May 21, 2025 • 42 mins
A one-year-old boy, Kahleb Collins,, is discovered to be "Missing" when he isn't found in the wreckage of a car crash that kills his father, Steven Collins, 40, and older sister, Ryleigh Collins, 2, and lands his mother, Pam Bailey, 23, in the hospital in critical condition. Investigators looking for Khaleb don't find him in the wreckage but learn his grandfather, John Elton Bailey, has custody of the baby. When Bailey is interviewed he tells investigators he hasn't seen Kahleb since September. It is now December 17 and an Amber Alert is issued for Kahleb Collins. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case from what happened in the car wreck to a burn pile found on the Collins family property where human remains have been discovered.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.07 Introduction, burn piles
04:55.58 Fatal family car wreck leads to missing baby
10:16.20 Grandfather has custody of baby, but lives with the family
15:33.76 Was driver trying to commit suicide?
20:10.03 Difference between looking for decaying body of baby and adult
25:05.93 Human remains found in burn pile
30:37.56 Children not as resilient as adults when subjected to elements
35:03.84 The child has not been identified
40:02.17 Father is alleged to have abused one-year-old
42:25.42 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality times, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't know about
all the rest of the rural areas around the country,
but I do know about the South. In the South,
you live out in the rural area, you don't really
have an access to a dumpster. Most people, and I'm
(00:24):
thinking back to my grandparents right now, had oil drums
in their yard and they'd put their household trash in
it and light it on fire. That was one of
the great treats of my life when I was little,
that my grandmother would let me help her do that.
And then, of course in the rural areas you have
big burn piles as well, where you'll take brush that
(00:46):
you've cut away, maybe along your fence line or fallen
trees or whatever the case might be, and you don't
do it. You don't do it every single day. You'll
wait till it accumulates. That is the brush. The trash
burn regularly. But you know, sometimes those brush piles actually
turn into gathering areas because it's essentially a gigantic pond fire.
(01:10):
It's a place for many that has great memories. People
sitting around singing, maybe somebody's got a guitar, maybe somebody's
drinking beer and laughing and joking and carrying on. But
every now and then, every now and then, there will
(01:30):
be an event that happens on a family's property that
is beyond the pale of anything that we can imagine.
And today is a day that we're going to talk
about one such case that not many people have heard of.
(01:51):
It's a case that originates in our home state of Alabama,
and it's got everybody talking around these parts. And maybe
after you hear this, you want to do your own research.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks. Dave. You
(02:17):
ever had an old drum you burn trash in? You
ever done that before?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I'm from the South, but it's southern California, so no,
you know that was very quickly, just so we are
all clear. Yeah, I know what one is, yeah, and
I know what a burn pile is. But I also
know what it was like as a child for getting
in trouble for building a fire in the backyard when
(02:42):
my brother and I were trying to roast marshmallows. So yeah,
it's funny how things change, you know. I love living
in different parts of the Great Country because things that
are normal where we live now. Are people think you're
making it up? When this story first broke, it was
brought to me by my wife. She said, Dave, have
you heard about this car wreck? Because it was a
(03:05):
car wreck that a dad died, a two year old
girl died, his daughter, and his wife was in critical condition.
And it was I think it happened on a Sunday,
if I'm not mistaken. And my first thought was what happened,
you know? And looking at what happened, I was like, well,
they're speeding, first of all, high rate of speed nine.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
He estimated ninety two miles per hour and a forty
five mile prior zone going straighten out a curve.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
What dad does that? What kind of adult father puts
his children in that kind of risk? Oh? But let's
add another one to it, Joe, because Riley Collins, the
two year old daughter of Stephen Collins and Pam Bailey,
she wasn't buckled in anywhere. So you're driving ninety miles
(03:57):
an hour in a forty five mile if I'm on
HoriZone going into a curve and your daughter, your two
year old daughter isn't buckled in. Yep, Yeah, good job.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, ain't that awesome. And just so people understand that
we've had this case for us, I'll put it to
you this way. The reason I wanted to talk about
this case is that I rarely get asked by local
television channels to do stuff. And it's not that I
(04:29):
don't want to. I love people at local stations because
they don't have the same sensibilities necessarily that you know,
the big the big boys do you know? Their view
is focused on local matters and I enjoy helping out,
you know. And but I had two called me from
(04:49):
Birmingham in the last two days. Can you comment on
this case? And I'm thinking, wow, yeah, I'll be glad
to And I really didn't know much about it. As
a matter of fact, I knew nothing of about it
until I guess four maybe four days ago. And you
said that you had known about it. Lodonna had passed
(05:09):
that on to you. And this is back in December
when the MVA took place. But Dave, this case goes
back further than December.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
It was actually in the car wreck that killed Stephen Collins,
the father, and Riley Collins, the two year old daughter,
and his mother the mother here Pam Bailey, She was
critically injured. They did not expect her to live. And
so what happened is you're identifying the people involved, and
you're going, wait a minute, we have the mom, we
have the dad. They've got two children. We can only
(05:44):
find one. So they were looking, you know, they were
looking around the crash site for this one year old toddler,
this little baby, you know, I mean, they're missing a child.
And it was from that accident they went, wait a minute,
there's no baby here. There's no sign of another child
being in this car. And that's when they went when
was That's when the investigation began and they found out
(06:06):
they maybe had been missing since September.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, and so we're up to December now when the
EREC takes place, and back to the accident. I think
that this is something that folks need to understand that
first off, the mother was restrained, she was belted in
the vehicle. The father who was understrained, the operator of
(06:31):
the vehicle. He was ejected and the two year old
was ejected and she was in the back seat, and
so she was thrown out of the vehicle, and of
course they both wound up with massive blunt force trauma,
which is the primary cause of death in every just
(06:51):
about every motor vehicle accident I've ever worked, and it's
the number one cause of death relative to motor vehicle accidents.
And it kind of makes sense. It's like it's like
you're in a tumble dryer and you're getting thrown about
multiple points of impact, and you know, no number of
(07:16):
bag deployments are going to save your life if you're
traveling at that rate and you're unrestrained. So and I
was kind of reflecting on this day when when they
have this kind of epiphanal moment where at the scene
where they know that there is a baby that is
(07:37):
attached to this family that's not there, who is won
by the way, I can only imagine the police, because
this is what cops are and firefighters too. At about children.
They probably said, look, we're going back out here. We're
scouring every because you never know. Car accidents are so
(07:59):
violent and it's so dynamic. You never know where anybody
who's going to be launched to where they're going to
land up land at, and for a one year old,
very tiny, they could have wound up anywhere. You have
no idea. I've seen some of the most bizarre things
in the world in motor vehicle accidents, and we can
(08:20):
do it an entire show on that sometimes. But how
is it? I think the question I have is that
how is it that they came to understand that the
child was missing? That's what I don't. I don't I
can't really feature here.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Now here's your investigation. You've got a dead forty year
old father, dead two year old daughter. Mom wife is
in the hospital in critical condition. When they started peeling
back the family dynamic, they found out that John Elton Bailey,
that would be Pam Bailey's father. By her name is
(08:58):
Wendy Bailey, but her she goes by her middle name
is Pamela, and she goes by Pam Bailey. Okay, so
Pam's father, John Elton Bailey, who is fifty five years old,
he actually had legal guardianship of Caleb.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
And of course classic line coming up here in three
two one, they were already on on the radar of
Family and Children Services. You know, as you can imagine,
what a shock, huh. And when when I reveal to
you in this episode what has been done, You're going
(09:37):
to sit back and you I'm not going to say
you can't take the measure of it, because Lord knows
some stuff we talked about. But you're really going to
be scratching your head over this because it is. It's
absolutely ghastly and what a devastating blow, you know, in
that little community. Because we're talking about this is so
(10:02):
just kind of a quick geography lesson here. Fayette County, Alabama,
is north west of Birmingham, and if everybody's familiar with Bama,
you know the University of Alabama. It's almost directly due
north of Tuscaloosa where the University of Alabama is. It's
(10:26):
it's rural, Okay, it's very rural. It's sparsely populated. I've
got a couple of really good friends that are from Fayette, Alabama,
which I believe is the county seat, and they, you know,
go on and on about their home there because it's
(10:48):
so peaceful out in the country, beautiful, lush kind of
rolling land up there. You're still in that kind of
Cumberland plateau, Appalachian foot hill kind of scenery, you know,
as you're at the north and to have this kind
of devastation happened in that little community up there, which
(11:11):
shocked the conscience and when we find out about Caleb,
you can imagine the community up there was one of
you know, where's this child? The child's part of this
area here. We want to know what happened to him,
and no one had seen or heard anything about him.
All they knew is that these three adults had custody
(11:35):
over two children and for whatever reason, they couldn't take
care of him. Well, where's the first place you're going
(11:56):
to look for a missing child? You know, if you
determined that as a result of this motor vehicle accident,
this baby Caleb is nowhere to be found. He's one
years old. Guess what, You're going to go to the
home and this property is kind of an odd an
odd misshmash if you will. When there's a lot of
(12:22):
Jerne footage of this place and a couple of outbuildings
that sort of thing, and you can actually see where
there are what appears to be, I don't want to
call it piles of garbage, but there are areas where
things have been deposited back there. It's hard to really
make sense of it, but you know, Dave, the police
(12:43):
went out to this location on several occasions, did multiple
searches and never could never could find Caleb.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
But once they get to the house and talk to
granddad John Elton Bailey, he says, yeah, I don't know, Worry.
I hadn't seen him in a couple of months. I
don't know where that little boy is. So he gets
charged right away. They charge him with failure to report
a child missing. So now the story has broken. You've
got this horrible car crash, moms in critical condition, the
(13:14):
other two are dead, and Grandpa's now in jail on
one hundred thousand dollars bond because this child didn't go
missing yesterday. This child's been missing for a while. And
that's after they researched it some more. On December seventeenth,
they issued the emergency alert, the BOLO or not a BOLO,
but the Amber Alert alert you know, or whatever alert
we give nowadays on that because they hadn't they didn't
(13:36):
really know what to go on. You know, there really
wasn't anything other than what they were being told by
family that said, I don't know where he is. I mean,
how do you answer that question, I guess, Joe. One
of the things that you and I and actually we
all immediately think of our own children when a child is,
(13:56):
and we think, what have I ever been where I
didn't know where my child was for more than a minute,
you know, And to think that you could actually answer
with it, that you could wake up in the morning
knowing that a child, you're, a one year old child
you are responsible for, that you could actually go to
bed tonight not knowing where that child is. I can't
(14:18):
even identify with that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
I can't either. And you know, and this isn't a
matter of you know, everybody does things differently. It takes
it takes minimal effort to just attain the baseline of care,
you know, warm, clean clothes, clean baby, significant food. Now,
(14:45):
some people don't believe in holding their kids. I'd still
hold my kids today if I could. But that's not
what everybody does. But just those basics that you know,
are kind of required of us as civilized human beings.
We have three adults that miserably failed, apparently at that
one simple task, and you know, it's demonstrated. It's demonstrated
(15:09):
to me that even further by the fact that they
didn't have this two year old restrained in the vehicle
and he's driving so recklessly. I got to tell you
one other thing, in the light of everything that has
kind of come about in this case, have you have
you thought has it? Has it crossed her mind, Dave
that maybe him operating that vehicle the way he was,
(15:34):
that that was a suicide attempt.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Hmm. No, I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
It's something that had come to mind from me, because
you know, why in the world would you be operating
a motor vehicle at that speed and you've got the
mother of your children in the vehicle with you, and
you've got an unrestrained child in the back seat. Did
the dad know something and was he aware that you know,
(16:08):
there was gonna be a bad moon rising for him
in maybe a matter of weeks, because they can't. You
can't keep this covered up forever, and so to facto
just gonna We're going to end everything by doing this. Now,
Maybe maybe that's far fetched. I have, however, had people
that have committed suicide with their vehicle by running it
(16:32):
into fixed objects. That's a thing that does happen. And
you know, to me, maybe maybe it wasn't intentional, but intentional,
but you're living your life in such a reckless manner
in the absence of this one year old because you know,
you've had we'll see September, October, November. You've had three
(16:53):
months to kind of stew over this whole thing, this
entire time where the child has gone missing. You know,
somebody's going to be looking for them. They're going to
come back to you, and then, I don't know, maybe
maybe guilt weighs heavy based upon what was done potentially
from what I'm hearing to this child prior to the disappearance, Dave,
(17:17):
because I got to tell you, out of a lot
of the cases we cover, I've used I don't know,
I don't want to, uh, you know, continue to overuse
this word. But what we're going to be talking about
in just a few moments here as echoes of sadism
because of what has over what was allegedly done to
(17:40):
this one year old. But you know, when the police
got out there, initially they couldn't find anything, Dave, and
they went all over the property. I'm looking at the
drone footage. I can actually see where they've dug holes,
you know, and they're you know, these kind of certain
they're not like trenches or anything. They're kind of circular
in appearance. There's searching over the area. I would imagine
(18:02):
that they may have suspected that there was a burial
in the backyard. That's the only reason I can think
of them turning Earth's back there.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I'm thinking about the JJ Tilely case. When they were
on that property. You know, they were looking in a
very specific area. You know, we had basically two areas
that they had figured out where these bodies were. Yeah,
in case, they've got the whole area to go look at.
I got a feeling that there's going to be a
number of other objects out there that they've probably tried
(18:31):
to hide, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
I would think so. And going back to the day
Bell you know, the day Bell case cases, rather, I
never know what surname to call anybody by, and that
whole thing is so so ridiculous and.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
So horrible.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
But I think about, you know, Tiley out there and
what they did with her remains. He was found adjacent
to a ring. And I still remember actually the day
that I was shown those aerial photographs from that scene
(19:12):
from Chad day Bell's home, And this is before I
got to see the first images, before the authorities moved
the logs and it was set up. David. It looked
like something from a boy scout encampment. There were logs
that were laid out in a perfect circle like you
would sit on and you know, picking the guitar, you know,
(19:32):
having a bonfire and all that sort of thing and
all that stuff, and later images had been moved, and
of course with her remains, it was a very half
hearted effort. It was horrific but half hearted effort to
try to render her down, and they failed miserably because
there was still a significant amount of her body that
(19:55):
was left behind. But you know, the police are with
a case in County, Alabama. They're looking everywhere and they're
not getting a hit. They can't see anything out there.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
What's going to be the difference between what you're looking
for with a seventeen year old body versus a one
year old.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Oh, it's very very simple.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
We don't break down the same way. I know, there's
a lot less of a one year old at thirty
five pounds, but I mean there's more to it than
just that, right, I mean, yeah, there is.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
And you know one of the big things is that
let's just start off very basically talking about skeletal structure.
You know, when you're one, you haven't had like bone
fusions that have taken place, that sort of thing. Do
you know that babies are actually, you know, toddlers, They
have more bones than adults do because because fusion hasn't
(20:47):
taken place, well fusion can, particularly at that age, can
take place, the bones still have to be soft and malleable. Okay, Therefore,
if they are exposed to say, thermal injuries for a
protracted period of time, they're broken down very very easily.
(21:09):
And with an adult where you have this kind of
the bones have ossified at this point in time, they're
much more resilient. It takes a much longer time to
render them down. We've covered several cases involving and involving
cremains as they're referred to, and it takes a lot
(21:31):
of tending of the fire. It's not I'd said in
one interview, I think it was yesterday where I think
a lot of people labor under this idea that you're
going to take a galley of gasoline and pour it
over the subject and struck a match and walk away,
and yeah, and that that's not the case because gasoline
(21:53):
is not fuel. We think of fuel for our car gasoline, gasolar,
sorry three two gasoline kerosene fuel their accelerants. Okay, you
can get something started. You know. Obviously if you've ever
(22:16):
foolishly you had a puddle of gas and you struck
a match and you threw it in, and you see
how that happens. It kind of flashes over, you know,
and certainly the more gas you have, you're gonna have
an explosion. But it doesn't burn forever and ever. Amen. Okay,
you have to you have to source it with wood.
For instance, you think about Terror Grinstead over in Georgia.
(22:38):
She was in the middle of her remains were like
in the middle of a pecan orchard, and when her
body was rendered down that fire was tended for a
long period of time using pecan wood, which, by the way,
I found out this is kind of an interesting little aside.
(23:01):
There's a scale that's out there that I discovered where
you can It measures the bt us, which is the
measurement of heat relative to the species of wood. And
as you know that hickory and pecan are like at
the top, and I didn't realize that hickory and pecan
(23:24):
are very close relatives and so they burn incredibly hot. Okay,
whereas you have other woods that you know, like if
you try to burn pine, for instance, it's not the
best idea. Sometimes you have to do it. It's a
little smoky, a lot of sap, that gummy, you know,
stuff that comes out of it. So these fires have
(23:45):
to be tended if you're looking to render down a body. However,
when you're talking about a one year old, let that
sink in just for a moment. A one year old
twelve months they've been on this earth, a one year old,
(24:06):
It doesn't take much. It just takes somebody that's cold
hearted and doesn't care. There was a reporter in Birmingham
(24:34):
that attended a press conference that was held by the
sheriff's office there in Fayette County, Alabama, and the reporter
asked the sheriff because the sheriff said that they had
(24:57):
found remains in a burn pile on this property, and
he said, the only thing he has said so far
is that they were human remains. And the reporter asked,
she said, could I recognize these as human remains? And
(25:21):
the sheriff shook his head and said, no, no, you couldn't.
What they have. What they have that remains at that scene,
first off, was recovered by a anthropologist that they brought
out there, which I recommend highly anybody that is looking
(25:45):
to recover remains. This is not something that should be
taken lightly. You need to have access to a forensic anthropologist,
hopefully one that's fully trained up, and in this case,
obviously they had one. Because when you go into a
burn pile, Dave, and you begin to look at everything
that's there, it it all looks the same. I mean,
(26:10):
just think about it. All of our friends out there,
if you're ever around an area where you have a
you've had a bonfire and all of the wood is
rendered down there. Even if you've thrown like a plastic
bottle in there, or maybe a metal bottle cap if
it's allowed to burn long enough, everything looks the same.
(26:31):
But I got to tell you, Dave, not to the
eye of an anthropologist.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Okay, now, Joe, we're talking about the body of a
one year old child, and I looked this up to
see what the description was when you know of size,
approximately thirty five pounds. They started looking for him in December,
where he'd already been gone for a couple of months.
We're not even sure exactly when. Just go back to
September and let's just you know, say three months, and
(27:01):
if if he was just if the I hate you
even saying, I feel evil for talking like this, but
if that body, if the baby had died, Okay, let's
just say that baby died from the flu. He died
in the middle of the night, crib death, whatever, and
they panicked and got up, and they wrapped him into
towel and they took him outside and didn't know what
to do, afraid because of their past legal happenings that
(27:22):
they'd be accused of wrongdoing. So they just took this
child and just left him out and you know, put
him out to that side. How quickly would a thirty
five pound baby like that, a one year old decomposed
very quickly if they're not left updating very quickly, very quickly.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You know, we're talking September. That's that's still the height
of summer here. Everybody thinks September that it's fall. Not
in Alabama. It's not not in Alabama. It's not it's
it's brutal. September is actually generally more miserable than July
is as far as heat and humidity goes. So, in
(28:04):
answer to your question, if you if you had similar
remains that would be left out in the open like that.
First off, decomposition would start very very quickly, but you
you have a window there where you would be able
to still recognize the remains, provided you're not dealing with scavengers,
(28:28):
and of course in Alabama you're always dealing with scavengers.
But in a perfect in a perfect scenario like you're
talking about, where the remains remain unmolested by any kind
of scavenger that's out there. It's just subject to the
environmental conditions. Body is going to break down relatively quickly,
and you will not I would imagine within probably by
(28:54):
the by mid probably mid to late October, you might
just be dealing with skeleton. If you could still find
the skeleton at that point in time, and there would
be some remnant there, and again it's impossible, not the
factor in scavenger activity, you know, in an environment like that.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
What about the what about the skeleton? Would the skeleton
because it's not it's not a full grown adult skeleton,
but will those bones break down?
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, yeah, because they're very soft. It's kind of it's
kind of I'm sure that there's probably archaeologists out there
that would take exception what I'm about to say. I
like to read a lot about archaeology and discovery of
remains from antiquity, those that have been recovered. It's very
very rare that the remains of infants or young children
(29:46):
are ever recovered from ancient you know, ancient digs. You'll
find skeletons, you know, of adults, but again, the skeletons
have formed, they've gone through this maturation process to that point.
Little ones are so very fragile. And you know, people
always talk about how resilient. You know, child can fall
(30:07):
and bounce right back. You know, they might cry a
little bit. But if you and I took the same
took the same tumble as to what little kids might do,
you know, we're going to be convalescing in our bed
for a couple of days, all right, if not on
ICEU in my case, so you know, But for little kids, though,
they can bounce right back, but they're not as resilient
(30:30):
when subjected to when they're when their body okay we're
not talking about living children now, when their bodies, their
little bodies are subjected to to the elements like that,
and then you add in an added layer of fire,
that that thermal dynamic that comes in and the bodies
(30:53):
begin to get to the point where they're they're unrecognizable.
And again if this child because to this point, you know,
full disclosure here as of this taping right now, Dave,
we still don't have a positive id on this precious
little baby and I call him babies one years old.
(31:16):
We don't have an id on him, and I think
that I have an idea as to why it's taking
so long. But we do know that we have human
remains and the anthropologist was able to retrieve those remains.
And just because you retrieve remains at a scene like this,
(31:37):
that's not the end of the job because now actually
the real work begins because there's two key areas here, Dave,
that you have to look at scientifically. First off, who
is this Okay? Now, I know people are saying, come on, Morgan,
you know how many other one year olds are missing.
(31:59):
I can't just assume that you know what they say
about assume you never assume that at all. You have
to scientifically verify who these remains are. Well, the real
task here, Dave, is going to be able to find
tissue that's still viable. Uh and that's for retrieval of DNA.
(32:27):
That's the only way you're going to get this this
baby's body. Uh, you know, identified there are going to
be no foods.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You can't do it with any bone pieces. But there's
bone pieces. Is there no DNA in bone?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's there's DNA there. But you know,
these bones are very very soft. I don't know how
intact they are. I think my default position is going
to be teeth because these are still the child at
one has what referred to as deciduous teeth. It's the
same thing. It's like the old it's the same things.
The old terms baby teeth, and there's any even older
(33:00):
term called milk teeth, and the older generation use those terms.
But yeah, so the deciduous teeth, deciduous means it's something
that's sitting on top. They're not they're not permanent, but
they're kind of a they're closed off. And of course
teeth are not bone. And if you can find a
(33:23):
tooth that's intact, that hasn't fractured as a result of
being exposed to heat, and there's high probability you can
teeth are very resilient. You would drill down into the
teeth and into the pulp. And this takes quite a
bit of skill and extract that pulp sample from there. Now,
what are you going to compare it to? Well, dad's dead,
(33:46):
all right, sister's dead, well, who remains? Well, Mama remains.
So you would do you would go into a buckleamy
coastal swab and retrieve the cells out of her on
the size of her cheek there. And some people call
it a swab or scraping. It's more like a scraping.
(34:09):
You get that sample and then you do a DNA
profile on her, and that DNA which is unknown at
this point, tom or the term that she used in forensics,
it's called questioned questioned sample. You would compare the two
to see if you get a hit. And that's really
the way I think that they're going to have to
(34:29):
get this child's body identified, all right, to make sure
that that is Caleb's remains that are there.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Now, it's one thing for somebody just to hourly say
they found the toddler in the burn pile on the property.
Come on, Margan, it's got to be this kid. Al
dot com is actually running a story saying the remains
of an Alabama toddler missing and presumed dead since last
year were found in a burn pile. Has it been confirmed,
that's what they're saying. And this it goes back to
something you and I talked about the other day. What's
(35:02):
the media, the media not knowing how to do its job.
You and I have done, and you've did a great
lesson on this with manner, cause, mechanic and death, and
it was I didn't know a lot of it. I
know enough of what I've learned from you. But when
I hear somebody in the media say the wrong thing,
(35:24):
they don't know what they're talking about. And it's really
disingenuous to pretend you are a journalist if you're going
to get facts wrong. And the fact is that child
has not been identified.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
No, the child has not and you can you can
make a comment like and this is something we would
say scientifically, if we've been able to do our measurements,
we can say that these remains are consistent with the
remains of a one year old child. But we haven't
even hit that point yet, Okay, where that's been publicly stated,
(35:57):
but you still cannot at the time that we're speaking
right now, Dave, you still cannot affirmatively say that. And
that's that's very dangerous because there are cases out there
where uh and I've been a part of them, where
bodies are misidentified. And listen, I got to tell you,
(36:21):
not saying this about this family, but if there was
a similar family and they had such careless disregard for
their own children, who's to say that this hadn't happened
to other children. I have no idea about that, but
it's something that if you're an investigator, you cannot just
(36:44):
assume that this is calybse remains. You have to you
have to go the full length in order to bring
this home. You're gonna want that, and the court is
going to require it of you, because you know, there's
there have been charges leveled in this case, both at
the mother and and at the grandpa. But one of
(37:07):
the one of the most chilling parts to this story, Dave,
is the fact that, according to what the police are saying,
this Stephen Collins, who is Caleb's dad, Okay, apparently what
(37:30):
he had been doing was that this is this is
you know, I mentioned the whole thing about a touch
of sadism here. Apparently, according to reports, Stephen Collins has
been accused in you know how I told you that defects.
(37:52):
Our Department of Family and Children's Services has gotten involved.
There are court documents that exist that's to treatment of Caleb.
They talk about and this is the phraseology and I
quote physically abused by torturous remain strike that day in
(38:14):
three two. This is a statement and I quote quote
physically abused by torturous means end quote. And how was
he tortured? Well, apparently what was happening is that this
(38:37):
one year old was being bound by Stephen Collins, allegedly
with rope and beaten. That's in life. That's what these
court documents allege. And he's also accused of insane court
(38:58):
documents of sending graphic text messages to Wendy Bailey and
in those text messages he threatened to kill this precious
angel and to just kind of drive this point home, Dave,
Stephen Collins allegedly sent photos to her of the abuse.
(39:24):
Let that sink in just for a second, Okay, let
that drip down into your ground water everybody of what
this guy was about allegedly, because it's it's an absolute
horror show. I'd like to know what was going on
with the two year old as well? And because I don't,
(39:48):
I don't, I don't really understand. First off, if this
is in court documents, I got questions, was this baby
still in the house? Well, who was named custodian? Grandpa was?
Guess who was all living under the same roof together,
(40:11):
all three of these adults, Grandpa, mama, and the Stephen
Collins guy. They're all living together, but yet Collins is
alleged to have done this to Caleb. I have questions
about this court filing because apparently this is known, this
(40:32):
is something that's known outside the circle of these individuals
in this home. Well, who allowed this? You know, who's
who is or was not making visits to this home
if this baby was being treated this way. And I
got to tell you, I'm really going to hate. I'm
(40:54):
really going to hate the moment. And I hope it
doesn't come that I find out out that anybody outside
this family has possession of those photographs, somebody in a
position of authority, because it's horrible, horrible stuff. If any
of this stuff is true. Again, this is all speculative
(41:17):
at this point in time, but I can tell you this,
I know speaking for my buddy Dave. We're going to
keep an eye on this case. We're going to watch
this all the way through because I'm vested now. I
want to try to understand what happened to Caleb. I
(41:38):
want to understand how he died. I don't think I'll
ever know the why behind it. You never can know.
I don't really care about these other people, but you know,
on Body Bags, the people that we advocate for and
care for are the dead. It's the people that didn't
have a voice when they were alive, like little Caleb,
(42:01):
and they sure don't have a voice after they're dead.
But if you know, if it brings me to my knees,
I am going to speak up for Caleb and we're
going to talk about him some more. We'll find out
more information and hopefully in a future episode, we'll be
getting back to you real soon and maybe we can
offer an update once there's been a decision about. First off,
(42:25):
who these remains belong to. I'm Josephcott Morgan and this
is Bodybacks.
Quality times, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't know about
all the rest of the rural areas around the country,
but I do know about the South. In the South,
you live out in the rural area, you don't really
have an access to a dumpster. Most people, and I'm
(00:24):
thinking back to my grandparents right now, had oil drums
in their yard and they'd put their household trash in
it and light it on fire. That was one of
the great treats of my life when I was little,
that my grandmother would let me help her do that.
And then, of course in the rural areas you have
big burn piles as well, where you'll take brush that
(00:46):
you've cut away, maybe along your fence line or fallen
trees or whatever the case might be, and you don't
do it. You don't do it every single day. You'll
wait till it accumulates. That is the brush. The trash
burn regularly. But you know, sometimes those brush piles actually
turn into gathering areas because it's essentially a gigantic pond fire.
(01:10):
It's a place for many that has great memories. People
sitting around singing, maybe somebody's got a guitar, maybe somebody's
drinking beer and laughing and joking and carrying on. But
every now and then, every now and then, there will
(01:30):
be an event that happens on a family's property that
is beyond the pale of anything that we can imagine.
And today is a day that we're going to talk
about one such case that not many people have heard of.
(01:51):
It's a case that originates in our home state of Alabama,
and it's got everybody talking around these parts. And maybe
after you hear this, you want to do your own research.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks. Dave. You
(02:17):
ever had an old drum you burn trash in? You
ever done that before?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I'm from the South, but it's southern California, so no,
you know that was very quickly, just so we are
all clear. Yeah, I know what one is, yeah, and
I know what a burn pile is. But I also
know what it was like as a child for getting
in trouble for building a fire in the backyard when
(02:42):
my brother and I were trying to roast marshmallows. So yeah,
it's funny how things change, you know. I love living
in different parts of the Great Country because things that
are normal where we live now. Are people think you're
making it up? When this story first broke, it was
brought to me by my wife. She said, Dave, have
you heard about this car wreck? Because it was a
(03:05):
car wreck that a dad died, a two year old
girl died, his daughter, and his wife was in critical condition.
And it was I think it happened on a Sunday,
if I'm not mistaken. And my first thought was what happened,
you know? And looking at what happened, I was like, well,
they're speeding, first of all, high rate of speed nine.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
He estimated ninety two miles per hour and a forty
five mile prior zone going straighten out a curve.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
What dad does that? What kind of adult father puts
his children in that kind of risk? Oh? But let's
add another one to it, Joe, because Riley Collins, the
two year old daughter of Stephen Collins and Pam Bailey,
she wasn't buckled in anywhere. So you're driving ninety miles
(03:57):
an hour in a forty five mile if I'm on
HoriZone going into a curve and your daughter, your two
year old daughter isn't buckled in. Yep, Yeah, good job.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, ain't that awesome. And just so people understand that
we've had this case for us, I'll put it to
you this way. The reason I wanted to talk about
this case is that I rarely get asked by local
television channels to do stuff. And it's not that I
(04:29):
don't want to. I love people at local stations because
they don't have the same sensibilities necessarily that you know,
the big the big boys do you know? Their view
is focused on local matters and I enjoy helping out,
you know. And but I had two called me from
(04:49):
Birmingham in the last two days. Can you comment on
this case? And I'm thinking, wow, yeah, I'll be glad
to And I really didn't know much about it. As
a matter of fact, I knew nothing of about it
until I guess four maybe four days ago. And you
said that you had known about it. Lodonna had passed
(05:09):
that on to you. And this is back in December
when the MVA took place. But Dave, this case goes
back further than December.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
It was actually in the car wreck that killed Stephen Collins,
the father, and Riley Collins, the two year old daughter,
and his mother the mother here Pam Bailey, She was
critically injured. They did not expect her to live. And
so what happened is you're identifying the people involved, and
you're going, wait a minute, we have the mom, we
have the dad. They've got two children. We can only
(05:44):
find one. So they were looking, you know, they were
looking around the crash site for this one year old toddler,
this little baby, you know, I mean, they're missing a child.
And it was from that accident they went, wait a minute,
there's no baby here. There's no sign of another child
being in this car. And that's when they went when
was That's when the investigation began and they found out
(06:06):
they maybe had been missing since September.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, and so we're up to December now when the
EREC takes place, and back to the accident. I think
that this is something that folks need to understand that
first off, the mother was restrained, she was belted in
the vehicle. The father who was understrained, the operator of
(06:31):
the vehicle. He was ejected and the two year old
was ejected and she was in the back seat, and
so she was thrown out of the vehicle, and of
course they both wound up with massive blunt force trauma,
which is the primary cause of death in every just
(06:51):
about every motor vehicle accident I've ever worked, and it's
the number one cause of death relative to motor vehicle accidents.
And it kind of makes sense. It's like it's like
you're in a tumble dryer and you're getting thrown about
multiple points of impact, and you know, no number of
(07:16):
bag deployments are going to save your life if you're
traveling at that rate and you're unrestrained. So and I
was kind of reflecting on this day when when they
have this kind of epiphanal moment where at the scene
where they know that there is a baby that is
(07:37):
attached to this family that's not there, who is won
by the way, I can only imagine the police, because
this is what cops are and firefighters too. At about children.
They probably said, look, we're going back out here. We're
scouring every because you never know. Car accidents are so
(07:59):
violent and it's so dynamic. You never know where anybody
who's going to be launched to where they're going to
land up land at, and for a one year old,
very tiny, they could have wound up anywhere. You have
no idea. I've seen some of the most bizarre things
in the world in motor vehicle accidents, and we can
(08:20):
do it an entire show on that sometimes. But how
is it? I think the question I have is that
how is it that they came to understand that the
child was missing? That's what I don't. I don't I
can't really feature here.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Now here's your investigation. You've got a dead forty year
old father, dead two year old daughter. Mom wife is
in the hospital in critical condition. When they started peeling
back the family dynamic, they found out that John Elton Bailey,
that would be Pam Bailey's father. By her name is
(08:58):
Wendy Bailey, but her she goes by her middle name
is Pamela, and she goes by Pam Bailey. Okay, so
Pam's father, John Elton Bailey, who is fifty five years old,
he actually had legal guardianship of Caleb.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
And of course classic line coming up here in three
two one, they were already on on the radar of
Family and Children Services. You know, as you can imagine,
what a shock, huh. And when when I reveal to
you in this episode what has been done, You're going
(09:37):
to sit back and you I'm not going to say
you can't take the measure of it, because Lord knows
some stuff we talked about. But you're really going to
be scratching your head over this because it is. It's
absolutely ghastly and what a devastating blow, you know, in
that little community. Because we're talking about this is so
(10:02):
just kind of a quick geography lesson here. Fayette County, Alabama,
is north west of Birmingham, and if everybody's familiar with Bama,
you know the University of Alabama. It's almost directly due
north of Tuscaloosa where the University of Alabama is. It's
(10:26):
it's rural, Okay, it's very rural. It's sparsely populated. I've
got a couple of really good friends that are from Fayette, Alabama,
which I believe is the county seat, and they, you know,
go on and on about their home there because it's
(10:48):
so peaceful out in the country, beautiful, lush kind of
rolling land up there. You're still in that kind of
Cumberland plateau, Appalachian foot hill kind of scenery, you know,
as you're at the north and to have this kind
of devastation happened in that little community up there, which
(11:11):
shocked the conscience and when we find out about Caleb,
you can imagine the community up there was one of
you know, where's this child? The child's part of this
area here. We want to know what happened to him,
and no one had seen or heard anything about him.
All they knew is that these three adults had custody
(11:35):
over two children and for whatever reason, they couldn't take
care of him. Well, where's the first place you're going
(11:56):
to look for a missing child? You know, if you
determined that as a result of this motor vehicle accident,
this baby Caleb is nowhere to be found. He's one
years old. Guess what, You're going to go to the
home and this property is kind of an odd an
odd misshmash if you will. When there's a lot of
(12:22):
Jerne footage of this place and a couple of outbuildings
that sort of thing, and you can actually see where
there are what appears to be, I don't want to
call it piles of garbage, but there are areas where
things have been deposited back there. It's hard to really
make sense of it, but you know, Dave, the police
(12:43):
went out to this location on several occasions, did multiple
searches and never could never could find Caleb.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
But once they get to the house and talk to
granddad John Elton Bailey, he says, yeah, I don't know, Worry.
I hadn't seen him in a couple of months. I
don't know where that little boy is. So he gets
charged right away. They charge him with failure to report
a child missing. So now the story has broken. You've
got this horrible car crash, moms in critical condition, the
(13:14):
other two are dead, and Grandpa's now in jail on
one hundred thousand dollars bond because this child didn't go
missing yesterday. This child's been missing for a while. And
that's after they researched it some more. On December seventeenth,
they issued the emergency alert, the BOLO or not a BOLO,
but the Amber Alert alert you know, or whatever alert
we give nowadays on that because they hadn't they didn't
(13:36):
really know what to go on. You know, there really
wasn't anything other than what they were being told by
family that said, I don't know where he is. I mean,
how do you answer that question, I guess, Joe. One
of the things that you and I and actually we
all immediately think of our own children when a child is,
(13:56):
and we think, what have I ever been where I
didn't know where my child was for more than a minute,
you know, And to think that you could actually answer
with it, that you could wake up in the morning
knowing that a child, you're, a one year old child
you are responsible for, that you could actually go to
bed tonight not knowing where that child is. I can't
(14:18):
even identify with that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
I can't either. And you know, and this isn't a
matter of you know, everybody does things differently. It takes
it takes minimal effort to just attain the baseline of care,
you know, warm, clean clothes, clean baby, significant food. Now,
(14:45):
some people don't believe in holding their kids. I'd still
hold my kids today if I could. But that's not
what everybody does. But just those basics that you know,
are kind of required of us as civilized human beings.
We have three adults that miserably failed, apparently at that
one simple task, and you know, it's demonstrated. It's demonstrated
(15:09):
to me that even further by the fact that they
didn't have this two year old restrained in the vehicle
and he's driving so recklessly. I got to tell you
one other thing, in the light of everything that has
kind of come about in this case, have you have
you thought has it? Has it crossed her mind, Dave
that maybe him operating that vehicle the way he was,
(15:34):
that that was a suicide attempt.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Hmm. No, I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
It's something that had come to mind from me, because
you know, why in the world would you be operating
a motor vehicle at that speed and you've got the
mother of your children in the vehicle with you, and
you've got an unrestrained child in the back seat. Did
the dad know something and was he aware that you know,
(16:08):
there was gonna be a bad moon rising for him
in maybe a matter of weeks, because they can't. You
can't keep this covered up forever, and so to facto
just gonna We're going to end everything by doing this. Now,
Maybe maybe that's far fetched. I have, however, had people
that have committed suicide with their vehicle by running it
(16:32):
into fixed objects. That's a thing that does happen. And
you know, to me, maybe maybe it wasn't intentional, but intentional,
but you're living your life in such a reckless manner
in the absence of this one year old because you know,
you've had we'll see September, October, November. You've had three
(16:53):
months to kind of stew over this whole thing, this
entire time where the child has gone missing. You know,
somebody's going to be looking for them. They're going to
come back to you, and then, I don't know, maybe
maybe guilt weighs heavy based upon what was done potentially
from what I'm hearing to this child prior to the disappearance, Dave,
(17:17):
because I got to tell you, out of a lot
of the cases we cover, I've used I don't know,
I don't want to, uh, you know, continue to overuse
this word. But what we're going to be talking about
in just a few moments here as echoes of sadism
because of what has over what was allegedly done to
(17:40):
this one year old. But you know, when the police
got out there, initially they couldn't find anything, Dave, and
they went all over the property. I'm looking at the
drone footage. I can actually see where they've dug holes,
you know, and they're you know, these kind of certain
they're not like trenches or anything. They're kind of circular
in appearance. There's searching over the area. I would imagine
(18:02):
that they may have suspected that there was a burial
in the backyard. That's the only reason I can think
of them turning Earth's back there.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I'm thinking about the JJ Tilely case. When they were
on that property. You know, they were looking in a
very specific area. You know, we had basically two areas
that they had figured out where these bodies were. Yeah,
in case, they've got the whole area to go look at.
I got a feeling that there's going to be a
number of other objects out there that they've probably tried
(18:31):
to hide, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
I would think so. And going back to the day
Bell you know, the day Bell case cases, rather, I
never know what surname to call anybody by, and that
whole thing is so so ridiculous and.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
So horrible.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
But I think about, you know, Tiley out there and
what they did with her remains. He was found adjacent
to a ring. And I still remember actually the day
that I was shown those aerial photographs from that scene
(19:12):
from Chad day Bell's home, And this is before I
got to see the first images, before the authorities moved
the logs and it was set up. David. It looked
like something from a boy scout encampment. There were logs
that were laid out in a perfect circle like you
would sit on and you know, picking the guitar, you know,
(19:32):
having a bonfire and all that sort of thing and
all that stuff, and later images had been moved, and
of course with her remains, it was a very half
hearted effort. It was horrific but half hearted effort to
try to render her down, and they failed miserably because
there was still a significant amount of her body that
(19:55):
was left behind. But you know, the police are with
a case in County, Alabama. They're looking everywhere and they're
not getting a hit. They can't see anything out there.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
What's going to be the difference between what you're looking
for with a seventeen year old body versus a one
year old.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Oh, it's very very simple.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
We don't break down the same way. I know, there's
a lot less of a one year old at thirty
five pounds, but I mean there's more to it than
just that, right, I mean, yeah, there is.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
And you know one of the big things is that
let's just start off very basically talking about skeletal structure.
You know, when you're one, you haven't had like bone
fusions that have taken place, that sort of thing. Do
you know that babies are actually, you know, toddlers, They
have more bones than adults do because because fusion hasn't
(20:47):
taken place, well fusion can, particularly at that age, can
take place, the bones still have to be soft and malleable. Okay, Therefore,
if they are exposed to say, thermal injuries for a
protracted period of time, they're broken down very very easily.
(21:09):
And with an adult where you have this kind of
the bones have ossified at this point in time, they're
much more resilient. It takes a much longer time to
render them down. We've covered several cases involving and involving
cremains as they're referred to, and it takes a lot
(21:31):
of tending of the fire. It's not I'd said in
one interview, I think it was yesterday where I think
a lot of people labor under this idea that you're
going to take a galley of gasoline and pour it
over the subject and struck a match and walk away,
and yeah, and that that's not the case because gasoline
(21:53):
is not fuel. We think of fuel for our car gasoline, gasolar,
sorry three two gasoline kerosene fuel their accelerants. Okay, you
can get something started. You know. Obviously if you've ever
(22:16):
foolishly you had a puddle of gas and you struck
a match and you threw it in, and you see
how that happens. It kind of flashes over, you know,
and certainly the more gas you have, you're gonna have
an explosion. But it doesn't burn forever and ever. Amen. Okay,
you have to you have to source it with wood.
For instance, you think about Terror Grinstead over in Georgia.
(22:38):
She was in the middle of her remains were like
in the middle of a pecan orchard, and when her
body was rendered down that fire was tended for a
long period of time using pecan wood, which, by the way,
I found out this is kind of an interesting little aside.
(23:01):
There's a scale that's out there that I discovered where
you can It measures the bt us, which is the
measurement of heat relative to the species of wood. And
as you know that hickory and pecan are like at
the top, and I didn't realize that hickory and pecan
(23:24):
are very close relatives and so they burn incredibly hot. Okay,
whereas you have other woods that you know, like if
you try to burn pine, for instance, it's not the
best idea. Sometimes you have to do it. It's a
little smoky, a lot of sap, that gummy, you know,
stuff that comes out of it. So these fires have
(23:45):
to be tended if you're looking to render down a body. However,
when you're talking about a one year old, let that
sink in just for a moment. A one year old
twelve months they've been on this earth, a one year old,
(24:06):
It doesn't take much. It just takes somebody that's cold
hearted and doesn't care. There was a reporter in Birmingham
(24:34):
that attended a press conference that was held by the
sheriff's office there in Fayette County, Alabama, and the reporter
asked the sheriff because the sheriff said that they had
(24:57):
found remains in a burn pile on this property, and
he said, the only thing he has said so far
is that they were human remains. And the reporter asked,
she said, could I recognize these as human remains? And
(25:21):
the sheriff shook his head and said, no, no, you couldn't.
What they have. What they have that remains at that scene,
first off, was recovered by a anthropologist that they brought
out there, which I recommend highly anybody that is looking
(25:45):
to recover remains. This is not something that should be
taken lightly. You need to have access to a forensic anthropologist,
hopefully one that's fully trained up, and in this case,
obviously they had one. Because when you go into a
burn pile, Dave, and you begin to look at everything
that's there, it it all looks the same. I mean,
(26:10):
just think about it. All of our friends out there,
if you're ever around an area where you have a
you've had a bonfire and all of the wood is
rendered down there. Even if you've thrown like a plastic
bottle in there, or maybe a metal bottle cap if
it's allowed to burn long enough, everything looks the same.
(26:31):
But I got to tell you, Dave, not to the
eye of an anthropologist.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Okay, now, Joe, we're talking about the body of a
one year old child, and I looked this up to
see what the description was when you know of size,
approximately thirty five pounds. They started looking for him in December,
where he'd already been gone for a couple of months.
We're not even sure exactly when. Just go back to
September and let's just you know, say three months, and
(27:01):
if if he was just if the I hate you
even saying, I feel evil for talking like this, but
if that body, if the baby had died, Okay, let's
just say that baby died from the flu. He died
in the middle of the night, crib death, whatever, and
they panicked and got up, and they wrapped him into
towel and they took him outside and didn't know what
to do, afraid because of their past legal happenings that
(27:22):
they'd be accused of wrongdoing. So they just took this
child and just left him out and you know, put
him out to that side. How quickly would a thirty
five pound baby like that, a one year old decomposed
very quickly if they're not left updating very quickly, very quickly.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You know, we're talking September. That's that's still the height
of summer here. Everybody thinks September that it's fall. Not
in Alabama. It's not not in Alabama. It's not it's
it's brutal. September is actually generally more miserable than July
is as far as heat and humidity goes. So, in
(28:04):
answer to your question, if you if you had similar
remains that would be left out in the open like that.
First off, decomposition would start very very quickly, but you
you have a window there where you would be able
to still recognize the remains, provided you're not dealing with scavengers,
(28:28):
and of course in Alabama you're always dealing with scavengers.
But in a perfect in a perfect scenario like you're
talking about, where the remains remain unmolested by any kind
of scavenger that's out there. It's just subject to the
environmental conditions. Body is going to break down relatively quickly,
and you will not I would imagine within probably by
(28:54):
the by mid probably mid to late October, you might
just be dealing with skeleton. If you could still find
the skeleton at that point in time, and there would
be some remnant there, and again it's impossible, not the
factor in scavenger activity, you know, in an environment like that.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
What about the what about the skeleton? Would the skeleton
because it's not it's not a full grown adult skeleton,
but will those bones break down?
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, yeah, because they're very soft. It's kind of it's
kind of I'm sure that there's probably archaeologists out there
that would take exception what I'm about to say. I
like to read a lot about archaeology and discovery of
remains from antiquity, those that have been recovered. It's very
very rare that the remains of infants or young children
(29:46):
are ever recovered from ancient you know, ancient digs. You'll
find skeletons, you know, of adults, but again, the skeletons
have formed, they've gone through this maturation process to that point.
Little ones are so very fragile. And you know, people
always talk about how resilient. You know, child can fall
(30:07):
and bounce right back. You know, they might cry a
little bit. But if you and I took the same
took the same tumble as to what little kids might do,
you know, we're going to be convalescing in our bed
for a couple of days, all right, if not on
ICEU in my case, so you know, But for little kids, though,
they can bounce right back, but they're not as resilient
(30:30):
when subjected to when they're when their body okay we're
not talking about living children now, when their bodies, their
little bodies are subjected to to the elements like that,
and then you add in an added layer of fire,
that that thermal dynamic that comes in and the bodies
(30:53):
begin to get to the point where they're they're unrecognizable.
And again if this child because to this point, you know,
full disclosure here as of this taping right now, Dave,
we still don't have a positive id on this precious
little baby and I call him babies one years old.
(31:16):
We don't have an id on him, and I think
that I have an idea as to why it's taking
so long. But we do know that we have human
remains and the anthropologist was able to retrieve those remains.
And just because you retrieve remains at a scene like this,
(31:37):
that's not the end of the job because now actually
the real work begins because there's two key areas here, Dave,
that you have to look at scientifically. First off, who
is this Okay? Now, I know people are saying, come on, Morgan,
you know how many other one year olds are missing.
(31:59):
I can't just assume that you know what they say
about assume you never assume that at all. You have
to scientifically verify who these remains are. Well, the real
task here, Dave, is going to be able to find
tissue that's still viable. Uh and that's for retrieval of DNA.
(32:27):
That's the only way you're going to get this this
baby's body. Uh, you know, identified there are going to
be no foods.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You can't do it with any bone pieces. But there's
bone pieces. Is there no DNA in bone?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's there's DNA there. But you know,
these bones are very very soft. I don't know how
intact they are. I think my default position is going
to be teeth because these are still the child at
one has what referred to as deciduous teeth. It's the
same thing. It's like the old it's the same things.
The old terms baby teeth, and there's any even older
(33:00):
term called milk teeth, and the older generation use those terms.
But yeah, so the deciduous teeth, deciduous means it's something
that's sitting on top. They're not they're not permanent, but
they're kind of a they're closed off. And of course
teeth are not bone. And if you can find a
(33:23):
tooth that's intact, that hasn't fractured as a result of
being exposed to heat, and there's high probability you can
teeth are very resilient. You would drill down into the
teeth and into the pulp. And this takes quite a
bit of skill and extract that pulp sample from there. Now,
what are you going to compare it to? Well, dad's dead,
(33:46):
all right, sister's dead, well, who remains? Well, Mama remains.
So you would do you would go into a buckleamy
coastal swab and retrieve the cells out of her on
the size of her cheek there. And some people call
it a swab or scraping. It's more like a scraping.
(34:09):
You get that sample and then you do a DNA
profile on her, and that DNA which is unknown at
this point, tom or the term that she used in forensics,
it's called questioned questioned sample. You would compare the two
to see if you get a hit. And that's really
the way I think that they're going to have to
(34:29):
get this child's body identified, all right, to make sure
that that is Caleb's remains that are there.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Now, it's one thing for somebody just to hourly say
they found the toddler in the burn pile on the property.
Come on, Margan, it's got to be this kid. Al
dot com is actually running a story saying the remains
of an Alabama toddler missing and presumed dead since last
year were found in a burn pile. Has it been confirmed,
that's what they're saying. And this it goes back to
something you and I talked about the other day. What's
(35:02):
the media, the media not knowing how to do its job.
You and I have done, and you've did a great
lesson on this with manner, cause, mechanic and death, and
it was I didn't know a lot of it. I
know enough of what I've learned from you. But when
I hear somebody in the media say the wrong thing,
(35:24):
they don't know what they're talking about. And it's really
disingenuous to pretend you are a journalist if you're going
to get facts wrong. And the fact is that child
has not been identified.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
No, the child has not and you can you can
make a comment like and this is something we would
say scientifically, if we've been able to do our measurements,
we can say that these remains are consistent with the
remains of a one year old child. But we haven't
even hit that point yet, Okay, where that's been publicly stated,
(35:57):
but you still cannot at the time that we're speaking
right now, Dave, you still cannot affirmatively say that. And
that's that's very dangerous because there are cases out there
where uh and I've been a part of them, where
bodies are misidentified. And listen, I got to tell you,
(36:21):
not saying this about this family, but if there was
a similar family and they had such careless disregard for
their own children, who's to say that this hadn't happened
to other children. I have no idea about that, but
it's something that if you're an investigator, you cannot just
(36:44):
assume that this is calybse remains. You have to you
have to go the full length in order to bring
this home. You're gonna want that, and the court is
going to require it of you, because you know, there's
there have been charges leveled in this case, both at
the mother and and at the grandpa. But one of
(37:07):
the one of the most chilling parts to this story, Dave,
is the fact that, according to what the police are saying,
this Stephen Collins, who is Caleb's dad, Okay, apparently what
(37:30):
he had been doing was that this is this is
you know, I mentioned the whole thing about a touch
of sadism here. Apparently, according to reports, Stephen Collins has
been accused in you know how I told you that defects.
(37:52):
Our Department of Family and Children's Services has gotten involved.
There are court documents that exist that's to treatment of Caleb.
They talk about and this is the phraseology and I
quote physically abused by torturous remain strike that day in
(38:14):
three two. This is a statement and I quote quote
physically abused by torturous means end quote. And how was
he tortured? Well, apparently what was happening is that this
(38:37):
one year old was being bound by Stephen Collins, allegedly
with rope and beaten. That's in life. That's what these
court documents allege. And he's also accused of insane court
(38:58):
documents of sending graphic text messages to Wendy Bailey and
in those text messages he threatened to kill this precious
angel and to just kind of drive this point home, Dave,
Stephen Collins allegedly sent photos to her of the abuse.
(39:24):
Let that sink in just for a second, Okay, let
that drip down into your ground water everybody of what
this guy was about allegedly, because it's it's an absolute
horror show. I'd like to know what was going on
with the two year old as well? And because I don't,
(39:48):
I don't, I don't really understand. First off, if this
is in court documents, I got questions, was this baby
still in the house? Well, who was named custodian? Grandpa was?
Guess who was all living under the same roof together,
(40:11):
all three of these adults, Grandpa, mama, and the Stephen
Collins guy. They're all living together, but yet Collins is
alleged to have done this to Caleb. I have questions
about this court filing because apparently this is known, this
(40:32):
is something that's known outside the circle of these individuals
in this home. Well, who allowed this? You know, who's
who is or was not making visits to this home
if this baby was being treated this way. And I
got to tell you, I'm really going to hate. I'm
(40:54):
really going to hate the moment. And I hope it
doesn't come that I find out out that anybody outside
this family has possession of those photographs, somebody in a
position of authority, because it's horrible, horrible stuff. If any
of this stuff is true. Again, this is all speculative
(41:17):
at this point in time, but I can tell you this,
I know speaking for my buddy Dave. We're going to
keep an eye on this case. We're going to watch
this all the way through because I'm vested now. I
want to try to understand what happened to Caleb. I
(41:38):
want to understand how he died. I don't think I'll
ever know the why behind it. You never can know.
I don't really care about these other people, but you know,
on Body Bags, the people that we advocate for and
care for are the dead. It's the people that didn't
have a voice when they were alive, like little Caleb,
(42:01):
and they sure don't have a voice after they're dead.
But if you know, if it brings me to my knees,
I am going to speak up for Caleb and we're
going to talk about him some more. We'll find out
more information and hopefully in a future episode, we'll be
getting back to you real soon and maybe we can
offer an update once there's been a decision about. First off,
(42:25):
who these remains belong to. I'm Josephcott Morgan and this
is Bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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