Tuesday, April 23, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
The hearing before Justice of the Peace Nancy Oesterle officially was to consider postponing the preliminary hearing for James and Lillian Meegan, charged with the slaying of their baby daughter five years ago.
But James Meegan used Monday's court session to complain that his telephone privileges at the county jail have been cut off, preventing him from talking with his children.
Deputy District Attorney John Lukens said the people on the receiving end of the calls didn't appreciate Meegan's messages.
Lukens declined to confirm that Lillian Meegan -- expected to testify against her husband at Thursday's preliminary hearing -- was one of those called.
The couple's teenage daughter might also be a witness in the case that charges her father with murder and her mother with child neglect in the bizarre disappearance of their daughter, Francine.
The teenager and another child are living with relatives, but three of the Meegans' children have been in the custody of county officials at Child Haven since Feb. 14, when the investigation into Francine's disappearance began.
Lillian Meegan, 35, has been fighting to regain custody of the children but a decision from the Family Court is not expected until after the preliminary hearing.
The case has been complicated because no body has been found. DNA tests are being conducted on a baby's body found several years ago in the Arizona desert, where it was burned.
Lillian's attorney, Paul Wommer, has said that prosecutors offered a deal a few weeks ago that would require the couple to admit responsibility and reveal the whereabouts of the baby's body.
Lukens declined at the time to comment on the offer but noted there was the potential for evidence to surface at any time in the case.
It now appears the plea bargain is focusing on Lillian Meegan and her ability to implicate her husband, whom police said confessed to a friend that he killed the baby.
Before his arrest, James Meegan steadfastly denied to reporters that there was any wrongdoing in the 1990 disappearance of 11-month-old Francine, but he never backed up that contention with information about the tot's whereabouts.
When a probe into the baby's disappearance began earlier this year, Lillian Meegan told authorities that Francine was snatched from her car outside the Gold Coast where she left her unattended while cashing a check.
She said she didn't report the purported abduction to avoid police scrutiny.
But witnesses said the baby was last seen being carried, wrapped in blankets, from the family's home by James Meegan, 39.
A police affidavit refers to a statement from one of Meegan's friends that the defendant confessed to shaking the girl to death by the neck when she wouldn't stop crying.
The baby's existence wasn't known to friends or neighbors since she had been with a Southern California couple from age 2 days to 9 months as adoption proceedings progressed. But the deal fell through after the couple balked at giving the Meegans more than the $30,000 they said they already paid.
The California couple returned the baby at James Meegan's insistence, police said.
James Meegan
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