Suffer the Little Children

In episode 47, I started telling you the story of 4-year-old Averylee Hobbs, whose mother broke her skull as an infant, only to regain custody of Avery a few years later. In this episode, I’m going to tell you about the horrific and preventable end of this precious little girl’s short life, the prosecution of her mother, and the many ways Avery’s paternal grandmother is working to turn her tragic...

In Episode 12, I told you the story of 3-year-old Amari Boone, who was a ward of the state of Texas and under the care of foster parents when he died on Easter Sunday of 2020. Those foster parents, Deondrick Foley and Joseph Delancy II, were arrested last week and finally charged after 9 months. However, their charges of injury to a child come nowhere close to encompassing the brutal blunt force i...

Averylee Hobbs was not even a month old when she was first injured by her mother, who was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison for that incident. When she was released, Britney Mayes began fighting for custody of her daughter, who had lived with her paternal grandparents, Tammy and Jonathan Risen, since Britney was arrested. When Britney was given visitation with her daughter, Avery beg...

Last week, I told you the story of Jaheem Harris, who died on July 8, 2017 after his mother’s ex-boyfriend, who was allowed to babysit Jaheem and his siblings despite a no-contact order between the man and Jaheem’s mother, called 911 to report that Jaheem had possibly drowned in the bathtub. Jaheem’s extensive blunt force injuries led police to arrest the man, who was ultimately convicted and sent...

On July 8, 2017, a man in Waterloo, Iowa called 911 to report that a child in his care had drowned in the bathtub, but responding paramedics found four-year-old Jaheem Harris covered with vicious bruises in a dry bed, partially dressed in dry clothing, with no signs of water in the bathtub. The man, an ex-boyfriend of Jaheem’s mother and the father of Jaheem’s two younger sisters, admitted to poli...

In my last episode, I updated you on the first dozen or so cases I covered on the podcast. In this episode, I’ll provide updates on the next several cases I covered from episodes 13 to 24.  The cases discussed in this episode include those of Marion Jester-Montoya, Charlette Dawkins, Eduardo Posso, Arabella Parker, Ky’mani Moore, Frankie Gonzalez, Treyanna Summerville, Sereniti Sutley, Remi Cowan,...

In this episode, I’ll provide updates on some of the cases I covered on early episodes of the podcast, which is something I plan to do periodically going forward.  The cases discussed include those of AJ Freund, Dylan Groves, Zymere Perkins, Raylee Browning, Thomas Valva, Alex Hurley, Alissa Guernsey, Noah Tomlin, Logan Cline, and Amari Boone. Please note: there will be no episode next week, but I...

On March 14, 2019, first responders to 1536 West 300 South in Vernal, Utah encountered a scene that would forever haunt them. 24-year-old Mckenley Yadon-Stout told them her three-year-old stepdaughter, Arianna, had choked on something, but the injuries they witnessed on the unresponsive little red-haired girl told a very different story. Two months after Arianna’s death, Mckenley was arrested for...

Last week, I told you about the disappearance of 14-day-old Caliyah McNabb. Caliyah’s mother, Cortney Bell, made a frantic 911 call on the morning of Saturday, October 7, 2017 to report that her newborn daughter was missing from the family’s mobile home in Covington, Georgia. Erratic behavior on the part of the baby’s father, Christopher McNabb, led investigators to consider him their primary pers...

On October 7, 2017, Newton County Sheriff’s Officers responded to a mobile home park just south of Covington, Georgia, where a couple claimed their two-week-old daughter, Caliyah McNabb, had gone missing from their trailer within a time frame of less than an hour in broad daylight. The next day, Caliyah’s tiny body was found in the woods just a three-minute walk from the family’s trailer. Based on...

Last week, I started telling you the story of 10-year-old Zahra Baker, who kept her brilliant smile and sunshiney outlook despite surviving two bouts of cancer, the amputation of one leg, the loss of her hearing, and growing up without her mother. When her father brought a new woman into her life, Zahra was excited to have a stepmother, but as soon as the family moved from Australia to the stepmot...

By the time she was eight years old, Zahra Baker beat cancer not once but twice, losing a leg and most of her hearing in the process. Because her father had been single for most of Zahra’s life, she was thrilled when he finally married, but her excitement was short-lived. Almost immediately after Zahra and her dad moved from their native Australia to her stepmother’s home state of North Carolina,...

A few weeks back, in episode 33, I covered the tragic story of 10-year-old Nakota Kelly, who was allegedly murdered in July of this year by his father, Anthony Dibiah. Nakota was failed by both DCS and the family court system. His mom, Hayley Kelly, tried for years to get the unsupervised visits with his father to stop, reporting abuse multiple times, but to no avail. Now, thanks to their failure...

On November 4, 2014, police responded to a trailer home in West Caln Township, Pennsylvania, where they found 3-year-old Scotty McMillan dead on a deflated air mattress, covered with cuts, bruises, and puncture wounds. Scotty’s mother and her boyfriend confessed to spending the days leading up to Scotty’s murder torturing the little boy, beating him with various homemade weapons, tying him up with...

The World Health Organization or WHO calls childhood incest a “silent epidemic,” but a very important question is: why does it have to be silent? Why are we afraid to talk about a crime that happens every day to countless children? It could be happening in your neighbor’s house right now. It could be happening in a family member’s house. It could be happening in your own home without your knowledg...

Upon hearing from his mother that he was to spend the upcoming weekend in his father’s custody, ten-year-old Nakota Kelly told her, “My father is going to kill me.” Due to a very specific custody agreement, his mom had no choice but to take him on Friday to spend the weekend with his father, Anthony Dibiah. On Saturday evening, Anthony called a cousin in Texas, screaming, “I killed my son!” In Ant...

On May 26, 2020, police entered a Pennsylvania home and found the emaciated body of a 12-year-old boy in a bedroom with no light, only a bed for furniture, and every surface caked with feces. After a three-month investigation, Scott Schollenberger and Kimberly Maurer were arrested on murder charges, both accused of holding Scott’s son, Maxwell, in captivity for years with no light, no medical care...

When six-year-old Kerrigan Rutherford was found dead of unknown causes in her family’s rented home in Montgomery, Illinois on July 2, 2020, neighbors spoke up about the abuse and neglect they had witnessed taking place within the family. As it turned out, several people had made reports to police and to DCFS about the way Courtny and James Davidson treated Kerrigan and her younger sister. After an...

A little West Virginia boy endured the death of his father and was subsequently sent to live with his paternal grandmother, aunt, uncle, and three cousins. Nine months later, five-year-old Keaton Boggs was brought to the emergency room, suffering from a catastrophic head injury and obvious signs of abuse. After two days, Keaton died in the hospital, and his grandmother, aunt, and uncle were arrest...

On September 23, 2019, 36-year-old Lisa Snyder of Albany Township, Pennsylvania called 911 and reported her two children were unresponsive. When EMTs arrived, they found a scene straight out of a horror movie or any mother’s nightmare; in the basement of the modest brick home, 8-year-old Conner and 4-year-old Brinley were hanging by their necks from either end of a wire dog lead wrapped around a s...

Last week, I told you about the early life and brutal death of five-year-old Lauren Michele McConniel. When Lauren was admitted to Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis on March 3, 2010, she weighed a scant 28 pounds and had absolutely no fat reserves. She was covered in injuries, had a deadly level of salt in her blood, and had been displaying increasingly disturbing behavior while living in...

Five-year-old Lauren Michele McConniel was a happy, healthy, vibrant child until she was unjustly torn away from her loving mother in Tennessee. In Indiana, Lauren’s father and stepmother refused to allow her mother to see her, and, along with three members of her stepmother’s family, spent several months physically and sexually abusing Lauren until she ultimately starved to death in March of 2010...

Illinois mother Kara Witkowski, who joins me on today’s episode, spent months trying to protect her two young children from harm while in the care of their father. Thomas Biel had confessed to raping and abusing Kara and was under investigation for possessing child pornography. His father, Jerry Biel, was being investigated for allegedly molesting Kara’s 3-year-old daughter. Despite months of warn...

Exclusive interview with former prosecutor Jeff Wible! In episode 8 of this podcast, I covered the tragic story of Alissa Guernsey, a 16-month-old girl who died in Topeka, Indiana in 2009 while in the care of her foster mother, Christy Shaffer. Christy was only charged with a single count of neglect of a dependent resulting in injury, and after only 77 days in jail, the judge in the case modified...

In January of this year, two young children showed up on a neighbor’s doorstep, saying their mommy had been gone overnight and they didn’t know where she was. By the time police arrived, the mother had returned, but the closure of one mystery opened a much larger one: where was the woman’s third child? 26-year-old Sagal Hussein of Howard, Wisconsin insisted her 5-year-old son, Josias Marquez, who...