Captivated by Alex’s picture on a Russian adoption Web site, Irma Pavlis and her husband began efforts to welcome into their family the 6-year-old boy she now is accused of killing.
“She fell in love with that picture because he looked just like her husband,” said Stuart Goldberg, Pavlis’ attorney.
On Nov. 5, more than a year after she and her husband, Dino, began the legal wrangling of adoption, the couple brought Alex and his 5-year-old sister to their Schaumburg apartment.
On Monday, six weeks after adopting the children from a private orphanage in rural Russia, the weeping 32-year-old adoptive mother appeared in Cook County Circuit Court and was ordered jailed in lieu of $3 million bail, accused of beating Alex to death.
Pavlis of the 1500 block of Mercury Drive is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the boy’s death.
Paramedics arrived at the apartment Thursday after Pavlis called 911 to report that Alex was not breathing. Firefighters told Schaumburg police they thought they saw signs of abuse, Lt. Dennis Carroll said. Police said Dino Pavlis was at work and is not suspected in the child’s death.
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Alex died Friday of blunt trauma to the head, the Cook County medical examiner’s office reported. Police said Irma Pavlis admitted to shaking the boy and striking him on the head.
After Monday’s hearing in the Rolling Meadows courthouse, Goldberg said his client had disciplined the boy by spanking him but that she did not believe she had caused his death. Goldberg theorized that the child might have died as the result of a fall or from a pre-existing medical condition, though he did not know of any.
The boy’s sister is in the custody of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
The case is the second in two years involving the death of an adopted Russian child in the region. Last December, Natalie Fabian Evans, 33, of Lowell, Ind., was charged with murder, battery and neglect of a dependent in the 2001 death of her 16-month-old son, Luke. The case is scheduled to go to trial in July.
By all accounts, the first six weeks of parenthood were tough for the Pavlises. Goldberg said the children were “willful.” Despite having spent a year studying Russian, Irma Pavlis was having a hard time communicating with the children, Goldberg said.
“She said Alex would make his body go limp, flail his arms and would fall to the ground,” Goldberg said.
Grant DeNormandie, Dino Pavlis’ boss at a South Side towel and linen supply company, said Dino Pavlis had said the children’s view of American culture was badly distorted by what they had seen on television in Russia. He said they were disappointed when they arrived.
“They thought it was going to be like Disney World,” DeNormandie said.
The couple met when Irma Pavlis, who was a journalist in her native Mexico City, came to Chicago in 1992 to study English. She returned to Mexico after a few months, and the couple exchanged love letters for about two years, Goldberg said.
The couple married in 1995, Goldberg said. They renewed their vows in 2000 in a church wedding in Mexico City, he said.
A devout Catholic, Irma Pavlis felt her marriage was missing children, Goldberg said. The couple decided to adopt after Irma had two miscarriages, he said.
They found the name of a Russian adoption agency in an Internet search, Goldberg said.
Friends of Dino Pavlis said the couple turned to adopting abroad because of the steep costs of adopting in the United States.
“I know he didn’t have a lot of money, and it was lot cheaper to go to Russia and adopt than try to do it here,” said Robert DeNormandie, a former co-worker of Dino Pavlis’.
Jill Manuel, a spokeswoman for the DCFS, said an independent private agency did a home study of the Pavlises’ home before the adoption was made final to make sure the home was safe.
“There’s nothing in that home study that would indicate that these children would not find a safe home there,” Manuel said.