Dad gets 27 years
in child’s death

A court martial rules that Navy
prosecutors didn't prove the baby's
death was intentional

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

A Pearl Harbor submariner was sentenced today to 27 years behind bars for accidentally suffocating his three-month-old daughter on Mother's Day 1998.

However, under a pretrial agreement Petty Officer Frank Osheski, an eight-year Navy veteran, will only have to serve 19 years in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

Cmdr. Robert Redcliff, who presided over Osheski's three-day court-martial, also ordered that Osheski be reduced five grades to seaman recruit, forfeit all pay and receive an dishonorable discharge.

Osheski, 26, pleaded guilty on Oct. 22 to accidentally holding his daughter, Amy, face down in the crib of his Iroquois Point naval housing on May 10, 1998.

But Navy prosecutors believed Osheski, a former crew member on the nuclear ballistic missile submarine USS Ohio, intentionally killed the infant because he didn't believe she was his daughter, and that he was striking out against his wife, Mary, for her abusive behavior toward him.

Navy prosecutors said Amy symbolized to Osheski his wife's infidelity since he didn't believe the infant was his daughter and that he was also burdened with the constant care of the child.

They said Osheski was forced by his wife to take care of the couple's two young children and at one point Mary Osheski locked their son in one of the rooms of their Ewa Beach three-bedroom home because she didn't want to take care of him.

The day Amy was killed the infant had a bleeding diaper rash which the mother refused to have treated because she was fearful that the baby would have been turned over to state Child Protective Service officials, Navy prosecutors said.

But Redcliff yesterday rejected the premeditated murder charges, saying Navy prosecutors failed to make their case.

Mary Osheski and the couple's son, Kyle, have moved to the state of Washington.

Osheski is currently a machinist assigned to the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility.