a broader experience in the wider world,

and that is why she went through EF Au Pair.

Louise: I came with EF Au Pair.

It's a chance for girls from Europe

to come over to the United States

to experience the culture, the language,

to take care of children, live with an American family.

That was working with children, which is something I enjoyed.

The contractual agreement, if you will,

that allowed her to stay in the United States

was that she would watch children,

and in turn, she would be able to live the social life

of an American teenager.

Jenkins: By all accounts, Louise was a lovely young lady

who had experience as a babysitter

in her hometown in England.

The family was well respected.

She was known as a gentle young lady.

Louise didn't break any school rules.

She was always an extremely good pupil.

She was just a normal teenager,

fun-loving teenager,

but so honest.

Karas: She was working for a family in Manchester-by-the-Sea,

but things weren't working out.

She had a night life. She liked to go out at night.

She liked to go to the theater.

It was just a little too hard,

too far away for her to keep the curfew.

Louise: I was very isolated, didn't feel

I was getting to do everything that I had come here to do.

That's my thought, that maybe I would have to look

for a host family that was more suitable to my needs.

Karas: The Eappens were looking for somebody new in November.

They found Louise Woodward.

Deborah: We thought she looked like a great candidate.

She seemed to love children.

She had a lot of experience with a large family.

She seemed very lively.

Karas: They lived in Newton, a Boston suburb.

Much easier for Louise to get to the theater at night,

but things started breaking down in that household,

as well, within weeks.

We had issues that came up slowly over time with her,

but not pertaining to, so much,

the care of the children as her hours,

her being tardy in the morning, her keeping late hours at night.

Louise: There were, possibly, I think, two occasions

where I stayed out past midnight.

Sunil was furious with me.

I think I did normal things.

I would never have done anything to endanger the children.

Leone: As of late January,

she's on thin ice with the Eappens.

Debbie and Suni have both addressed her.

"You're not doing what we want you to do with our children.

If this doesn't get better, this is over."

It means she's going back to Elton,

and she doesn't want that to happen.

♪♪

Woman: And although she did not throw him,

she was rough with him in putting him on the floor

of the bathroom on top of some towels.

Whitfield-Sharp: I heard it on the radio

that a young British woman had been arrested and accused

of assaulting and battering an 8-month-old baby.

And that she was going to be arraigned

in a district court in Massachusetts.

Louise: Within 24 hours, I was arrested.

Within 48 hours, I was in jail.

Karas: Louise admitted to the police

that she had been in a rush

when she gave Matthew a bath that day.

Maybe I wasn't as gentle with him as I could have been

because I was trying to get the bath over with

fairly quickly because he was tired.

Jenkins: The prosecutors contended that Louise Woodward

was discontented with her job and that, in the frustration

of dealing with a fussy, cranky 8-month-old baby boy,

she lost control and essentially slammed him

down onto the bathroom floor.

Whitfield-Sharp: People couldn't believe that a British nanny

would injure a child

because this was like Mary Poppins gone wrong.

This didn't make any sense.

She didn't look scary to us.

Right. We thought we were safe.

We had no clue whatsoever

that she would ever harm our children.

[ Monitor beeping ]

Coakley: Matthew is being kept alive on oxygen,

but many of his functions,

because of this severe, severe brain damage,

are not working on their own,

and it became clear, I think, to the family,

Matthew was not going to recover,

could not survive on his own,

and they made a decision at that stage

to take Matthew off the ventilator.

♪♪

Deborah: And we lit my grandmother's candle,

and we were holding Matthew.

We prayed.

And Matty died.

The Eappens' lives were devastated.

After he died, the prosecution upped the ante

and charged her with first-degree murder.

I think she was very frightened, very, very frightened.

I'm innocent, and I didn't do anything wrong,

and there was the whole thing that somebody has to pay,

and that somebody had to be me.

Scheck: It wasn't just believing her.

We had science showing that everything they said

just didn't happen.

Sunil: This was no accident,

and there's only one person

that could have possibly been responsible.

Louise Woodward was not the face of a murderer.

Louise Woodward is being held

in the Massachusetts correctional Institute

at Framingham, 20 miles outside of Boston.

It is the state's

only maximum-security prison for women.

Prosecutors charge that Woodward shook the child

and struck his head against something.

Leone: She hit him against something hard to cause

a 2 1/2-inch crack to the back of his skull.

It happened that day, and it happened on one person's watch,

and that was Louise Woodward.

The client told us that she absolutely didn't do this.

Louise: I'm innocent.

I didn't do anything wrong.

If anything, I tried to help him as best I could.

I didn't do anything to hurt him or harm him in any way.

It wasn't just believing her.

We had science showing that everything they said

just didn't happen.

We could prove that it's consistent with accident.

The reputation of Barry Scheck preceded him

because of his prominent role

in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Velez-Mitchell: Barry Scheck was hated by many

after the O.J. case,

where they felt that the so-called dream team

really conspired to get a guilty man

off of a vicious and violent double murder.

So many people may have felt that Barry Scheck would be able

to get this young woman off the charges.

Scheck: The defense was being paid for by the au pair company

and, you know, they told us right away

that we would be able to go out and get all the best experts

and really dive into this.

The experts the defense hired

were not examining Matthew himself,

but they were looking at the records.

They were looking at x-rays, medical reports,

police reports, everything that was available

so they could make their own evaluation

that this was a pre-existing injury.

In other words, it didn't happen on February 4, 1997.

It happened weeks earlier.

One of the key points that the defense made was that

there was a lack of swelling on little Matty Eappen's head.

That would have indicated that, perhaps,

his injuries were caused earlier.

Leestma: There was no, as I recall,

any injury to the scalp.

Now, if somebody is going to be -- have their head bashed,

you would expect a goose egg, and there was none.

Scheck: Dr. Leestma,

in his examination of the brain, found osteoblasts,

a healing cell at the site of the skull fracture.

That doesn't happen unless it's old.

The defense also says there was evidence of healing,

not just of the skull fracture, which indicates

it would have been much earlier than February 4th,

but also of the subdural hematoma,

the injury on the brain.

It had a somewhat layered appearance,

like it had been there for a while

and wasn't causing too much trouble.

And that meant that this little boy had had some problems

for quite some time.

And something small caused his brain to rebleed.

Relatively minor trauma can trigger a bleed

in a pre-existing subdural hematoma.

I've seen this phenomena, certainly, in junior high

and high school football players.

They'll -- they've died on the field

from what looks like a relatively minor hit.

Leestma: It could have been an innocent fall.

Kids are falling all the time.

There was a bouncy chair.

All right?

So that was one way that this could have happened,

that the child fell off the bouncy chair.

It could have been that kind of short fall

that caused the skull fracture, the formation of the subdural,

and then about 3 weeks later, it rebled.

And the results didn't show up until Matthew woke up that day,

as Louise Woodward described it.

Matthew basically slept the entire day,

and he didn't enjoy his bath like he usually did.

It was almost impossible to get him to eat anything.

I decided I'd try and feed him a bottle.

He didn't want it.

He was crying, pushing it away and screaming.

Signs and symptoms of an evolving brain injury.

That became kind of the soul of the case.

Coakley: That was their theory.

They didn't really have a lot

other than that this was an old injury.

It just didn't make any sense.

Anything could have ruptured that.

Anything could have started a rebleed.

I know, in my heart, that I did nothing wrong,

and the people I love, and the people who know me

know that I'm not capable of that.

Byrne: Once she's arrested, her hometown had formed

all these groups, you know, for justice for Louise.

Reporter: The case has turned this quiet

Northwest English village of about 3,000

into a magnet for media activity.

There are almost as many cameras here

as there are ribbons on the trees outside.

There is not even a shadow of a doubt

that Louise Woodward has been the victim

of some very terrible miscarriage of justice

among the people here in Elton.

The news broadcast came over, and it was quite a shock to me

because we think, "Is she ever going to get a fair trial?"

Karas: It's not surprising that Louise Woodward

had a lot of support in England, in her home country,

but in New England, she also had her supporters.

Kahn: Louise Woodward, some has kind of regarded

not so much as a murder suspect,

but as a -- almost a political prisoner,

if you will, a latter-day Angela Davis.

-Free Louise. -Free Louise!

-Free Louise! -Free Louise!

Everybody had an opinion,

and I received a lot of hate mail,

you know, from people that knew nothing about it,

suggesting that I was the villain in this case.

All of a sudden, every day, you come to work,

and there's hundreds of people out.

They close off the street and set up fences.

The whole world is watching!

All: The whole world is watching!

The whole world is watching!

The whole world is watching!

It helped a lot.

It really did, just to know that people realized

that this was wrong,

that even Bostonians could see that this was wrong.

They thought they had that case won.

I'm outside the Cambridge courthouse where,

a little more than an hour ago,

Louise Woodward took the witness stand in her own defense.

I was numb at that point.

I thought, "Did that just destroy our case?"

In the fall of 1997, the world was wondering

who and what caused the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen.

Was British nanny Louise Woodward guilty of murder

or was it a tragic accident on her watch?

Inside and outside the courtroom, emotions ran high.

People across the globe were divided

as to who was the victim and who was to blame.

♪♪

Reporter 2: Millions of viewers

were glued to their TVs this week

as Louise Woodward's murder trial unfolded.

Move it!

It was like being in the Super Bowl,

and your trial is your game.

Reporter 3: The crime --

the killing of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen.

The defendant -- the family's nanny,

a 19-year-old British au pair, Louise Woodward.

This is the only case of child abuse

that I will ever do because it was so dramatic.

I've never seen anything like this, cameras everywhere,

people everywhere.

The coverage was all over the map,

depending where on the map you were.

In England, they were very pro Louise Woodward.

And there were also groups which were anti-The Eappens.

They didn't like the fact that Deborah Eappen

was a working mother.

Criticism was aimed at the parents,

that they were derelict for leaving their child

in the care of an au pair.

How dare they?

People grumping and saying,

"You know, if you hadn't left your child,

this would have never happened.

She's only 19 years old, no experience.

Is that something that the parents

of a 2-year-old and an infant would think

is the best childcare situation for their child?

How do you react, Doctor, to this maybe unusual criticism

that, since you both go to work,

you're partially responsible to pay a price for this?

I think it's ludicrous.

I mean, that's like --

To me, it's like blaming the rape victim for being raped.

We should be able to have an expectation

that someone is not gonna kill your child.

Did Matthew Eappen suffer a skull fracture on February 4th,

or did it occur, as the defense contended,

some time before that?

The defense's position was that this skull fracture was not new.

It had happened maybe a few weeks earlier

and that there was evidence it was actually

starting to knit together.

Matthew Eappen did not suffer a violent impact to the head.

But, of course, the other side says,

"This child would not have been living normally for two weeks

with a fractured skull."

It is not possible that a gentle toss could cause these injuries.

It was a medical case.

It became, in some ways, a battle of the expert witnesses.

It was, in that sense, complicated for jurors.

They had to listen to some very difficult testimony

about Matthew's condition, what the doctors found,

what their expert opinions were on both sides.

Bilateral retinal hemorrhages.

The superimposed hypoxic ischemic --

We're pointing towards the Sylvian fissure.

Epidural hematoma.

-A subdural hematoma. -Subdural hematoma.

-Subdural. -Hematoma.

Do you think there were two subdural hematomas?

Jenkins: It was somewhat tedious

for the spectators in the courtroom,

including the news reporters.

So it must have been tedious for the jurors.

I felt that the jury got it

at every step of the prosecution's case.

I did feel that, when the defense medical piece

of the case was done,

that they may have injected some reasonable doubt into the case.

If you're a layperson, how are you supposed to discern

what's right and what isn't right?

One group of doctors in this case is dead wrong,

and I choose those words carefully.

They are dead wrong.

And we're asking a group of jurors

to look at that and decide which one it is.

Karas: After a few weeks

of conflicting and complex medical testimony,

both sides are ready to rest,

but then the defense had a decision to make.

The case was over, other than one issue,

and the judge brought a sidebar, and he said,

"Is the defendant going on the stand?"

At that point, Barry Scheck gave me a little elbow,

and we moved back from the others,

and Barry leaned over to me and said,

"Would you put her on the stand?"

I said, "Absolutely not, Barry." I said, "How about you?"

He said, "Not in a million years."

But Barry wasn't making that decision.

Scheck: There are certain decisions

that are up to the client in the final analysis,

and one of them is whether to take the witness stand or not.

She was clear -- "I didn't do this.

I don't want to do any time for this.

I don't want to be stigmatized for this."

That's why she insisted on testifying,

and that's why she wanted the best chance of being acquitted.

I'm outside the Cambridge courthouse where,

a little more than an hour ago,

Louise Woodward took the witness stand in her own defense.

It was very crowded in the courtroom.

People were waiting to see what she had to say.

Jenkins: Louise Woodward seemed so calm and innocent

on the witness stand.

She had a cherubic face that made it difficult

to see her as a monster who would kill a child.

Scheck: Miss Woodward, did you ever

shake Matthew Eappen violently?

No.

Did you ever hit Matthew?

No.

I didn't think there was gonna be

any Perry Mason moment in this case.

I didn't think she was going to break down and cry

or admit that she'd done something

which led to the death of Matty.

Louise: I tried to help him myself.

I tried to give CPR, and then I called 911.

Did you see Matthew Eappen's head become injured?

No.

Christian: I think people thought

that she was telling a believable story,

that she was telling it well,

and then, just before the end of her direct examination,

she was asked a question that, perhaps,

she may have misunderstood.

My co-counsel, Andrew Good, asked her a question,

and the question he asked her, with faltering voice,

because, for him, it was very emotional.

Good: And did you slam Matthew Eappen?

And she could hear his voice was breaking,

and Louise thought that he was joking,

and she kind of laughed and said no.

No.

I have no further questions.

I was numb at that point.

I thought, "Did that just destroy our case?"

We were all thunderstruck.

You're gonna win or you're gonna lose.

Man: Members of the jury,

is the defendant guilty or not guilty?

I was surprised.

A young British nanny accused of murder

takes the stand in her own defense.

Jenkins: Louise Woodward generally came off

as serious, calm and composed in her testimony.

I tried to help him myself.

I tried to give CPR.

At one point, when her own defense asked her

if she had shaken or hit Matthew,

she almost kind of giggled

and sort of ridiculed, even, the question.

Good: And did you slam Matthew Eappen?

No.

And I think that played very badly with the jury.

And now the jury is left with deciding

whether or not Louise Woodward was responsible.

Owen: I think when all is said and done,

jurors are gonna use their common sense

and they're gonna say, "I believe her."

Van Susteren: Both sides talked to the jury this morning

in their respective closing arguments.

Lawyer Barry Scheck concentrated on the medical evidence.

This is a reasonable doubt.

This is the end of the case.

This is the bone window.

This shows you that the prosecution is 100% wrong

about what happened in this case.

Every medical part of this case was disproven.

It didn't happen this way.

It couldn't have happened this way,

and it didn't happen during this time.

If there had been a violent slam on February 4th,

you'd see some soft tissue swelling on the bone window,

end of case.

We were trying the science case,

being that it, you know, made a lot of sense.

This bone window is impossible because it never happened

because it's an older injury.

Science had spoken definitively, I think,

and I think the prosecution would agree with that.

Scheck: All she ever tried to do on February 4th

is save this child's life.

Leone: When Barry had sat down after presenting

his part of the defense case, he had done his job.

He had probably injected some doubt into the case

by putting together what was a very good theory,

but you had to continue to bring this back

to why we were in that courtroom.

Matthew Eappen will never take his first step.

Matthew Eappen will never say his first word

because Matthew Eappen is dead.

It was all about Matty.

Let's go.

Let's get you justice, and let's have 12 people say

that we're right about what occurred.

Matty is having an off day.

Matty is cranky. He's fussy.

He's crying.

Well, an off day for Matty --

An off day for Matty means a bad day for Louise Woodward.

Ladies and gentlemen, this became a formula for disaster.

He spelled the case out from "A" to "Z"

as to why it was Louise Woodward that committed the crime.

Jenkins: He was pacing the floor.

He had set aside his notes and was speaking from the heart.

Matty Eappen is still crying. He's fussy.

He's cranky, and she can't stand it.

So she grabs Matty Eappen, and she shakes him.

"Stop crying."

So she shakes him a little more, and Matty Eappen keeps crying.

He keeps fussing, and she keeps shaking,

but it ain't working, and Matty Eappen

is still crying and fussing until she now takes him,

and she slams his head down.

Matty Eappen is not crying anymore.

Coles: It was a piece of Oscar-winning theater.

He spellbound the jury.

Now, up until then,

Mr. Scheck hadn't really taken the prosecution seriously.

He was so convinced of his client's innocence.

Halfway through Mr. Leone's testimony,

Mr. Scheck started looking at him,

and his face began to change.

The verdict was one of the most dramatic verdicts of our time.

Byrne: There was hush in the courtroom.

Bailiff: All rise!

As the jury came out, they seemed quiet, serious.

Man: Members of the jury,

is the defendant guilty or not guilty?

Foreperson: Guilty.

Guilty of what?

Guilty of murder in the second degree.

There was a pause, and then a wail.

[ Louise wails ]

There was an outburst, an outcry, from Louise Woodward.

[ Louise crying loudly ]

It was actually a horrible moment when the verdict came in.

We were all thunderstruck.

He says to me, to this day, "Yeah, I thought we had it won

after we finished the medical case.

But after you sat down after your closing,

I really felt worried."

Why did they do that to me? Why did they do it?

Shh.

I didn't do anything.

All of her supporters were equally outraged.

They were watching in England, on television.

Man: Ladies and gentlemen...

Foreperson: Guilty.

-Ah! -No!

They just erupted in rage when she was convicted.

Man: Guilty of second-degree murder,

so say you, Madam Foreperson?

Leith: When it come she had been found guilty,

it was just sort of devastation,

that we couldn't believe it, just heartbroken.

It's quite unreal, really.

I was sick to my stomach.

I just -- I couldn't believe it.

Leestma: Shock.

I knew we put forth what we should, said what we had to say,

and it apparently fell on deaf ears.

Too bad, way too bad.

I'm really happy with the verdict.

Louise is guilty.

Louise killed Matthew.

They thought they had it beat, and they didn't.

Scheck: It was horrible.

Take a look at the press conference afterwards.

I...

It was hard to keep it together, but I felt good that I did.

We are stunned by this verdict,

mortified by this verdict, to be frank,

but this fight is not over.

Louise Woodward is not guilty.

The judge knew she was innocent.

She was innocent.

You could see it in that man's eyes.

He was gobsmacked.

It's the most bizarre series of events that I have ever seen.

♪♪

If you just joined us, about an hour and a half ago,

the result was in in the jury trial of Louise Woodward.

The jury came down guilty, and at that, she screamed.

Why did they do that to me?

Why did they do it?

People didn't expect her to get convicted.

I thought they would believe her.

Whitfield-Sharp: It's terrible.

All I could think of was Louise going back to that lockup

and facing this life sentence.

Coakley: There were hoards of media.

I recall that Jerry and I were out

talking to different cameras and folks

until about 2:00 in the morning.

The jury has spoken.

That we had the truth and common sense on our side.

We went back to talk to then D.A. Tom Reilly.

Tom brought us back in and said, "We have work to do

because I'm concerned about this verdict."

He was concerned that Judge Zobel might do something.

There were rumors that, after the verdict came in,

he went off the bench and threw up in the back.

That's because the great weight of the evidence

doesn't support a conviction.

One of the court officers came over, and he says,

"Judge Zobel has set aside verdicts before."

King: Judge Zobel has scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday.

Do you worry that, Tuesday, that judge may change things?

I'm not sure worried is the word,

but we'll wait and see.

It's a fairly unique rule in Massachusetts

that allows the judge to take a verdict away

and reduce it or just disagree with it.

For a judge to throw out a verdict is almost unheard of.

Hiller Zobel has done it at least twice.

And we're all thinking that, given this evidence,

he'll do it again.

At 10:00 this morning Eastern time,

Judge Hiller Zobel made his ruling

in the Louise Woodward case.

I think, when people went into that hearing that day,

they didn't really expect Judge Zobel to do what he did.

Guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

In a stunning reversal of fortune,

the 19-year-old Woodward sees her

second-degree murder conviction reduced to manslaughter.

Under authority granted under the laws of Massachusetts,

the judge stepped in

and threw out the conviction for second-Degree murder,

saying there was not enough evidence.

He said, "I find there's so much evidence

it reaches manslaughter,

and so that's the verdict that I issue," essentially.

Woodward will be resentenced.

The possibilities range from probation only

to a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Reporter 4: It'll be a major, major story

if Louise Woodward is allowed

to just walk free and go home.

Chen: This morning, she was serving a life sentence.

Tonight, though, British au pair Louise Woodward is free.

Zobel: Taking all of the circumstances into account,

I regard a proper sentence to be 279 days

in the house of corrections being served.

The judge says, "You can leave with time served.

Go on your merry way."

Boy, did that cause an uproar.

[ All cheering ]

[ Singing indistinctly ]

-We won! -Yeah!

Time served, go home.

That was the one resolution of this

that was best calculated to avoid a second trial.

It was all about science

and, let's face it, the judge knew that,

and that's why the judge did his very best to fix it.

Velez-Mitchell: I question the decision of the judge,

not so much to reduce the charge,

but to reduce the amount of time served.

I mean, my God, a child is not worth

more than 9 months behind bars?

She inflicted these injuries on an 8-month-old baby,

and she should be held accountable for them.

We had an innocent victim, who was an 8-month-old child,

that did not deserve the injuries that were inflicted

on that child.

That gets lost, I think.

I am sickened by what happened.

I'm saddened by what happened.

Leone: We did our job. We prepared.

We executed in a very disciplined way,

and we prevailed in that we found her responsible

for killing Matthew,

but to have it end like this was disappointing.

Van Susteren: The parents of baby Matthew Eappen

are said to be devastated

by the court's decision to free her.

We will never know

what great things Matthew might have accomplished.

We will never know the joy that Matthew

would have continued to bring to our family.

We will never know this

because Louise Woodward took Matthew away from us.

We'd like to know what happened to Matthew,

how long he suffered.

It's just -- you just want to know what happened

to your child.

Cossack: Louise Woodward's attorney

picked up his client's passport this morning

in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The passport opened the door for Woodward

to return home to Elton, England.

She was, in fact, deported, I believe.

I want her out of this country.

The case is over now, and so she should leave this country

and leave this country as soon as possible.

Karas: Even with a manslaughter conviction,

she is a convicted felon.

She is responsible for Matthew Eappen's death.

I feel great sorrow for the death of baby Matthew.

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

But, like I said time and time again,

I had nothing to do with his death.

Of course I'm upset that I've got a conviction,

but it's a conviction I don't deserve,

and I think that, in time --

The truth will come out, I think, in time.

I'll be cleared.

An estimated 1,300 cases of shaken baby syndrome,

now known as abusive head trauma, are reported every year.

It remains the leading cause of death

from child abuse in the United States.

In the time since the trial, some experts have questioned

the signs of diagnosing shaken baby syndrome.

Some claim that what had been thought of

as its hallmark symptoms can now be caused by something else,

not just violent shaking.

After her manslaughter conviction

for the death of Matthew Eappen,

Louise Woodward has gone home to England

and become a mother herself.

She gave birth to a daughter in 2014.

Doctors Deborah and Sunil Eappen

have started the Matthew Eappen Foundation

to bring awareness to shaken baby syndrome and child abuse.

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.