Landry Found What In Slobodow's House? A New Perspective on an Old Crime

In the United States today, women are fighting fierce family-court battles in bitter custody cases against fathers who abuse and violate children. In 54% of these cases, custody is awarded to the abuser.

What is it that makes a woman of the stature of a Margery Lemb Landry wind up in prison with a 20-year sentence? Landry was 20-year employee of the United States government, a modest, soft-spoken woman, and highly intelligent, with impeccable credentials and a fantastic career. She had a ranking of FSO-1, the highest possible ranking for a foreign service officer, earning the top salary available to such an officer. While assigned to London, she was head of the visa office. Her next promotion would have been to ambassadorial rank. She had lived all over the world and had a prized collection of antiques from each place she had served. She had married John Landry, a man she met during her London posting. But in one hour of an early-morning attempt to protect a child, everything Landry had was gone. Margery Landry’s name may be familiar. On January 7, 2002, this woman of impeccable credentials broke into the home of one Arlen Slobodow—estranged husband of Elsa Newman--about 3:30 in the morning. She wore a homemade ski mask, tan pants, green shirt and tan shoes. Slobodow’s sons had disclosed ugly sexual abuse at Slobodow’s hands, and Landry was in search of child pornography which the boys had mentioned as part of their disclosures. On the basis of what the boys had told her, she was looking for both pornographic photos and pornographic videos he had taken of his children. Records show that Landry had tried every other means she could think of to solve the problem of their father’s sexual abuse as revealed by the children. She talked to senators…judges…organizations that boasted their sole purpose was to help children…friends in high places in government…attorneys…law officers. As if nobody believed her, she was repeatedly turned away. Meanwhile, disclosures from the boys continued.

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The closest I could come to a decent photo of Margery Landry--State Department ID tag--from the days before she lost everything.

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Elsa Newman, the mother of the boys, was also hard at work on their behalf. But she was determined to work through the process of American justice. As an attorney, she believed the legal system would protect her and her children. Landry, however, was beginning to understand that the justice sytem promised no help for her godsons. Thus, intent on helping these children, on the night of January 7, Landry entered Slobodow’s home. She carried samples of child pornography she intended to “plant,” in the event she could find no sign of the pornography the children had said their father created. In addition, she had with her a 9mm handgun, although only two bullets were loaded in the gun. Later Landry would say she had carried the gun “for protection,” in view of the fact that Slobodow had previously assaulted her. She had more ammunition in a box, but she left the box at the point of the break-in and began her search. During her exploration of the house, Landry failed to find the pornography she was looking for. Her movements and her train of thought then changed. As the children’s godmother, she had a deep love for both of the boys. A woman who had no children of her own, she often said that she loved them as if they were her own. The Landrys were so much a part of the family that the children called her “Aunt Margie” and her husband “Uncle John.” Landry decided to look in on the two boys in their rooms, to catch just a glimpse of them as they slept. She may have seen the older son asleep, but when she reached the younger boy’s room, the bed was empty and had not been slept in. Concerned at his absence, Landry began to look through other parts of the house for the child. And then disaster struck. The nearly inexpicable question of why Margery Landry acted as she did has only one answer. Nothing else will do. In the process of her search, Landry reached the master bedroom. There she found Slobodow, nude from the waist down—as the older boy would state later, “Dad’s butt was hangin’ out.”--in bed with his younger son, and the boy was completely nude. The month was January. If the two were sound asleep—as Slobodow would later claim—and if they were under the covers as January weather in Maryland would naturally demand, there is no way Landry could have known they were nude. Something more was happening. Margery Landry had apparently stumbled upon a scene of abuse in progress. Landry would later testify that her first thought was, “Oh, my God, it’s just what [the boys] said!” Nor did she leap unthinking into action. “How can I ever explain to Elsa that I saw this and did nothing?”she asked herself, and “How can I live with myself, knowing I have not done everything possible to help this child?” Thus Landry entered the room and “tried to pull the two apart,” as she would later testify. And just how could she have attempted to “pull the two apart” if there was nothing going on but sleeping. No…there had to be more than that. Slobodow then turned his attention from his son to the woman who was trying to stop this molestation in progress. Landry pulled him away from the boy, but Slobodow pushed her to the ground and began hitting her. When he saw that Landry had a gun, he tried to turn the gun on her. There were two bullets—the gun went off twice. The angle at which one bullet struck the wall showed that Landry was, in fact, on the floor when the gun fired. The other bullet struck Slobodow in the thigh. It is noteworthy in this regard that, although the bullet left both an entrance and an exit wound, and although the pajama bottoms were covered with blood, there were no corresponding holes in the garment. This information in itself verifies Landry's statement that she found the man half nude in bed with a boy who was completely nude. The rest of the story is short. The two continued to struggle. Eventually Landry fled and Slobodow managed to reach a phone and call 9-1-1, where he informed the operator that his estranged wife had sent someone to kill him—a thought which, even had it been true, would not have been something Slobodow could possibly have known. In the morning, Margery Landry was arrested at her home. Shortly thereafter, Elsa Newman, the mother of the two boys, was also arrested. She would be charged, among other things, with conspiracy in Landry’s crime, which prosecutors would call “attempted murder.” Today, both women are in prison, despite a growing number of people who believe that Elsa Newman is innocent, unjustly convicted and unjustly imprisoned. The children live in Tampa, Florida, in the custody of a father they say has tormented them with unspeakable sexual molestation, as well as other forms of abuse.