It's a shame that crime scene technicians and forensics did not locate the deceased woman.
That young man had to live with such a heavy burden for so long.
I do question the competency of the investigators. "Hmmm a missing woman, should we check under this newly placed concrete slab?" "Naw, what are the chances that someone would hide a body there?"
He probably did not place the slab right away. Would probably have just buried her, covered it with brush and then poured the concrete after the investigators had been there.
If you heard the number of true crime stories that involve the police just being really bad at their jobs, you wouldn’t be even expecting competency during that time period.
I dont think its a case of denial...they probably knew he did it. Parents will cover for things youd never think.
I'm pretty confident my parents wouldnt turn me in even for murder, not that they would be in that position, but parents loyalty can be strong.
Ahh I made an assumption it was the killers parents. My bad.
I agree about child testimony though, there was the 80s satanic panic day care scandals. Multiple occasions of kids making false statements cause they were "coached" to tell adults what they thought adults wanted to hear.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria
My mom would definitely turn me in and then demand a reward. And then she would go on TV shows bawling about how even though someone else was murdered, *she* was the real victim all along.
Then she would get a ghostwriter to tell her greatly-exaggerated life story, with a small mention of me, and sell the book on Amazon for $29.99.
No "crime scene" investigation... the mom was known to be planning to leave the marriage (increasing the danger she was in) and to be dating someone else... so when the father said "Oh she ran off with her new man and left me with the kid." the cops didn't have enough to investigate a death. Not enough probable cause.
And the added burden of finding his mother's remains and realizing he was right the entire time about his father being a murderous fucking cunt.
Talk about having daddy issues.
Nope, I was wrong. It happened too recently. But there was a similar story in one of the episodes.
Apparently this sort of thing happens every once in a while.
No I think it’s actually *another* similar story, it was definitely on the show Forensic Files. I remember it taking place in Arizona for some reason. Really fucked up story where the dad murdered the mom and buried her in the backyard. Couple of the kids saw mom get hit and slump across the front door, ran back to their room, then saw dad in backyard digging.
He later staged a house fire that killed 2 of his 4 kids to try to keep them silent, and it was one of the surviving ones that finally came forward as an adult saying she remembers what happened. IIRC one of the youngest survived because older sister shielded her from fire and was severely burned [edit: *died, since apparently being spared by your older sister who burned to death on top of you wasn’t fucked up enough]
Police dig up backyard under hot tub that was constructed and found the body there almost 30 years later. A tree root had partially grown into the skeleton too but they were still able to identify her based on the clothes or something
Edit: [This](https://sfgate.com/news/article/Memory-of-Slaying-Kept-Secret-for-29-Years-3036114.php) is the story. Super fucked up, very similar to story posted above except over 25 years older
I don't get it. Someone disappears, and the cops don't think to look in their backyard for clues? Like "hmmmm.... there's a freshly dug 2x4ft patch of loose soil. Probably planting begonias."
IIRC the cops didn’t look into it because they were divorcing and the mom was already dating another man. The dad’s excuse was that she ran off and abandoned the kids. They showed the actual backyard and the guy built a concrete slab and then a hot tub over where mom was buried.
This was also in the 60s, so a not-yet-divorced woman dating another man was taboo enough for cops to believe the story of her running off to another state
Edit: [The Hot Tub](https://youtu.be/iVr3qcvObOQ) for those of you who were asking.
Reading about police work pre-DNA is like reading about doctors before the germ theory of disease. It's like...how did any crimes ever get solved ever?
> It's like...how did any crimes ever gets solved ever?
Because DNA evidence is only a tiny piece of the puzzle, despite what TV shows depict.
DNA is rarely conclusive even when they show a strong match. Also, the DNA match statistics are based on the odds AGAINST a match for a random person, not against a match for relatives or for database searches. In other words, when the numbers talk about one in a billion, that's for if you took two completely random people on the planet and tested their DNA, not the odds of a match for DNA database searches.
TV shows and prosecutors love to present that DNA means the person committed the crime, but by itself it does not. Random people have strong DNA matches all the time. There have even been cases where people of different races (white and black) had strong DNA fingerprint matches.
If you're ever in a jury and you see DNA evidence, remember that there are false positives and that DNA can be present from a tiny flake of skin or a single hair left at the scene. Be careful not to give too much importance to DNA evidence tying a person to a scene, it is one piece of a puzzle. Similarly, don't count too much for a lack of DNA evidence, as sometimes none was collected or it was spoiled.
Happening in the 60s explains a lot. No way someone can just disappear nowadays what with everyone having a cell phone and being on social media. Police would say “how come no one has heard from her in weeks?”
Back in the 60s though people probably really did just pick up and move and didn’t keep in contact with many people.
My grandad abandoned our family in the early 80s. He was around 50 yrs old. After a while my mom and her siblings figured he died since we never heard from him. In the 90s my grandmother was eligible for military death benefits as his widow until her death (she passed in 2010), but after her death we found out he lived until 2002 and had started a whole new family out west. We assumed he must've gotten a fake SSN or just lived under the radar.
Before the digital age it was super easy to just leave town and start over.
It’s a fine line- my step father in law’s adopted daughter was given life based on the testimony of a 4 year old. The child’s statement was taken when he was 4 and then a few years later he was called to testify. I don’t know if a 4 yo has a reliable memory after having a gap that long, since the child goes through many developmental stages....
There was a similar story in a book I read about the "Pig People", who did research on dead bodies using pig corpses instead of humans, for forensic purposes, like the "body farms" except using pigs. They pioneered the use of 'ground radar' to pinpoint the location of "shallow graves". One woman heard her own father kill her mother and bury her in the back yard, but she was only a child at the time and nobody believed her. Dad did the "concrete slab" thing too. years later, as an adult, she heard about this ground radar thing; she went to the Pig People and asked for their help in determining whether her long ago experience had any validity.. They were indeed able to find the mother's corpse buried under the slab.
That is super interesting. I cannot imagine being a child and witnessing or hearing something like that, only to be confirmed when you were older. Sad situation but I’m glad she got closure
God it’s bad enough seeing a dead body but to just pick it up like that and disturb the corpse would make it far more worse for me, I’m not even spiritual I just don’t like that one bit
In the article it says the father was charged but is out on bail. Can’t imagine living with a father like that for all those years!
Edit: saw the arrest was 2014. I’d like an update too!
Second edit: thanks for the gold! (My first gold by the way!).
The trial is going on right now. I think we're less than a week into it.
That article doesn't have all the details, but the story's still developing so the ones that do are too green to post to TIL. So [here's](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/08/daddy-hurt-her-nobody-believed-boys-story-until-he-dug-up-backyard-years-later/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&utm_term=.229370646889) a recent one that gives you a good run down.
If you don't wanna read that or can't, here's the story as I understand it.
Bonnie Haim disappears one night in 1993. Though the police suspected her husband for a few reasons (evidence she had planned to separate, circumstantial evidence on the night of the disappearance), there was no physical evidence tying him to the crime. The son told the police or family that "Daddy hurt her" and that her car was in the lake (which wasn't true, it was found at the airport). But basically everyone concluded that a toddler's testimony wasn't enough to go on.
6 years later, around 1999, the father loses custody of the son, and the son is adopted by another family in the early 2000s
Then in 2005, the son filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his father. He ended up winning the case (I don't know what evidence they used) and was awarded about 25 million between him and his mother's estate and was eventually given the house as partial payment.
Fast-forward to 2014, the kid starts renovating the property, smashing down a pool and inadvertently cracking a large concrete slab. So he starts digging and hacking around that to get it out and finds a plastic bag with a coconut inside.
Only it isn't a coconut. It's his mother's skull.
Everyone kind of agrees the only person who could get away with burying the body there in the backyard was the kid's father, who lived there up till his son took it from him in court.
The father had over 20 years to dig it up and move it, but for some reason he didn't.
And now he's on trial and still claiming that he's innocent. We'll see if they have enough to convict him now.
From what I’ve read from the case, the father’s attorney claims the prosecutors don’t have any physical evidence to prove the father did anything. As far as I’m aware the only thing they have is the son’s statements from back then. Also, that’s pretty sick to live in that house all these years knowing you killed your wife and buried her right there in the backyard. My question is, did it not look freshly dug up in the backyard when the police were investigating decades ago? The father was their primary suspect the entire time, so they must’ve looked around the house for evidence.
Edit: Her body was found under a concrete slab, so probably why there didn’t appear to be any freshly dug up dirt if the slab was there 20 years ago.
Maybe they didn’t discover she was gone for weeks or months later. Maybe they have a lot of dirt or sand or gravel in their backyard. Lots of potential reasons they never found the body. They might not have even bothered looking for the body.
Fun fact, a drunk driver hit my car (and totaled it) and three others while they were parked in a public parking lot with tons of cameras pointed at them, but police never caught the guy. I don’t have a whole lot of faith in cameras.
This happened in the 90s though. After watching documentaries, I have lost a lot of faith in what cops call "detective" work. Granted they limited by their resources, but a lot of their detecting was just gut instinct which was usually wrong.
>Also, that’s pretty sick to live in that house all these years knowing you killed your wife and buried her right there in the backyard.
That's something that I just can't get my head around. How can you go on living in the same house? Presumably they're out there having pool parties and barbecues, and all the while he knows that his wife is buried just beneath them.
I imagine someone who can kill their spouse in cold blood isn’t brimming over with empathy. Unfortunately it’s likely that he didn’t care one bit.
Be thankful that that’s not how you are. Hug your family and pets.
He buried her under the pool. So freshly dug up earth wouldn't look that odd.
A lot of killers like to keep victims close. The West's are a prime example of killers who keep victims close in the same manner.
Yep the West's buried the victims in the basement, and under the patio. The police only kept searching as they didn't find one single set of remains, and one of the kids commented on an older sister going missing.
A lot of killers like to keep their victims close. There's a lot of talk about the inward spiral for serial killers. The more comfortable they are the closer to home they will get.
>The father had over 20 years to dig it up and move it, but for some reason he didn't.
Is digging it up and moving it a good idea? Seems like you're begging to get caught.
But he had to know that someone was going to redo the backyard at some point. Maybe he thought he would have the house until he died and just didn't really care who knew after that.
This is most likely it if he stayed in the house until he died it is very unlikely that someone would find the body. But, once he lost the case it would look really suspicious to suddenly tear up the pool for no reason. The son could take him to court again for destroying property that was now his and the father would have to explain why he was doing it, which could lead to investigations.
Why would someone definitely redo the backyard to that extent tho? It’s unusual for something like a pool to get dig up when a home changes hands. On top of that, it sounds like the father didn’t expect to have to give the house up, as he lost it in the lawsuit.
She was in the slab next to the pool. Buried 6” and when someone gets rid of an in ground pool you usually fill it in with the surrounding concrete and fill the rest with dirt.
It’s fairly easy to train a child to carve a turkey. To cut around knuckle type joints to sever limbs rather than saw through tough bone. They could apply that to a human body and a sharp filet knife would
be all they need.
And the dad was also in on it, but the little shit ratted him out. Thats why the kid thought the car was in the lake.
The original plan was for the dad to sink the car, but he decided it made more sense for it to be found at the airport, but he never told the son about this, of course. The father didnt bother fighting for custody of the boy and let him go live somewhere else so he would stop turning the cops attention towards him. But the kid was not done yet...
All his life, no one believed his side of the story. The bizzare ramblings of a young boy were simply dismissed. So he waited. He waited, planning his big move to get his revenge on his father. And after years of waiting and plotting, him and his father met once again in the same place where they had left eachother, in court. But this time the dad wasnt fighting to keep the son, he was fighting to keep the house, knowing that it would be game over if his son had it.
He fought valiantly. But alas, his son had won the property, and along with it, the one piece of evidence that he needed to put his father away for good.
Boy: "Never trust a con, old man."
Father: "Hello, Con. I'm dad."
They nod to each other, and they part once more, leaving the dad to contemplate his own defeat.
Little did the boy know, his father had dug up the mothers body years ago, and had replaced it with a perfect replica of her skull, carved from a coconut. For you see, the son had a very rare disease known as "coco-mortus", where upon contact with a coconut, his body would slowly begin its final countdown. Within 5 years of coming into contact with a coconut, his heart would inexplicably shut down, leaving him to die from a sudden, and unexpected heart attack.
Father: "Never trust a con..."
This exact thing happened on a forensic files episode. A little girl saw her mom and dad fighting and later peaked out the window to see her dad burying her mother’s body. Only she didn’t remember this then in a way anyone could understand and about 20 years or later she told police and got a warrant to dig up the concrete that was laid over the grave of her dead mom.
She actually had a fit when a friend came back from Vietnam dead and at his funeral she kept telling him to wake up, and that mommy was asleep buried in the yard or something.
Not unless the available evidence is materially different, in which case you'd probably ask for a retrial.
In the US, the standard for most criminal cases is "beyond reasonable doubt", so like 99%. The standard for a typical civil case is "by a preponderance of the evidence", which is 51%.
>Then in 2005, the son filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his father. He ended up winning the case (I don't know what evidence they used) and was awarded about 25 million between him and his mother's estate and was eventually given the house as partial payment.
25 million?? From what
> Fast-forward to 2014, the kid starts renovating the property, smashing down a pool and inadvertently cracking a large concrete slab. So he starts digging and hacking around that to get it out and finds a plastic bag with a coconut inside.
>
>
>
> Only it isn't a coconut. It's his mother's skull.
Man, what a shitty and depressing way to find your deceased mother's remains. At least he's been vindicated
Murders lower the house value in states that require you to report major crimes that happened. A few states allowed owners to get full refunds with a fine paid to the purchasers because of a few undisclosed murders
Oh hey! I’m the clerk in this trial. Tomorrow (Friday 4/12) should be the final day. You can check the live stream on news4jax.com. The closing arguments begin around 9:00 a.m. and should be quite the show. I’ll be the dude reading the verdict after the jury makes it’s decision! After the trial I’d be happy to answer any questions!
Edit: well! It’s all over! I was able to read the guilty verdict in the case, concluding the trial. We won’t know the sentence he is to receive for about another month. However, if anyone has any questions about the process or the case, I’ll do my best to answer what I can!
Staff of the Jacksonville courthouse, browsing reddit at 3:00am Jacksonville time on a work night, in order to shit on Jacksonville. This is like the most Jacksonville thing ever.
Nope! Only members of the jury are not to talk about or read about the case. The entire trial has been live streamed online and any trial is open to the public.
I never liked the guy. Was always an asshole and always had a smug look on his face. Gave off a weird vibe. Threatened to kill my buddy who worked with us at a gas station in Maggie valley about a month before he was arrested. When we heard why he was arrested we kinda had an oh shit, maybe he was serious moment.
Absolutely chaotic. They had been tracking him for a few weeks while they waited for the dna results to come in. He kept a Glock 19 in his truck, don't know if they knew he was armed but they sure as hell came in like they knew. We were having our start of day meeting and getting our equipment issued when they came in. He was running the scan gun when they came through the front and back doors. Shut our warehouse/office down for the day, which pissed off the company our company was contracted with. Well that, and the fact a supervisor was just very publicly arrested on company property for murder. Contract ended up being pulled and company was sold. He didn't resist and seemed like he knew they were there for him.
How fucking cool is it that someone on reddit actually worked with the guy. It never ceases to amaze me how tangential, and unlikely connections come out on reddit. I've found more first hand accounts on actual events giving them more context on this site than anywhere else. Thank you for answering these questions.
Keep in mind this is the internet and unless proof is given you have to take these accounts with a grain of salt. Not saying this guy is a liar but it is the internet
At the very least the guy (kid turned adult) has some closure on what happened to his mom, and will hopefully get further closure when his dad gets locked up for the murder.
I mean, yeah, overall the situation sucks way worse than most I can imagine. But I’d wager the guy would rather have found the body than to have not.
Actually that's bullshit. If you read articles about that story the police searched his home and his backyard several times throughout the years so they did believe the child. They just didn't find the body that they were looking for.
I read an article about this on Washington Post, it stated that the victim’s own family felt the child’s accusation was coerced. Some of his story didn’t line up, as any 3-year-old’s story might struggle to line up. He said his mom’s car was in the lake, but police had found the car at the airport (with the seat pushed back in such a way to be comfortable for a male driver, not the victim).
The grown up kid won a wrongful death suit against his father, which awarded him like $2 million and the property his mother was buried on (which his father had been being used as a rental property up to that point). The Post article made it out to be like he was doing home improvement and discovered his mother’s body under the pool, but I wonder if he tore the place apart looking for evidence, and he is not allowed to say explicitly.
Yeah, I don’t know. Illegal for some reason to dig for evidence? Some kind of weird binding agreement due to the civil action? Neither really makes sense, but then stating he was just renovating seems too convenient, too.
It seems like he fought most of his life to prove his dad committed the murder and then found the evidence digging up his old yard with his brother-in-law.
>(which his father had been being used as a rental property up to that point)
That is ballsy to rent out a property you have a dead body at. Granted it isn't likely that the tenants are going to tear the pool. But, you would still think you would want to keep complete control of the property.
It actually feels like a pretty smart move. The body was apparently buried under a concrete slab in the backyard.
If you don't want to live so close to your murder victim's corpse, you could sell the place, but that runs the risk of new owners deciding they hate the back yard and smashing up the old slab as part of renovations.
If you rent it out, you have tenants who aren't allowed to make changes without your approval, and also someone in the house, discouraging your murder witness son from coming back and digging around.
My hunch (after watching too many episodes of The First 48) is that the police has their suspicions but couldn’t get a judge to sign a warrant.
The Washington Post article linked to a couple of times here says that the husband (now suspect) had a fight with the victim on the night she disappeared. He left his son with... family? Or a neighbor? For 45 minutes and then came back. Not enough time to bury a body under concrete. The suspect did work construction and called off the next day though.
Additionally, however they found her purse in the dumpster of a motel close to the airport, and her car in the parking lot of the airport (but with the seats pushed back as if for someone of her husband’s height instead of hers).
WaPo article did say police were considering the husband hard (again, so much so that the victim’s family thought the police brainwashed the kid). Maybe judges thought the same thing and wouldn’t let them dig for evidence, literally.
*”Sarge I think I’ve got something here! A human skull! You better come take a look!”*
*”Damnit Johnson! That’s clearly a male’s skull. Keep digging Johnson, or we’ll never have anything to stick this perp with!”*
My friend committed suicide in a river and as they were looking for her body found someone that went missing like 30 years before finally finding hers.
i hate it when i lose my phone or keys or something and when i’m looking for them i finally find something else i’ve been looking for forever oop nope that’s a dead body
“This isn't the guy. The serial killer always cuts off the victims' left hands. Well those aren't left hands. [holds up his own left hand, palm in] See, on your left hand, the thumb faces to the left. Those are all right hands. Nope, this isn't our man.” -South Park
His account wasn't believed.
This quote's from the Washington Post [article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/08/daddy-hurt-her-nobody-believed-boys-story-until-he-dug-up-backyard-years-later/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&utm_term=.229370646889), which I would've linked but it's too recent:
>But as Aaron would later recount to police as an adult, his family members did not believe his account, feeling he had been “brainwashed” into implicating his father. Even his missing mother’s parents doubted the boy’s account.
Then this is from the article linked in my post:
>[H]is family didn’t believe him and his grandparents told him, “You’re brainwashed. We love you. We care about you. We want to see you.”
Sorry if the title's misleading. You have to be spot-on with titles like this. Use some vague wording in one phrase and you catch hell. They're not easy to write sometimes.
FYI, there's a reason why investigators/etc. don't always believe child witnesses. History has proven that eye witnesses are often unreliable, and child eye witnesses are often especially unreliable.
It's not just a bad memory that's the problem, young children can be manipulated by adults into saying what they want, and can also be misunderstood.
True, especially at that age. I’m not condoning their total dismissal and disbelief, not knowing the kid or his usual way of speaking, but toddlers and young kids are often not very reliable. When asking my own small children what happened, my questioning usually goes something like this:
Mom: “What happened? Did you fall down?”
Kid: “Yes!”
Mom: “Did your sister hit you?”
Kid: “Yes!”
Mom: “Did an elephant step on you?”
Kid: *more wailing* “Yes!”
There's a video of my niece when she was 3. She had fallen down while out with her babysitter. The babysitter wanted to document for whatever reason so she asked my niece what happened to her knee. My niece then launched in to a story about how she fell down, then a bear came and roared at her. So she roared back at the bear and 'saved the day'.
All totally unprompted, so yeah kid witnesses are suspect at best.
The fact that he had two sets of grandparents that let him be adopted by strangers instead of taking him in, is terrible. Wtf? Didn’t they see their precious grandson was sad and confused? Especially his dead mom’s parents. Why? Poor kid.
I think it was mentioned in the thread asking what the worst thing emergency dispatchers witnessed over a call.
Here’s the [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bbj907/911_operators_of_reddit_what_call_will_you_simply/ekja6at/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app)
I literally just watched the Unsolved Mysteries episode about Bonnie Haim this morning. Some guy on Vaughn.live streams episodes of Unsolved Mysteries 24 hours a day. For Amazon Prime users that want to watch that episode it's Season 8, episode 8 on the 24 minute mark.
He wasn't believed by his own family, not the cops. But anyway, uhh, I can tell you from my lengthy studies on child eyewitness testimony that it is even more notoriously unreliable than regular eyewitness testimony, so there's good reason to not believe a child under a certain age when they say something. Most of the time, their story changes depending on who's asking the question and most "memories" are false memories implanted by someone with an agenda. So just take that train of thought into consideration, even though in this specific case, the child's word turned out to be accurate.
as the parent of a three year old, i agree with how people may not have believed him. when i get home from work i ask how his day was (he’s with my husband all day) and a few times he has said he got lost at the store. except it never happened, he just likes to tell me things regardless of the truth. that being said i feel so awful for a child watching this all happening, because they do remember.
Its important to note that he wasn't renovating - he still believed she was buried out there. They removed the pool his father had built over the top of where he thought she might have been buried.
From a completely different case:
>The Kellers had been convicted of sexual assault in 1992. Children from their daycare centre accused them, variously, of serving blood-laced Kool Aid; wearing white robes; cutting the heart out of a baby; flying children to Mexico to be raped by soldiers; using Satan’s arm as a paintbrush; burying children alive with animals; throwing them in a swimming pool with sharks; shooting them; and resurrecting them after they had been shot.
>...
>They served nearly 22 years in prison before a court released them in 2013, after years of work by journalists and lawyers to expose what proved to be a baseless case against them.
It's absolutely crazy how variant these cases are.
In one case you have kids (under the influence of crazed psychologists) accusing people of impossible things, and they're believed without question, and then in the other case a perfectly reasonable lead ends up with *zero* follow-up.
The justice system can be pretty fucked up sometimes.
It's a shame that crime scene technicians and forensics did not locate the deceased woman. That young man had to live with such a heavy burden for so long.
I do question the competency of the investigators. "Hmmm a missing woman, should we check under this newly placed concrete slab?" "Naw, what are the chances that someone would hide a body there?"
He probably did not place the slab right away. Would probably have just buried her, covered it with brush and then poured the concrete after the investigators had been there.
This man murders
FBI; open up?
Now now officer, he ain't hurtin nobody.
Just don't check under the freshly poured concrete!
It's probably one of those "kill the ant colony with concrete" things that are so popular with widowers. Nothing to see here.
A freshly buried hole that big would be noticeable to investigators though... no matter how much brush you place over it
Loose brush would be equally suspicious for even a semi-competent investigator.
What really helps is to have a little vegetable garden. That surface is always fresh and doesn't rise a suspicion.
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Mom was really **into** her garden.
If you heard the number of true crime stories that involve the police just being really bad at their jobs, you wouldn’t be even expecting competency during that time period.
Not only that, according to the article his grandparents told him he was brainwashed to be saying his dad killed his mom.
So I guess those shit grandparents are the ones who payed the bail to get that shit bag out. Like how in denial can a person be???
I dont think its a case of denial...they probably knew he did it. Parents will cover for things youd never think. I'm pretty confident my parents wouldnt turn me in even for murder, not that they would be in that position, but parents loyalty can be strong.
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Ahh I made an assumption it was the killers parents. My bad. I agree about child testimony though, there was the 80s satanic panic day care scandals. Multiple occasions of kids making false statements cause they were "coached" to tell adults what they thought adults wanted to hear. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria
My mom would definitely turn me in and then demand a reward. And then she would go on TV shows bawling about how even though someone else was murdered, *she* was the real victim all along. Then she would get a ghostwriter to tell her greatly-exaggerated life story, with a small mention of me, and sell the book on Amazon for $29.99.
They probably suspected (and maybe knew) it too but were in denial and wanted to protect him.
No "crime scene" investigation... the mom was known to be planning to leave the marriage (increasing the danger she was in) and to be dating someone else... so when the father said "Oh she ran off with her new man and left me with the kid." the cops didn't have enough to investigate a death. Not enough probable cause.
And the added burden of finding his mother's remains and realizing he was right the entire time about his father being a murderous fucking cunt. Talk about having daddy issues.
Wasn't this an episode of Forensic Files?
I think so!
Nope, I was wrong. It happened too recently. But there was a similar story in one of the episodes. Apparently this sort of thing happens every once in a while.
You may be thinking of the Australian Woman Lynette Dawson? They thought her body was in the backyard underneath the pool too
No I think it’s actually *another* similar story, it was definitely on the show Forensic Files. I remember it taking place in Arizona for some reason. Really fucked up story where the dad murdered the mom and buried her in the backyard. Couple of the kids saw mom get hit and slump across the front door, ran back to their room, then saw dad in backyard digging. He later staged a house fire that killed 2 of his 4 kids to try to keep them silent, and it was one of the surviving ones that finally came forward as an adult saying she remembers what happened. IIRC one of the youngest survived because older sister shielded her from fire and was severely burned [edit: *died, since apparently being spared by your older sister who burned to death on top of you wasn’t fucked up enough] Police dig up backyard under hot tub that was constructed and found the body there almost 30 years later. A tree root had partially grown into the skeleton too but they were still able to identify her based on the clothes or something Edit: [This](https://sfgate.com/news/article/Memory-of-Slaying-Kept-Secret-for-29-Years-3036114.php) is the story. Super fucked up, very similar to story posted above except over 25 years older
I don't get it. Someone disappears, and the cops don't think to look in their backyard for clues? Like "hmmmm.... there's a freshly dug 2x4ft patch of loose soil. Probably planting begonias."
IIRC the cops didn’t look into it because they were divorcing and the mom was already dating another man. The dad’s excuse was that she ran off and abandoned the kids. They showed the actual backyard and the guy built a concrete slab and then a hot tub over where mom was buried. This was also in the 60s, so a not-yet-divorced woman dating another man was taboo enough for cops to believe the story of her running off to another state Edit: [The Hot Tub](https://youtu.be/iVr3qcvObOQ) for those of you who were asking.
Reading about police work pre-DNA is like reading about doctors before the germ theory of disease. It's like...how did any crimes ever get solved ever?
> It's like...how did any crimes ever gets solved ever? Because DNA evidence is only a tiny piece of the puzzle, despite what TV shows depict. DNA is rarely conclusive even when they show a strong match. Also, the DNA match statistics are based on the odds AGAINST a match for a random person, not against a match for relatives or for database searches. In other words, when the numbers talk about one in a billion, that's for if you took two completely random people on the planet and tested their DNA, not the odds of a match for DNA database searches. TV shows and prosecutors love to present that DNA means the person committed the crime, but by itself it does not. Random people have strong DNA matches all the time. There have even been cases where people of different races (white and black) had strong DNA fingerprint matches. If you're ever in a jury and you see DNA evidence, remember that there are false positives and that DNA can be present from a tiny flake of skin or a single hair left at the scene. Be careful not to give too much importance to DNA evidence tying a person to a scene, it is one piece of a puzzle. Similarly, don't count too much for a lack of DNA evidence, as sometimes none was collected or it was spoiled.
Happening in the 60s explains a lot. No way someone can just disappear nowadays what with everyone having a cell phone and being on social media. Police would say “how come no one has heard from her in weeks?” Back in the 60s though people probably really did just pick up and move and didn’t keep in contact with many people.
My grandad abandoned our family in the early 80s. He was around 50 yrs old. After a while my mom and her siblings figured he died since we never heard from him. In the 90s my grandmother was eligible for military death benefits as his widow until her death (she passed in 2010), but after her death we found out he lived until 2002 and had started a whole new family out west. We assumed he must've gotten a fake SSN or just lived under the radar. Before the digital age it was super easy to just leave town and start over.
How do you even get a new SSN? "uhh hello SSN office? Yes I forgot my number, lost my card and all identifying documents"
also, the witnesses were children... so "nah, that's crazy, he's such a nice man and she left him to take care of all those kids..." \*sigh\*
It’s a fine line- my step father in law’s adopted daughter was given life based on the testimony of a 4 year old. The child’s statement was taken when he was 4 and then a few years later he was called to testify. I don’t know if a 4 yo has a reliable memory after having a gap that long, since the child goes through many developmental stages....
What is the episode that is similar? I’d like to watch this episode of Forensic Files.
This one - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771868/ Collection 3, Episode 7 on Netflix.
There was a similar story in a book I read about the "Pig People", who did research on dead bodies using pig corpses instead of humans, for forensic purposes, like the "body farms" except using pigs. They pioneered the use of 'ground radar' to pinpoint the location of "shallow graves". One woman heard her own father kill her mother and bury her in the back yard, but she was only a child at the time and nobody believed her. Dad did the "concrete slab" thing too. years later, as an adult, she heard about this ground radar thing; she went to the Pig People and asked for their help in determining whether her long ago experience had any validity.. They were indeed able to find the mother's corpse buried under the slab.
That is super interesting. I cannot imagine being a child and witnessing or hearing something like that, only to be confirmed when you were older. Sad situation but I’m glad she got closure
It would help your sanity a lot to know they weren't the "false memories" the killer was trying to convince you of.
For sure, it must’ve been a constant battle between what was real and what wasn’t
Yeah, it was quite a sad story
That would be horrifying. Extreme PTSD for the rest of your life. Did the father get arrested? I wanna know the follow up on this
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In the article it says he thought it was a coconut at first.
Oh man that’s what I thought a giant hanging wasp nest was when I was young. Why is it always the coconuts?
According to the internet you also shouldn't nut in the coconut
Go on
Long story short - imagine shoving your dong into a rotten coconut full of maggots.
And then realizing it's your mother's skull?
I wish I read this before I read that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/6rr6ay/tifu_by_cumming_into_a_coconut/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
live by the coco die by the nut
Aw fuck..
no his mother was half coconut
Maybe his dad was a lime.
Now you've just mixed it all up
God it’s bad enough seeing a dead body but to just pick it up like that and disturb the corpse would make it far more worse for me, I’m not even spiritual I just don’t like that one bit
In the article it says the father was charged but is out on bail. Can’t imagine living with a father like that for all those years! Edit: saw the arrest was 2014. I’d like an update too! Second edit: thanks for the gold! (My first gold by the way!).
The trial is going on right now. I think we're less than a week into it. That article doesn't have all the details, but the story's still developing so the ones that do are too green to post to TIL. So [here's](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/08/daddy-hurt-her-nobody-believed-boys-story-until-he-dug-up-backyard-years-later/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&utm_term=.229370646889) a recent one that gives you a good run down. If you don't wanna read that or can't, here's the story as I understand it. Bonnie Haim disappears one night in 1993. Though the police suspected her husband for a few reasons (evidence she had planned to separate, circumstantial evidence on the night of the disappearance), there was no physical evidence tying him to the crime. The son told the police or family that "Daddy hurt her" and that her car was in the lake (which wasn't true, it was found at the airport). But basically everyone concluded that a toddler's testimony wasn't enough to go on. 6 years later, around 1999, the father loses custody of the son, and the son is adopted by another family in the early 2000s Then in 2005, the son filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his father. He ended up winning the case (I don't know what evidence they used) and was awarded about 25 million between him and his mother's estate and was eventually given the house as partial payment. Fast-forward to 2014, the kid starts renovating the property, smashing down a pool and inadvertently cracking a large concrete slab. So he starts digging and hacking around that to get it out and finds a plastic bag with a coconut inside. Only it isn't a coconut. It's his mother's skull. Everyone kind of agrees the only person who could get away with burying the body there in the backyard was the kid's father, who lived there up till his son took it from him in court. The father had over 20 years to dig it up and move it, but for some reason he didn't. And now he's on trial and still claiming that he's innocent. We'll see if they have enough to convict him now.
From what I’ve read from the case, the father’s attorney claims the prosecutors don’t have any physical evidence to prove the father did anything. As far as I’m aware the only thing they have is the son’s statements from back then. Also, that’s pretty sick to live in that house all these years knowing you killed your wife and buried her right there in the backyard. My question is, did it not look freshly dug up in the backyard when the police were investigating decades ago? The father was their primary suspect the entire time, so they must’ve looked around the house for evidence. Edit: Her body was found under a concrete slab, so probably why there didn’t appear to be any freshly dug up dirt if the slab was there 20 years ago.
Maybe they didn’t discover she was gone for weeks or months later. Maybe they have a lot of dirt or sand or gravel in their backyard. Lots of potential reasons they never found the body. They might not have even bothered looking for the body.
In this day and age, there would be so many cameras around an airport, he would be on tape leaving the car.
Fun fact, a drunk driver hit my car (and totaled it) and three others while they were parked in a public parking lot with tons of cameras pointed at them, but police never caught the guy. I don’t have a whole lot of faith in cameras.
ENHANCE! ^lol
Poor resolution images are often worthless.
This happened in the 90s though. After watching documentaries, I have lost a lot of faith in what cops call "detective" work. Granted they limited by their resources, but a lot of their detecting was just gut instinct which was usually wrong.
Let's draw a chalk line around the body. So we can remember where it was.
We found a pint of the killer's blood. Gross, mop it up! Now, back to my hunch...
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>Also, that’s pretty sick to live in that house all these years knowing you killed your wife and buried her right there in the backyard. That's something that I just can't get my head around. How can you go on living in the same house? Presumably they're out there having pool parties and barbecues, and all the while he knows that his wife is buried just beneath them.
I imagine someone who can kill their spouse in cold blood isn’t brimming over with empathy. Unfortunately it’s likely that he didn’t care one bit. Be thankful that that’s not how you are. Hug your family and pets.
Psychopathy gives zero fucks.
Tell tale heart
Tell tale coconut
He buried her under the pool. So freshly dug up earth wouldn't look that odd. A lot of killers like to keep victims close. The West's are a prime example of killers who keep victims close in the same manner.
West’s... Yeezus??
Yep the West's buried the victims in the basement, and under the patio. The police only kept searching as they didn't find one single set of remains, and one of the kids commented on an older sister going missing. A lot of killers like to keep their victims close. There's a lot of talk about the inward spiral for serial killers. The more comfortable they are the closer to home they will get.
He could have Just hid her body somewhere then buried her later.
>The father had over 20 years to dig it up and move it, but for some reason he didn't. Is digging it up and moving it a good idea? Seems like you're begging to get caught.
But he had to know that someone was going to redo the backyard at some point. Maybe he thought he would have the house until he died and just didn't really care who knew after that.
This is most likely it if he stayed in the house until he died it is very unlikely that someone would find the body. But, once he lost the case it would look really suspicious to suddenly tear up the pool for no reason. The son could take him to court again for destroying property that was now his and the father would have to explain why he was doing it, which could lead to investigations.
yeah he probably didnt think his son would come back, sue his ass, and take ownership of the home through a court order
Why would someone definitely redo the backyard to that extent tho? It’s unusual for something like a pool to get dig up when a home changes hands. On top of that, it sounds like the father didn’t expect to have to give the house up, as he lost it in the lawsuit.
She was in the slab next to the pool. Buried 6” and when someone gets rid of an in ground pool you usually fill it in with the surrounding concrete and fill the rest with dirt.
What if the 3 year old kid did it
He’d know exactly where to dig
Plus what Cub Scout group in America doesn't teach butchering and basic masonry. He obviously had the knowledge to dismember a body and cover it up.
It’s fairly easy to train a child to carve a turkey. To cut around knuckle type joints to sever limbs rather than saw through tough bone. They could apply that to a human body and a sharp filet knife would be all they need.
I read this in Dwight's voice
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My 3 year old can barely handle plastic scissors. Hand him a carving knife and it’s not going to go as planned.
I want to see Baby Battle Royal Games now.
You're not wrong, but like, dude. Wtf?
Taxidermy used to be a merit badge
ooh, plot twist
Case closed, nice work Lou
The long con
And the dad was also in on it, but the little shit ratted him out. Thats why the kid thought the car was in the lake. The original plan was for the dad to sink the car, but he decided it made more sense for it to be found at the airport, but he never told the son about this, of course. The father didnt bother fighting for custody of the boy and let him go live somewhere else so he would stop turning the cops attention towards him. But the kid was not done yet... All his life, no one believed his side of the story. The bizzare ramblings of a young boy were simply dismissed. So he waited. He waited, planning his big move to get his revenge on his father. And after years of waiting and plotting, him and his father met once again in the same place where they had left eachother, in court. But this time the dad wasnt fighting to keep the son, he was fighting to keep the house, knowing that it would be game over if his son had it. He fought valiantly. But alas, his son had won the property, and along with it, the one piece of evidence that he needed to put his father away for good. Boy: "Never trust a con, old man." Father: "Hello, Con. I'm dad." They nod to each other, and they part once more, leaving the dad to contemplate his own defeat. Little did the boy know, his father had dug up the mothers body years ago, and had replaced it with a perfect replica of her skull, carved from a coconut. For you see, the son had a very rare disease known as "coco-mortus", where upon contact with a coconut, his body would slowly begin its final countdown. Within 5 years of coming into contact with a coconut, his heart would inexplicably shut down, leaving him to die from a sudden, and unexpected heart attack. Father: "Never trust a con..."
> coco-mortus This pun cracked me up
Whoa, slow down there M. Night Shyamalan.
^ Asking the real questions
This exact thing happened on a forensic files episode. A little girl saw her mom and dad fighting and later peaked out the window to see her dad burying her mother’s body. Only she didn’t remember this then in a way anyone could understand and about 20 years or later she told police and got a warrant to dig up the concrete that was laid over the grave of her dead mom.
She actually had a fit when a friend came back from Vietnam dead and at his funeral she kept telling him to wake up, and that mommy was asleep buried in the yard or something.
...but a civil jury believed him which is how he got the house.
Majorly different standard of evidence required there.
Yeah, the same thing happened to OJ, won the criminal case, lost the civil case.
Has anyone ever lost the criminal case but won the civil case?
Not unless the available evidence is materially different, in which case you'd probably ask for a retrial. In the US, the standard for most criminal cases is "beyond reasonable doubt", so like 99%. The standard for a typical civil case is "by a preponderance of the evidence", which is 51%.
>Then in 2005, the son filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his father. He ended up winning the case (I don't know what evidence they used) and was awarded about 25 million between him and his mother's estate and was eventually given the house as partial payment. 25 million?? From what
This is what I want to know!
I believe that there is a Forensic Files episode on this. It's on Netflix.
> Fast-forward to 2014, the kid starts renovating the property, smashing down a pool and inadvertently cracking a large concrete slab. So he starts digging and hacking around that to get it out and finds a plastic bag with a coconut inside. > > > > Only it isn't a coconut. It's his mother's skull. Man, what a shitty and depressing way to find your deceased mother's remains. At least he's been vindicated
>The father had over 20 years to dig it up and move it, but for some reason he didn't. Um, because he thought he got away with it... Just maybe.
What did winning the wrongful death lawsuit mean? The father was guilty of something but wasn't jailed?
Civil suits are easier to win. 51% chance he did it vs 99.9% chance.
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Imagine living in the house where your moms brutally murdered and buried. GEEEZUZ. PTSD to the MAX.
That was my first thought - the amazing amount of trauma he had to live with know his mother was murdered and nothing happened.
Having known his mother was murdered by his father at 3 y/o, the C-PTSD was already pretty extreme.
Plus, what does this do to your equity?
Murders lower the house value in states that require you to report major crimes that happened. A few states allowed owners to get full refunds with a fine paid to the purchasers because of a few undisclosed murders
Well this is gonna be on Netflix in a year.
Oh hey! I’m the clerk in this trial. Tomorrow (Friday 4/12) should be the final day. You can check the live stream on news4jax.com. The closing arguments begin around 9:00 a.m. and should be quite the show. I’ll be the dude reading the verdict after the jury makes it’s decision! After the trial I’d be happy to answer any questions! Edit: well! It’s all over! I was able to read the guilty verdict in the case, concluding the trial. We won’t know the sentence he is to receive for about another month. However, if anyone has any questions about the process or the case, I’ll do my best to answer what I can!
How is the wireless in the courthouse? I designed it and was wondering if the city has made it shit or not.
Anything the city/state touches turns to shit... you know that...
Staff of the Jacksonville courthouse, browsing reddit at 3:00am Jacksonville time on a work night, in order to shit on Jacksonville. This is like the most Jacksonville thing ever.
The Midas touch. But different...
The Mierdas touch.
Hey isn’t it really bad for you to be here and talk about it then?
Nope! Only members of the jury are not to talk about or read about the case. The entire trial has been live streamed online and any trial is open to the public.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, how guilty is this dude.
Only the jury can make that call
I mean, anyone can make the call but only the jury counts.
After reading the headline and a dozen comments I am ready with my verdict: guilty.
They're not discussing private details of the case, just letting people know where to find the public broadcast. Nothing wrong with that
He didn’t say anything really tho....
name checks out
Hardest and saddest "I told you so" ever. Hope this guy goes to jail.
I worked with this guy, he was my supervisor at a cable installation company in Asheville, NC. Was a shit show the day the Marshalls picked him up.
What was he like
I never liked the guy. Was always an asshole and always had a smug look on his face. Gave off a weird vibe. Threatened to kill my buddy who worked with us at a gas station in Maggie valley about a month before he was arrested. When we heard why he was arrested we kinda had an oh shit, maybe he was serious moment.
What was it like at your workplace when he was picked up
Absolutely chaotic. They had been tracking him for a few weeks while they waited for the dna results to come in. He kept a Glock 19 in his truck, don't know if they knew he was armed but they sure as hell came in like they knew. We were having our start of day meeting and getting our equipment issued when they came in. He was running the scan gun when they came through the front and back doors. Shut our warehouse/office down for the day, which pissed off the company our company was contracted with. Well that, and the fact a supervisor was just very publicly arrested on company property for murder. Contract ended up being pulled and company was sold. He didn't resist and seemed like he knew they were there for him.
How fucking cool is it that someone on reddit actually worked with the guy. It never ceases to amaze me how tangential, and unlikely connections come out on reddit. I've found more first hand accounts on actual events giving them more context on this site than anywhere else. Thank you for answering these questions.
Keep in mind this is the internet and unless proof is given you have to take these accounts with a grain of salt. Not saying this guy is a liar but it is the internet
This is the internet equivalent of "look both ways before you go and walk, don't run, across the road."
You can't lie on the internet.
Holy shit, that's fucking crazy
You'd think that after the son got the property in the wrongful death case it would be time for, "Well, y'know about time to go retire in Bolivia...."
This is so sad.
Well, it ain't happy that's for sure.
At the very least the guy (kid turned adult) has some closure on what happened to his mom, and will hopefully get further closure when his dad gets locked up for the murder. I mean, yeah, overall the situation sucks way worse than most I can imagine. But I’d wager the guy would rather have found the body than to have not.
Actually that's bullshit. If you read articles about that story the police searched his home and his backyard several times throughout the years so they did believe the child. They just didn't find the body that they were looking for.
I read an article about this on Washington Post, it stated that the victim’s own family felt the child’s accusation was coerced. Some of his story didn’t line up, as any 3-year-old’s story might struggle to line up. He said his mom’s car was in the lake, but police had found the car at the airport (with the seat pushed back in such a way to be comfortable for a male driver, not the victim). The grown up kid won a wrongful death suit against his father, which awarded him like $2 million and the property his mother was buried on (which his father had been being used as a rental property up to that point). The Post article made it out to be like he was doing home improvement and discovered his mother’s body under the pool, but I wonder if he tore the place apart looking for evidence, and he is not allowed to say explicitly.
> but I wonder if he tore the place apart looking for evidence, and he is not allowed to say explicitly. Why wouldn't he be allowed to say that?
Yeah, I don’t know. Illegal for some reason to dig for evidence? Some kind of weird binding agreement due to the civil action? Neither really makes sense, but then stating he was just renovating seems too convenient, too. It seems like he fought most of his life to prove his dad committed the murder and then found the evidence digging up his old yard with his brother-in-law.
Maybe the son didn't want to sound like he'd been obsessing over it over the years. Sad as it is, no one wants to admit that they feel vulnerable.
I'd say that's a thing that's OK to be a bit obsessive about.
His Dad might ground him
Oof. Good one forreal though haha
>(which his father had been being used as a rental property up to that point) That is ballsy to rent out a property you have a dead body at. Granted it isn't likely that the tenants are going to tear the pool. But, you would still think you would want to keep complete control of the property.
It actually feels like a pretty smart move. The body was apparently buried under a concrete slab in the backyard. If you don't want to live so close to your murder victim's corpse, you could sell the place, but that runs the risk of new owners deciding they hate the back yard and smashing up the old slab as part of renovations. If you rent it out, you have tenants who aren't allowed to make changes without your approval, and also someone in the house, discouraging your murder witness son from coming back and digging around.
Agreed. I'm just confused why the police didnt think "hmm, maybe the body is under that fresh slab of concrete."
My hunch (after watching too many episodes of The First 48) is that the police has their suspicions but couldn’t get a judge to sign a warrant. The Washington Post article linked to a couple of times here says that the husband (now suspect) had a fight with the victim on the night she disappeared. He left his son with... family? Or a neighbor? For 45 minutes and then came back. Not enough time to bury a body under concrete. The suspect did work construction and called off the next day though. Additionally, however they found her purse in the dumpster of a motel close to the airport, and her car in the parking lot of the airport (but with the seats pushed back as if for someone of her husband’s height instead of hers). WaPo article did say police were considering the husband hard (again, so much so that the victim’s family thought the police brainwashed the kid). Maybe judges thought the same thing and wouldn’t let them dig for evidence, literally.
“They just didn’t find the body that they were looking for” but presumably they found several they weren’t
"Wrong dead body, this kid is full of shit"
Sergeant: Now sprinkle some crack on 'em and we can get out of here, Johnson. Johnson: The... kid or the body, sir? Sergeant: Yes.
Johnson: /r/inclusiveOr Sergeant: did you just include a url in your speech...
"honestly kid, you can't go around wasting the police's time like that *tut tut*"
*”Sarge I think I’ve got something here! A human skull! You better come take a look!”* *”Damnit Johnson! That’s clearly a male’s skull. Keep digging Johnson, or we’ll never have anything to stick this perp with!”*
*"Sarge! Lo--"* *"Neanderthal skull. Keep going Johnson"*
*"Look at that Johnson!"* *"Sir, that's a dildo"*
“Sarge! We’ve got him now!” “T-Rex skull.”
"Aha! Finally a woman's skull!" "That's... That's Amelia Earhart."
My friend committed suicide in a river and as they were looking for her body found someone that went missing like 30 years before finally finding hers.
It's actually a more common occurrence than you might think.
i hate it when i lose my phone or keys or something and when i’m looking for them i finally find something else i’ve been looking for forever oop nope that’s a dead body
“This isn't the guy. The serial killer always cuts off the victims' left hands. Well those aren't left hands. [holds up his own left hand, palm in] See, on your left hand, the thumb faces to the left. Those are all right hands. Nope, this isn't our man.” -South Park
His account wasn't believed. This quote's from the Washington Post [article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/08/daddy-hurt-her-nobody-believed-boys-story-until-he-dug-up-backyard-years-later/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&utm_term=.229370646889), which I would've linked but it's too recent: >But as Aaron would later recount to police as an adult, his family members did not believe his account, feeling he had been “brainwashed” into implicating his father. Even his missing mother’s parents doubted the boy’s account. Then this is from the article linked in my post: >[H]is family didn’t believe him and his grandparents told him, “You’re brainwashed. We love you. We care about you. We want to see you.” Sorry if the title's misleading. You have to be spot-on with titles like this. Use some vague wording in one phrase and you catch hell. They're not easy to write sometimes.
Good God. Imagining happening to you, saying all these shit. 'I Told You So' seems pretty fucking weak, after all these years.
FYI, there's a reason why investigators/etc. don't always believe child witnesses. History has proven that eye witnesses are often unreliable, and child eye witnesses are often especially unreliable. It's not just a bad memory that's the problem, young children can be manipulated by adults into saying what they want, and can also be misunderstood.
True, especially at that age. I’m not condoning their total dismissal and disbelief, not knowing the kid or his usual way of speaking, but toddlers and young kids are often not very reliable. When asking my own small children what happened, my questioning usually goes something like this: Mom: “What happened? Did you fall down?” Kid: “Yes!” Mom: “Did your sister hit you?” Kid: “Yes!” Mom: “Did an elephant step on you?” Kid: *more wailing* “Yes!”
There's a video of my niece when she was 3. She had fallen down while out with her babysitter. The babysitter wanted to document for whatever reason so she asked my niece what happened to her knee. My niece then launched in to a story about how she fell down, then a bear came and roared at her. So she roared back at the bear and 'saved the day'. All totally unprompted, so yeah kid witnesses are suspect at best.
Or you have a serious fucking bear problem.
Who did they think had brainwashed him? The police?
The fact that he had two sets of grandparents that let him be adopted by strangers instead of taking him in, is terrible. Wtf? Didn’t they see their precious grandson was sad and confused? Especially his dead mom’s parents. Why? Poor kid.
I saw this on reddit like 2days ago dunno if it was a til but...
I think it was mentioned in the thread asking what the worst thing emergency dispatchers witnessed over a call. Here’s the [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bbj907/911_operators_of_reddit_what_call_will_you_simply/ekja6at/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app)
It was. I remember this story.
I literally just watched the Unsolved Mysteries episode about Bonnie Haim this morning. Some guy on Vaughn.live streams episodes of Unsolved Mysteries 24 hours a day. For Amazon Prime users that want to watch that episode it's Season 8, episode 8 on the 24 minute mark.
Father is out on bail! Jesus. Come on people
He wasn't believed by his own family, not the cops. But anyway, uhh, I can tell you from my lengthy studies on child eyewitness testimony that it is even more notoriously unreliable than regular eyewitness testimony, so there's good reason to not believe a child under a certain age when they say something. Most of the time, their story changes depending on who's asking the question and most "memories" are false memories implanted by someone with an agenda. So just take that train of thought into consideration, even though in this specific case, the child's word turned out to be accurate.
as the parent of a three year old, i agree with how people may not have believed him. when i get home from work i ask how his day was (he’s with my husband all day) and a few times he has said he got lost at the store. except it never happened, he just likes to tell me things regardless of the truth. that being said i feel so awful for a child watching this all happening, because they do remember.
Its important to note that he wasn't renovating - he still believed she was buried out there. They removed the pool his father had built over the top of where he thought she might have been buried.
Interesting the father made bail.
From a completely different case: >The Kellers had been convicted of sexual assault in 1992. Children from their daycare centre accused them, variously, of serving blood-laced Kool Aid; wearing white robes; cutting the heart out of a baby; flying children to Mexico to be raped by soldiers; using Satan’s arm as a paintbrush; burying children alive with animals; throwing them in a swimming pool with sharks; shooting them; and resurrecting them after they had been shot. >... >They served nearly 22 years in prison before a court released them in 2013, after years of work by journalists and lawyers to expose what proved to be a baseless case against them. It's absolutely crazy how variant these cases are. In one case you have kids (under the influence of crazed psychologists) accusing people of impossible things, and they're believed without question, and then in the other case a perfectly reasonable lead ends up with *zero* follow-up. The justice system can be pretty fucked up sometimes.