Man agrees to guilty plea in toddler’s death

A man accused in the January death of his 15-month-old son agreed Monday to enter a modified guilty plea.

Under the Alford plea, Barry L. McAdoo admitted no wrongdoing but acknowledged that prosecutors have enough evidence for a conviction.

“I have a chance of getting a worse sentence if I don’t plead,” McAdoo, 30, told 1st District Judge Charles Hosack.

As part of the plea agreement, McAdoo pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder and agreed to a life sentence and the requirement that he serve 15 years before becoming eligible for parole.

The agreement stipulates that the court would be bound by the sentence agreement reached by prosecutors and McAdoo’s public defender.

Hosack said he’ll decide whether he’ll agree to that following a pre-sentence investigation. Hosack said that if he agrees, the guilty plea McAdoo entered Monday would be binding.

Sentencing is scheduled for 3 p.m. Dec. 15.

Police responded on Jan. 14 to the small travel trailer in Coeur d’Alene where McAdoo, his pregnant wife and the 15-month-old toddler, Brandon, were living. Angela Cowles called 911 when her son quit breathing.

When police arrived, Barry McAdoo was gone. Cowles told police she had slipped on some ice and fallen while she was carrying her son. Later, she changed her story and said McAdoo had injured the child two days earlier.

She told police McAdoo wouldn’t let her out of the trailer to call for help during that time.

Brandon McAdoo died at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane on Jan. 16. Doctors attributed his death to “shaken-baby syndrome.”

Eight days after Brandon died, police discovered Barry McAdoo was at the same hospital, where both of his legs were amputated because of frostbite. He told detectives that he had taken 50 sleeping pills and rat poison and had wandered in a hallucinogenic state for several days until the frostbite forced him to seek care.

According to previous court testimony, McAdoo told investigators that Brandon was crying and it made him angry, so he struck the boy, knocking his head into a wall of the family’s trailer.