By Janice Morse
The Cincinnati Enquirer

MADISON TWP. - Geraldine Rice gave birth to her first child at 16. Then came a series of failed relationships and long-distance moves. A drug-trafficking charge landed Rice behind bars - and separated her from her children for four years.

But nothing has been tougher to endure than the turmoil swirling around Rice since Monday, when the 32-year-old mother of five went to police with a secretly recorded audiotape of her twin sons allegedly plotting to kill two siblings.

"I've been through hell and done a lot of things ... but even going to prison wasn't as hard to swallow as this is," Rice said Thursday, her green eyes welling with tears.

Following her nationally televised appearance on ABC's Good Morning America, Rice, sitting in a lawn chair outside her beige-toned trailer at the Catalina Manufactured Home Community, talked for more than an hour with an Enquirer reporter.

She recounted a troubled history, shared reasons she felt compelled to reveal the twins' alleged scheme and wondered aloud how to come to grips with the situation.

"They say God don't put no more on you than you can handle, but I can't handle this. Because I love my twins - oh, you can't put into words how much you can love them. They're unique. They're fascinating. They're truly God's gift to me," she said.

But Rice felt she had to report them to police because, "I want to protect all four of my boys ... as a mother, that's the choice I had to make."

Rice also disclosed new details about the evidence police have gathered against her 14-year-old twins. They are being held in the Butler County Juvenile Detention Center on delinquency counts of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder. A court appearance is set for Tuesday.

The 5-foot-tall woman said she desperately wanted to believe that the twins "really, really would not carry out - no way, shape or form - a plan or a plot like that."

But Rice said she can't forget their chilling words captured on tape. She also points out their alleged confessions to police, recent theft of her three Ginsu-type kitchen knives and previous statements that they would kill anyone who "messed with" them.

There's also the hole they started to cut through the wall of their trailer - an escape route they had planned to use after killing their brothers, ages 10 and 15, Rice said. That would have allowed them to avoid activating a security system she recently had installed to stop them from running away from home.

"It almost makes me believe that, yes, they would have done that," she said. "They even told (Butler County Sheriff's Detective Jason Rosser) that, after they got home from school Monday, they was going to go to sleep and then carry on out what they planned. And that almost makes me sick to my stomach."

Looking back over her life, Rice said, "I wish I would have done a lot of things differently."

But she still can't find what would make her twins want to kill their brothers. She said the boys would bicker over petty remarks - nothing serious. But Rice said the twins didn't like their older brother telling them what to do, and "I guess it doesn't take much" to make them angry.

The twins' father has been absent from their lives, Rice said; she doesn't even know where he is.

The first serious sign of trouble surfaced when the twins were 18 months old. Then living in Ocala, Fla., "they picked the paneling off the wall of the trailer and got out" as she slept after returning home from her third-shift convenience-store job, Rice said.

"I realized I had to start watching them more closely," she said.

A Cincinnati-area native, Rice moved back to Lower Price Hill. By the time the twins were 31/2 , doctors diagnosed them with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, she said.

Shortly thereafter, Rice said she was using "alcohol and weed" when she was busted for selling LSD.

"And from December 20th of 1995 until February 3rd of 1999, I didn't lay eyes on any of my kids," she said. "Nobody would bring them to see me."

The children stayed with relatives who were too busy, too angry or too ill to take the children for jail or prison visits. Rice says she maintained contact with frequent letters, telephone calls and gifts.

The twins spent some time in foster care - the root of some of their troubles, their maternal grandmother, Sally Whaley, said in a telephone interview from her South Fairmount home. Another boy in a foster home made sexual advances to the twins when they were only 5, the 49-year-old woman said; she thinks they learned other aberrant behavior and attitudes then, too.

Rice, who works as a caregiver for an elderly Warren County woman, has stayed away from drugs and has been devoted to her children, Whaley said. Her daughter "takes the kids everywhere," to parks, picnics and swimming, she said.

"They've had a really, really good life with her since she's been out," Whaley said. "I can't see why they would want to do this. ... Seeing my grandsons laying in a coffin, I just couldn't even imagine it."

The twins are affectionate, their grandmother added. "They always give me hugs and kisses and say, 'I love you Mammaw,'" Whaley said. One of the twins is a jokester; the other is more quiet and serious, she said.

The twins previously underwent counseling and took medication for their attention-deficit disorder, Whaley said, but she thinks they need more thorough diagnoses and treatment.

"We're worried about what is really going to happen to them - and we're worried about (their mother), because she is just about ready to fall off the edge," Whaley said. "I wish I could get inside of those kids' heads."

E-mail jmorse@enquirer.com