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LINK TO "THE PREVENTIONIST" PODCAST: WEB SITE:
https://www.nytco.com/press/introducing-the-preventionist-a-new-podcast-from-serial-productions/
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Based on an examination of Quinn’s medical records, Esernio-Jenssen testified that the infant’s injuries occurred during the three hours her father was alone with her. She claimed that Wolfe had throttled Quinn, shaking her and hitting her head against a hard surface before putting her to sleep"….."When he learned of Wolfe’s case, Pinsley found a forensic pathologist through the Center for Integrity in Forensic Science willing to work pro bono and look into Quinn’s medical records and autopsy, as well as police files and other documents relevant to the case. Eventually, the DA’s office said it determined Esernio-Jenssen’s trial testimony went “far beyond” what was in a report on Quinn’s death. Other medical experts who investigated the baby’s death said the time the head injuries occurred could not be determined to the level of specificity that Esernio-Jenssen claimed."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Lawsuits filed by families in the Lehigh Valley against Esernio-Jenssen portray the doctor as a figure brimming with overconfidence. The deposition documents detail how she smiled when recounting how a medical examiner concluded a young boy’s cause of death was a stroke, after she’d said the boy died from shaken baby syndrome. When asked by the examining attorney why a district attorney used a medical expert other than the one she and her staff recommended, she said it had nothing to do with her competency or the fact that she and her employer were being sued at the time. “Yeah, I think they were biased,” Esernio-Jenssen said.
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PASSAQGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Esernio-Jenssen claimed that Quinn suffered a head injury at the hands of her father, which ultimately led to her death, and this injury had to have occurred in the roughly three-hour period that Wolfe was alone with the baby before bringing her to the hospital. However, the review of Quinn’s medical records and autopsy, as well as police files and other documents relevant to the case, by Dr. Jane Turner, the forensic pathologist brought in by Pinsley, concluded that Esernio-Jenssen’s interpretation and testimony were fundamentally incorrect. Turner states that Esernio-Jenssen’s assertion about being able to determine such a precise time period where a head injury occurred based on the onset of symptoms stands in opposition to medical and scientific consensus about traumatic brain injuries. Instead, Turner’s report states that a head injury may result in symptoms right away but also can be delayed by hours or days."
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STORY: "A Lehigh Valley doctor's testimony sent this man to prison, Questions about her credibility led to his release," by Reporter Leif Greiss, published by The Morning Call, on December 18 2025."
PHOTO CAPTION: "Matthew Wolfe speaks at his home Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025, in Allentown. In 2017, Wolfe was convicted of killing his infant daughter in part due to the testimony of Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, a child abuse pediatrician and former medical director of the John Van Brakle Child Advocacy Center. In September, after the Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office reviewed the case and raised questions about Esernio-Jenssen’s testimony, the jury verdict was withdrawn. Wolfe pleaded no contest to reduced charges and was eligible for release from prison."
GIST: "On the mantle above the fireplace in his dad’s home sits a photo of Matthew Wolfe lounging with his daughter, Quinn, and his dog.
“Once Quinn was born, it was awesome,” Wolfe said. “You know, there’s no other word. There’s nothing to really compare it to. It’s one of the best parts of your life.”
In the same living room in South Whitehall Township is a weighted teddy bear that is 6 pounds 7 ounces — the same weight that Quinn was when she was born. He bought it on the recommendation of the therapist in the wake of his daughter’s death.
“It’s a little like holding her again,” Wolfe said.
Quinn Wolfe died in 2013, several days after suddenly becoming ill. She was just 3 months old. In 2015, Wolfe was charged with her murder.
On Jan. 27, 2017, Wolfe was convicted of fatally shaking his daughter and went on to spend a decade in prison.
In a stunning reversal, however, the guilty verdict against him was withdrawn in September, and Wolfe instead pleaded no contest to third-degree murder and endangering the welfare of a child, a move that allowed him to be released from prison.
The key to his 2017 conviction was the testimony of Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, a child abuse pediatrician and former head of the now-shuttered John Van Brakle Child Advocacy Center at Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s Hospital. And that same testimony coming into question under reexamination years later led to Wolfe’s release.
“She was their lynch pin. Without her — if you read the court transcripts, it’s in there — they didn’t have the evidence. She’s the only one. She fingered me. She said, ‘This day, at this time, Matthew Wolfe was by himself.’ Nobody else,” Wolfe said.
Based on an examination of Quinn’s medical records, Esernio-Jenssen testified that the infant’s injuries occurred during the three hours her father was alone with her. She claimed that Wolfe had throttled Quinn, shaking her and hitting her head against a hard surface before putting her to sleep.
How the case changed
Wolfe maintained his innocence from the beginning, and appealed his conviction. But it was Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley who helped persuade the district attorney to take another look at the case.
The DA offered Wolfe a deal: withdraw his appeal, plead no contest and walk free. A no contest plea means that while he wasn’t admitting guilt, he also wasn’t challenging the charges either, and his felon status remains.
“I want to live. I want to be there for my family — what’s left. That’s why I took the deal. Yeah, I could still be sitting in [prison] and going through a new trial, having to try and hire another attorney with no money. You know, I don’t want to do that,” Wolfe said.
In a statement, the district attorney’s office said it completed a review of cases in which Esernio-Jenssen was involved and found no other cases like Wolfe’s.
“However, Ersenio-Jenssen was involved in numerous cases that did not involve the criminal system, and our office has not been involved in any review of those matters. Some of those cases include juvenile dependency cases, cases within the child protective system and child custody disputes,” the statement said.
Who is Debra Esernio-Jenssen?
Esernio-Jenssen worked nearly her entire career as a child abuse pediatrician, a doctor who specializes in spotting signs of abuse in children. In particular, she specialized in diagnosing shaken baby syndrome.
In a 2023 interview for the podcast Attention on Prevention, Esernio-Jenssen said she became a child abuse pediatrician in the 1980s because at the time, New York state, where she was practicing, required children’s hospitals to have one, and no one else in the pediatrics department she worked in wanted the role.
Among the high-profile cases she was involved in was that of Dr. Malcolm Scoon, a Queens anesthesiologist who was convicted of manslaughter in 1998 for the death of his baby daughter. She authored multiple papers and manuals on diagnosing child abuse.
Yet her diagnoses earned her criticism.
In a 2005 New York child custody case that occurred after Esernio-Jenssen diagnosed an infant with shaken baby syndrome, for instance, her testimony and medical opinion were thrown out by the court. In the case, Judge Edwina G. Richardson said to justify that diagnosis, it appeared Esernio-Jenssen “came to an initial conclusion, then worked very hard to justify and defend it.”
During a 2011 deposition, Esernio-Jenssen insisted she had never made a bad judgment call or made a misdiagnosis in her then roughly 30-year medical career.
When presented with examples of cases where judges and courts disagreed with her medical conclusions, including the 2005 case, she held firm: She said she wasn’t interested in whether a judge found her credible or not.
“Oh, I don’t disagree that the court found that,” she told the attorney examining her in the deposition. “I disagree with the fact that you are saying that I misdiagnosed someone. That is a court finding. That has nothing to do with my medical diagnosis.”
Lawsuits filed by families in the Lehigh Valley against Esernio-Jenssen portray the doctor as a figure brimming with overconfidence. The deposition documents detail how she smiled when recounting how a medical examiner concluded a young boy’s cause of death was a stroke, after she’d said the boy died from shaken baby syndrome. When asked by the examining attorney why a district attorney used a medical expert other than the one she and her staff recommended, she said it had nothing to do with her competency or the fact that she and her employer were being sued at the time.
“Yeah, I think they were biased,” Esernio-Jenssen said.
In 2010, Esernio-Jenssen became medical director of the University of Florida’s child protection team, where she would once again work alongside law enforcement.
In 2013, however, the state attorney for the 8th Judicial Circuit of Florida informed law enforcement agencies that it would no longer rely on interviews conducted by Esernio-Jenssen’s team because its “protocols do not provide my office with what is needed to comfortably proceed.”
The following year, two complaints were filed against Esernio-Jenssen, one of which led then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott to order an investigation. While that didn’t result in any marks on Esernio-Jenssen’s medical record, the University of Florida demoted and removed her from her position on the child protection team. Following this, she moved to the Lehigh Valley to work for Lehigh Valley Health Network.
At LVHN, just as she did before, Esernio-Jenssen worked with law enforcement and played a role in the conviction of adults accused of abusing children, including Wolfe in 2017 and Shaquila Byrd, who pleaded guilty in 2016 to child endangerment.
Esernio-Jenssen stepped down as head of the Van Brackle Center shortly after Pinsley’s report was released in August 2023. A few months later, she resigned. LVHN officials said at the time the move had been in the works before the report was published. Both Lehigh and Northampton counties have since ceased working with the center.
Attorneys representing LVHN and Esernio-Jenssen did not respond to requests for comment.
Esernio-Jenssen and the Quinn Wolfe case
Matthew Wolfe said Esernio-Jenssen’s testimony during his trial didn’t stand out in any particular way, though he recalls that from the beginning of her involvement in the case, she had details wrong. He said one example was her writing that Quinn was taken by ambulance to the hospital when Wolfe actually drove her there.
Esernio-Jenssen claimed that Quinn suffered a head injury at the hands of her father, which ultimately led to her death, and this injury had to have occurred in the roughly three-hour period that Wolfe was alone with the baby before bringing her to the hospital.
However, the review of Quinn’s medical records and autopsy, as well as police files and other documents relevant to the case, by Dr. Jane Turner, the forensic pathologist brought in by Pinsley, concluded that Esernio-Jenssen’s interpretation and testimony were fundamentally incorrect.
Turner states that Esernio-Jenssen’s assertion about being able to determine such a precise time period where a head injury occurred based on the onset of symptoms stands in opposition to medical and scientific consensus about traumatic brain injuries. Instead, Turner’s report states that a head injury may result in symptoms right away but also can be delayed by hours or days.
Quinn Wolfe, the report says, was born healthy, and check-up appointments three days and two weeks after her birth showed no signs of poor health or major concerns. When she was 6 weeks old, her parents brought her to the doctor because she had started crying more than normal when being fed. Quinn’s pediatrician noticed bruising on the infant’s cheeks and right side of her abdomen, though this was not considered suspicious or unusual at the time. She was diagnosed with an ear infection.
Several weeks later, on Oct. 28, 2013, and again Nov. 11, the parents brought Quinn to the pediatrician again, this time reporting excessive crying, irritability and arching her back. At both visits, pediatricians noticed no injuries but at the second one, the pediatrician said he was concerned Quinn hadn’t been gaining weight.
On Nov. 12, Wolfe said he fed Quinn and put her down without issue, but shortly after, she vomited and turned blue.
At the hospital, it was quickly determined that Quinn was septic, hypothermic and an X-ray showed she had several healing rib fractures. A CT scan taken about three hours after she arrived at the hospital showed Quinn had a healing fracture on the lower left side of her skull and had suffered multiple extensive strokes. Four hours later, another CT scan found a new skull fracture at the back right part of her skull.
Esernio-Jenssen said that this sudden change in state was due to Wolfe violently shaking the baby and hitting her head on a hard surface. Esernio-Jenssen also said that Wolfe grasped around Quinn’s chest, causing bridging veins in her head to tear and bleed.
But Turner said that narrative ignores the fact that Quinn suffered a massive stroke, and that it also contains inaccuracies; imaging studies and the autopsy found no recent acute injuries to her chest and ribs and there were no torn veins. Turner also said the skull fracture that Esernio-Jenssen attributed to Wolfe occurred at the hospital and not while she was under her father’s care, evidenced by that fracture only showing up on the second CT scan.
Wolfe said he never harmed his daughter and she was never injured, even by accident, in his presence.
At 7:31 p.m. on the same day she was hospitalized, Quinn was transferred to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. She died Nov. 18, 2013.
The autopsy confirmed several findings from before her death, such as a fracture at the top rear of her skull and hemorrhages in her scalp, eyes, optic nerve and the space between the two hemispheres of the brain. It also confirmed the healing fractures on the left lower side of her skull and her ribs and multiple strokes she’d suffered. Her cause of death was determined to be brain trauma and the manner was homicide.
Turner made a different conclusion about what caused Quinn’s death: vascular disease that resulted in strokes in both arteries leading to her brain. She adds there were no signs of brain injury that line up with Quinn’s head being violently shaken or smacked. However, she leaves open the possibility of a traumatic brain injury, while stating that there are times where the onset of symptoms and change in mental state can happen hours or days after injury, backing this up with medical literature, studies and a lecture by a child abuse pediatrician Dr. Carole Jenny, all reinforcing that if Quinn’s brain suffered trauma it is impossible to determine when it happened based on when she started to display symptoms.
What is next for Wolfe
At the time The Morning Call spoke to Wolfe, he had been out of prison for 11 days, and was at the beginning of trying to rebuild his life as a free man. And there are some, he said, who still believe in his guilt.
“I still maintain my innocence. Words are weapons. I deleted my social media when I was out on bail years ago. I don’t even have social media anymore, but I have friends that do and there are still people who want to harm me,” Wolfe said. “They’re probably hurt or their feelings are hurt and they just want me to hurt too, but you know, I’ve been hurting and dealing with it and they need to move on with their lives and I’m trying to do the same.”
Because he pleaded no contest, he will live the rest of his life with a record as a felon. However, he is receiving assistance from the Innocence Project in reentering society with things like finding employment and opening a bank account.
However, he’s still coming to terms with what life will be like for him now. He said he lost all but his most trusted friends, his reputation, and his financial security. He said following Quinn’s death and his imprisonment, his mother, Kathy Wolfe, became depressed, began abusing alcohol and died from a bacterial infection. He wasn’t able to attend her funeral but was called upon from prison to make final decisions for her during her hospitalization.
“Everything you can lose, I’ve lost,” Wolfe said.
He said the rest of his family, direct and extended, stood with him and always believed his innocence, but he is returning to a Lehigh Valley that is different from the one he lived in before his conviction. To many people, he is a felon and the man who killed his daughter.
“I don’t know if I could teach again. I don’t even know if I want to stay in this area,” Wolfe said, breaking into tears. “This is where I grew up. Maybe it’s better to leave. This is all I know and maybe it’s better to get a fresh start somewhere else, where the people don’t have the strong feelings or the connection. I mean, now anybody can just Google me and up pops all this horrible crap, then you’ve got to try and explain.
“It’s almost easier when you’re in prison because you’re all in the same playing field. You’re all in there and you’re condemned. It’s almost easier than out here, where words are weapons now and they cut deep.”
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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