For those of you who don’t watch CSI or Law & Order, a cold case is a crime that has gone unsolved for years, sometimes decades. It is considered one of the hardest types of crimes to solve, simply because the evidence is usually lost, forgotten or irrevocably damaged. Add to that the fact that people’s memories fail and fade with time, and you have a recipe for endless unsolved crimes.
But that doesn’t mean that people don’t still try. And one recent example was an old infant death case in Calhoun County that involved everything from interviewing everyone involved all over again, to exhuming the body. But while a cold case murder investigation sometimes pays off, this was not one of those times.
A Mothers Confession Reopens Murder Case
In 1961 an 8-month-old baby boy died, allegedly because he suffocated, choking on regurgitated baby food. Two of his later siblings, little girls born into the same family, both died before their first birthdays in 1969 and then in 1970. No charges were ever filed because, at the time, no crime was ever suspected.
Decades later, the mother of the baby boy, now 78-years-of-age, is living in a nursing home. But her mental state is apparently compromised, and so, as it turns out, confession is not enough. What did she confess to, you wonder? No less than the murder of her infant son, it appears.
The woman’s daughter recorded a conversation she had with her mother last year, during which her mother admitted to smothering the baby. The daughter contacted police afterwards and submitted the recording to detectives, who reopened the case.
The remains of the baby were exhumed and examined by forensic pathologist Dr. Joyce DeJong. But according to Daniel Buscher, chief assistant prosecutor in Calhoun County, the body was in such a state of decomposition that there was no way to determine, after all this time, whether or not the death was caused by homicide or natural causes.
According to Calhoun County sheriffâs detective Steve Hinkley, while they do have a confession from the mother, the inconclusive results of the autopsy and the mother’s tenuous mental state make this a difficult case to move forward on.
There was discussion, apparently, about exhuming the remains of the other two children who died at similar ages some time later. But in the end, it was decided that whatever they were likely to learn from the bodies, it wouldn’t be enough to warrant an arrest and a trial.
So once again, there will be no charges, although the case will remain open. But at this time, no one is expecting that it will be solved. And the confession? Well, one woman may well go to her grave as the only person who really knows what happened to those babies, all those many years ago.