Their grandmother saw dirty, hungry little girls who should be taken from their mother. Even day care workers who knew Christina Lambert and Natalie Aulton only six weeks wanted to bend the rules in order to keep them safe.
But in the end, all the concerned observers in all the Maryland towns where Rene Elizabeth Aulton touched down during her bumpy adult life couldn't save Christina, 4, and Natalie, 2, from a fire their mother now is accused of setting on purpose.
The story is not one of smoking guns, but of a social services system that often cannot keep up with a family that flits from place to place and must find clear evidence of neglect before moving to sever parental rights. It is a story of relatives who, ironically, may have hurt a case for neglect by helping the children.
According to documents charging Ms. Aulton with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of arson, the 26-year-old woman confessed to city homicide detectives that she intentionally set the Nov. 15 fire in the closet of a second-floor bedroom at the family's Canton rowhouse.
To Sharon Aulton of Arnold, her granddaughters' tragic fate seems a horrid culmination of a long effort to find the girls a better life. To social services officials, it is a frustrating reminder of the limits put on them by law and circumstance.
The elder Ms. Aulton said in an interview she tried unsuccessfully several times to convince social workers Christina and Natalie were neglected and should go to foster care. She said the girls were often dirty, hungry and sick and lived in deplorable conditions for much of their short lives.
"I begged [Rene] and begged her and begged her to let the girls come live with me," Sharon Aulton said. "I wanted the children taken away from Rene all the time."
As recently as a month ago, she said, Baltimore City social workers told her there was not enough proof of neglect to take the children from their mother. When their grandmother protested that they were living in a homeless shelter, and that Christina was running a persistent fever, social workers told her being homeless was not itself a reason to take them and that their mother "was trying."
"There were a lot of people out there who would have loved to have those two beautiful girls," Sharon Aulton said. "How many chances do you have to give? If you follow her [Rene's] history . . . do you have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out?"
That history includes the intervention of Anne Arundel County social workers ultimately to transfer custody of Rene's first child, a boy born in 1988, to Sharon Aulton. There also were complaints that Rene was neglecting one or both of her girls to social services agencies in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore, Baltimore County and Baltimore City.
But Sharon Aulton said she never had reason to suspect the children were abused, and still has trouble believing her daughter confessed to deliberately killing them.
So do others who knew the children.
"There were obvious signs of neglect," said Pat Gallagher, who runs the day care center where the girls spent their last six weeks. "Never abuse."
Ms. Gallagher said Christina still wore diapers at 4 years old and that her sister, at 2, was just learning to walk. Both often had soiled diapers and clothing, and appeared much younger than they were.
Sue Fitzsimmons, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore City Department of Social Services, said she could not comment specifically on Rene Aulton's case. But she said that generally, building evidence of a pattern of neglect is difficult, especially when the family moves around frequently.
"I'm not saying that a given grandmother wouldn't have legitimate concerns," she said. "But translating those concerns into something we can take into court . . . We have to build a case."
Court records and interviews make clear that Rene Aulton and her children moved often, with addresses in Arnold, Edgewater, Easton and the Baltimore area.
Rene Aulton had other caseworkers monitoring her, but their agencies would not permit them to be interviewed.
Joanne Selinske, director of the Mayor's Office of Homeless Services, would verify only that Ms. Aulton was a client. Administrators at Booth House, a Salvation Army homeless shelter where Rene Aulton and her children had lived recently, declined to permit counselors or residents to be interviewed.
Sharon Aulton said her daughter would have had a caseworker monitoring her receipt of public assistance, but state officials refused even to confirm that Ms. Aulton was eligible for aid.
Sharon Aulton described her daughter as an emotionally disturbed, stubborn woman who resisted the attempts of family members and friends to help her and would listen only to her boyfriends.
Her mother said Rene had a learning disability and an IQ of 83 but did graduate from high school. She left home permanently at 20, drifting from man to man. Others who knew her say she worked only periodically, in such jobs as maid at a motor inn on the Eastern Shore.
According to the elder Ms. Aulton, Rene, her son and the child's father, Joseph Lambert, were living with Sharon Aulton in 1988.
One day, Sharon Aulton said she came home to find the couple trying to take the baby, sick and 3 months old, away with them. When she tried to stop them, the couple assaulted her, Ms. Aulton said. The baby was taken to foster care and ultimately awarded to her by a juvenile court judge, permanently by the time he was 2.
Records at the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services confirm that the agency intervened to place that child in foster care.
Once the two girls were born, social workers began getting periodic complaints about their upbringing.
Social services sources confirmed a 1991 complaint of neglect in Talbot County -- made when Christina was 1 or younger -- was ruled "unsubstantiated," meaning that social workers did not find enough evidence to show it was true.
Camille Wheeler, director of social services for Baltimore County, said her department investigated Rene Aulton for neglect in the fall of 1993. That complaint too was unsubstantiated, she said.
Sharon Aulton said that both she and neighbors of the family called Baltimore County to launch that investigation.
In that case, county social workers told Sharon Aulton she was in part to blame for their finding, she said.
"They said as long as I was rescuing and buying clothes for the kids, they weren't being neglected," Ms. Aulton said. "That I had to let the kids be cold and hungry before they could show they were neglected."
Ms. Wheeler disputed that. "I don't think we would be critical of a grandmother who is trying to help her granddaughter in that sort of way," she said. "That would be very, very unlike our staff."
Linda Heisner, director of the Office of Family and Children's Services of the state Department of Human Resources, said social workers investigating complaints have access to some information about past cases in other counties, but not all. The information can be particularly sketchy if past cases were inconclusive, she said.
Ms. Aulton and her daughters recently had been living at Booth House. Until they moved to the Fleet Street rowhouse where they died, both girls stayed during the day at The Ark, a day care center for homeless children run by Episcopal Social Ministries.
Staff members there said they also felt the girls were neglected -- so much so that they took the unusual step of trying to keep them in the day care program even after their mother found housing.
Ms. Gallagher said she was aware of the latest child protective services investigation of Ms. Aulton in October -- an investigation she thought was still open as the girls prepared to leave day care. City Department of Social Services officials say the investigation, which they will not describe more fully, ended Oct. 24.
Ms. Gallagher said she asked Ms. Aulton to have her social worker call about keeping the girls in day care even after they were no longer homeless. But no one called, and the girls did not come back to The Ark.
A week later, they were dead, leaving those who took care of them wondering what more could have been done.