Five decades after a baby died from falling out of a crib, police now say the child’s mother killed him.
Louisiana resident Alice Bunch Idlett, 75, was arrested last week and charged with second-degree murder for the death of her 16-month-old son on Jan. 20, 1970, according to KPLC.
The Sulphur Police Department launched an investigation into the 1970 death in 2022 at the request of the child’s family, according to the outlet.
Baby Earl D. Bunch III suffered from injuries that were reported to be from falling out of a crib, investigators said. The child’s father, Earl Bunch Jr., was overseas during the time of the baby’s death.
Although the case was closed for lack of evidence, Sulphur Police said. More recently, law enforcement came across additional information that led to the exhumation of the child’s body. There were no details on what that evidence included.
A forensic autopsy determined the manner of death as a homicide, the outlet reported.
Court documents from a child custody case concerning Idlett’s daughter, obtained by the outlet, underscored Idlett’s feelings toward her son. She wrote letters to her husband, who was in Thailand, that revealed a “threatening nature, both towards herself and her son,” the filing states.
In letters written in November 1969, she blatantly said “I wish he was dead,” referring to the child, and confessed having never wanted to become a mother.
In a letter the following month, the young mother wrote: “What is wrong with me darling. I should love my own son but I really don’t think I do and if I did I would know it. I feel as if he would die tomorrow I wouldn’t care. I can’t help it. To me he is the one who ruint (sic) my life.”
The court documents also revealed that when she took the baby to the emergency room in January 1970, the child was “limp and gasping for breath.” An X-ray at the time revealed “multiple fractures of the skull and right shoulder.” He died the following morning during emergency surgery, the filing says.
Idlett was not accused of wrongdoing at the time. When Bunch returned from Thailand, he asked his wife about the circumstances of their child’s death.
She denied harming the child and said he had probably hurt himself while falling out of bed at his grandmother’s house a few weeks before he died.
Last Thursday, Idlett was booked into the Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center on $950,000 bond, the outlet reported. The Independent has reached out to Sulphur Police for more information.
