MONTGOMERY COUNTY prosecutors used modern medical science to prove Garrett Eldred Wilson killed his infant son for $150,000 in insurance money.

But the foundation of Wilson's July 29 conviction was built 27 years ago in a Baltimore courtroom by a brilliant but eccentric federal judge, a dogged lawyer and two young doctors.

The sensational murder trial of Martha Woods in 1972 established a legal precedent and launched the careers of national experts on sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The judge in the case allowed the prosecutor to introduce evidence showing a deadly pattern to Woods' behavior. Wilson was convicted on the strength of that legal precedent and the testimony of one of the experts in the Woods case.

The Woods case is so compelling -- and the characters in it so dynamic -- that the Maryland Bar Association's continuing education program is creating a workshop around it.

"It's really one of those cases that has it all," said Andrew Levy, who teaches the Woods case to students at the University of Maryland law school and is preparing the workshop.

Woods was the the wife of a sergeant stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Of the nine children she cared for over 20 years, seven died mysteriously and two others were hospitalized with breathing problems and related complications. Three of the dead children were her natural offspring, two were children she adopted, one was a niece, one was a nephew and two were children of friends.

She might have gotten away with it, hiding behind phony grief and protected by a polite society that didn't pry into the deaths of youngsters. But Dr. Douglas Kerr took notice when Woods brought her 2-year-old adopted daughter, Judy, to Johns Hopkins Hospital. The child suffered from breathing problems. One month earlier, Woods' adopted son, Paul, had died at Hopkins after doctors could not restore his breathing.

"He [Dr. Kerr] smelled a rat," said Charles Bernstein, then an assistant U.S. attorney and now in private practice in Baltimore. "What he did was heroic. Remember, at that time you didn't accuse a mother of murder."

The young doctor first talked Woods into having Judy admitted to Hopkins to ensure the little girl's safety and to stall for time. Then he gathered and reviewed the health records and death certificates of the other children. All had been healthy. All had been alone with Woods. All had died inexplicably.

"It didn't add up. So many children were harmed, we knew it couldn't be SIDS," said Bernstein, who prosecuted Martha Woods in the case of Paul's death.

The term SIDS was coined in 1969 to replace "crib death" as the catch-all for babies under 2 years old who stop breathing. It is not a medical diagnosis, and experts believe that the term will fade from use in the next 10 years as science more accurately pinpoints the cause of death.

Many experts believe that the SIDS explanation has been overused by doctors needing a tidy answer for grieving parents. And coroners did not investigate SIDS deaths, which spared families the emotional hardship of an autopsy of a child.

It also was a convenient alibi for killers like Martha Woods.

Woods was charged with first-degree murder in connection with Paul's death. The trial was held in federal court, because the crime was committed at the army base.

Judge Frank Kaufman had bench conferences with both lawyers that lasted hours. After Bernstein's opening statement, Kaufman sent jurors home without explanation, then informed them by registered mail that the trial would be delayed indefinitely. Two weeks later, he resumed the trial, announcing "something had come up."

Bernstein faced three obstacles -- getting a jury to believe a mother could kill her children; clearly explaining the medical aspects; and getting Kaufman's permission to tell the jury about the other deaths.

Kaufman went out on a legal limb and admitted into evidence the deaths of the other children.

"Once we got the judge to put in the numbers, SIDS wasn't going to fly," Bernstein said.

During the course of the six-month trial, Bernstein built his case with the help of Dr. Vincent DiMaio, an Army forensic pathologist.

DiMaio testified that Paul's death did not result from an accident or natural causes. In fact, he told Kaufman, in light of the deaths of the other children under Woods' care, he believed "beyond a reasonable doubt" that Paul was murdered.

The jury convicted Woods, setting the stage for an appeal by her lawyer, Robert Cahill Sr., now a Baltimore County Circuit judge. Woods received a life sentence.

Cahill argued that evidence of the other crimes was not admissible.

But a federal appeals court upheld Kaufman's rulings and Bernstein's tactic of using the other deaths to prove a pattern, or Woods' criminal "signature."

"Only when all of the evidence concerning the nine other children and Paul is considered collectively is the conclusion impelled that the probability that some or all of the other deaths ... were accidental or attributable to natural causes was so remote, the truth must be that Paul and some or all of the other children died at the hands of the defendant," the court wrote.

"Absent the fortuitous presence of an eyewitness, infanticide or child abuse by suffocation would largely go unpunished," the opinion said.

"The facts won out," says Bernstein. "It wasn't just convincing a trial jury, it was convincing the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals."

Bernstein and DiMaio wrote about the case in a 1974 issue of Journal of Forensic Sciences. "A Case of Infanticide" is considered a watershed article that spurred prosecutors to review old SIDS cases and opened the eyes of medical examiners.

Now 70 years old, Woods remains in a federal prison in Texas and is eligible for parole in two years.

Martha Woods killed the children, experts said, to draw attention to herself.

Garrett Wilson killed his tiny son in Montgomery County for $150,000 in insurance money.

Like Woods, Wilson claimed SIDS was the killer.

But, using the language crafted by the appeals court in 1973, Montgomery County prosecutors were able to persuade Circuit Judge Ann Harrington that she should allow a jury to hear about the death six years earlier of Wilson's baby daughter, Brandi Jean.

Both babies were healthy. Both were alone with their father when they died. Large insurance policies were taken out on both children weeks before their deaths.

Harrington incorporated much of the appeals court's language in her ruling.

A jury took only two hours to convict Wilson, who will be sentenced Sept. 3.

"The beauty of that [Woods] case is that it spelled out why the earlier evidence was so compelling," said prosecutor David Boynton. "The language was so accurate, so well done that it just seemed to fit on all fours."

Boynton said the evidence made his case "much, much stronger," but he applauded the testimony of the witnesses, especially the experts.

The prosecution's star witness also had a tie to the Baltimore case.

Dr. Linda Norton earned her stripes as the forensic pathologist who exhumed Lee Harvey Oswald and as a pivotal figure in two New York infant murder cases.

As a young medical examiner in Dallas, Norton worked side by side with DiMaio, five years her senior and fresh from his Baltimore victory.

"The Woods case really stands out," Norton said last week after she testified. "Only now are people beginning to question these cases. I expect the number of prosecutions will increase as a result of courtroom victories."

Candus Thomson is a reporter in The Sun's Montgomery County Bureau.