303: Jeffrey Baldwin

When emergency responders arrived at a home in Toronto on a cold November morning in 2002, they found a little boy lying lifeless on the floor. At first glance, it seemed like he had simply stopped breathing. But as investigators took a closer look, a horrifying truth emerged—one that would expose shocking failures in the child welfare system and leave the city reeling.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:34):
One could literally see every single bone in his body,
and the bones were as if it were a skeleton.
And I had literally never seen anything like that before.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Toronto, which is Canada's largest city, is a vibrant and
diverse metropolis with the rich history dating back to its
indigenous routes and later European settlement. The area became a
hub of trade and culture before the British established the
town of York in seventeen ninety three. It was later
renamed Toronto in eighteen thirty four and grew into a
thriving economic and cultural center, now home to nearly three

(01:20):
million people. Nestled within Toronto's dast end, Woodfield Avenue is
a quiet residential street near Woodbine Beach, lined with charming
homes and tree shaded sidewalks. The neighborhood is known for
its family friendly atmosphere, with easy access to park schools
and the bustling shops and cafes along Queen Street East.

(01:42):
But one fateful morning in November of two thousand and three,
the serenity of Woodfield Avenue was shattered by a desperate
nine one one call. The voice on the other end
of the line was urgent as they reported that a
child was unresponsive. Paramedics and police rushed to the home,
unaware that they were stepping into a case. They would
send shockwaves through Ontario's child welfare system. What they would

(02:05):
uncover inside that modest home would not only raise questions
about the safeguards in place for vulnerable children, but also
lead to sweeping reforms. Jeffrey Baldwin hadn't had the best

(02:31):
start in life. Born on the twentieth of January nineteen
ninety seven in Toronto, he entered the world facing challenges
most children never would. Developmentally delayed and vulnerable, Jeffrey's life
was shaped by instability from the very beginning. His teenage parents,
Vonn Kidman and Richard Baldwin struggled with their own demons.

(02:52):
If One was only sixteen years old when she gave
birth to her first child, a baby girl she named Sarah,
but motherhood was short lived. Sarah was taken from Yvonne's
care after she was found left alone in a crib
while Yvaughn fought Richard outside on the street. Then Jeffrey
was born, and by the time he was one year old,

(03:12):
the cycle repeated itself. The Catholic Children's Aid Society removed
Jeffrey and his sister Laura from their parents care. There
had been alleged incidents of domestic violence and a disturbing
incident at their welfare office. Yvaughn had allegedly been seen
aggressively shaking Jeffrey. Then there were allegations that their living

(03:32):
situation was squalid and that the children had no bedtime routine.
The intervention was meant to protect them, to offer them
a better life. They were placed in the care of
their maternal grandparents, Alva Bottineau and Norman Kidman. In time,
Jeffrey's younger brother Julian, also joined them, along with their
oldest sister. Jeffrey at the time was a cute, cherubic

(03:56):
little baby with curly blonde hair. He was an act
of boy. He always wanted hugs and kisses. All four
siblings were now under their grandparents' roof, where they were
supposed to be safe. But not all homes or sanctuaries,
and not all families offer love. The morning of the

(04:23):
thirtieth of March two thousand and two began with a
desperate name one one call Alvi Botno. Jeffrey Baldwin's grandmother
was on the other end of the line. Her voice
was calm, almost detached, as she told the despatcher that
her grandson had stopped breathing. She mentioned, almost as an afterthought,
that he hadn't been eating very well lately. The nine

(04:44):
one one operator's questions were sharp, laced with concern, and
he choked. Had something blocked his airway? Botano hesitated, She
explained that she had given Jeffrey some milk and bread
and that he had eaten it, but in the past
few days, she said, he had stoped eating and had
stopped drinking. That didn't make sense to the nine one
one operator. Young children don't just stop breathing again, the

(05:09):
operator pressed, had he choked? Bot No wavered. He could have,
she said, but quickly dismissed the idea. Instead, she suggested
that he had a touch of the flu. Her words
were troubling. If the child wasn't breathing, why wasn't she
more panicked? The dispatcher instructed her to check for signs

(05:29):
of life, to put her ear next to Jeffrey's mouth,
to watch for the rise and fall of his chest.
He does have a little movement in him. Bot Noo replied,
her voice still oddly indifferent. And that's just about the
best I can tell you right now. Right now, I'm
just a little scared, she said. The ambulance raised towards

(05:49):
the home on Woodfield Avenue, sirens cutting through the cold
morning air. As soon as the paramedics stepped inside, they
were hit with an overpwing stench, a thick, suffocating mixture
of urine and faces. The smell clung to the walls,
the floor, the very air they breathed. Guided into the kitchen,

(06:11):
their eyes landed on a small figure lying motionless on
the counter, wrapped in a toil. It was Jeffrey. The
boy was unresponsive, his frail body eerily still. The paramedics
turned to Botano and asked about his medical history. His
History's fine, she said, flatly, as if none of this
was unusual. Despite the fact that Jeffrey was fighting for

(06:34):
his life, Botano seemed more preoccupied with an upcoming job interview.
Then a man shuffled into the room, rubbing the sleep
from his eyes. It was Norman Kidman, Jeffrey's grandfather. He
barely spared a glance at the dying child before groggily
complaining to the paramedics. He still peas and poops in
his bed, he muttered, pointing to Jeffrey. It was then

(06:57):
that the paramedics understood they weren't looking at a simple
medical emergency. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. Jeffrey's body told
the truth. His grandparents refused to speak. He was skin
and bones, with his limbs frail and his face hollow.
His eyes, which were sunken deep into his skull, stared blankly.

(07:19):
His tiny body bore the unmistakable signs of starvation. He
was very, very thin, extremely malnourished. Paramedic Robert Selfridge would
later recall Jeffrey was scooped up and rushed to the
waiting ambulance, But when the paramedics turned to Botano and
Kidman and asked who would accompany him, neither of them

(07:39):
stepped forward. Jeffrey went alone with the hospital for Sick Children.
The full extent of his suffering was laid bare. His
tiny frame was covered in bruises, his cheeks and eyes
were sunken. Loose skin sagged from his emaciated body. A
thick layer of bacteria clung to his skin, sore as

(07:59):
fester on his bodys and genitals. His belly was bloated
from severe and malnutrition. Jeffrey weigh just twenty one points
less than what he had weighed years earlier when the
Catholic Children's Heated Society had placed him in his grandparents care.
Just five years old, Jeffrey Baldwin was the size of
a toddler, a child who had been meant to thrive

(08:21):
away from his abusive parents, a child who had instead
been left to waste away. Despite the best efforts of
doctors at the hospital, Jeffrey Baldwin's frail body could take
no more. His heart gave out, Unable to withstand the

(08:44):
years of neglected and injured. He was just six weeks
shy of his sixth birthday. His tiny body was transported
to the Medical Examiner's office, where team of forensic experts
would uncover the horrors that had led to a slow,
agonizing death. Doctor Jim Keirns, the coroner, later described what
he saw. The child was extremely emaciated. You could call

(09:07):
it horrific.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
One could literally see every single bone in his body,
and the bones were as if it were a skeleton.
And I'd literally never seen anything like that before.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
It was immediately clear that Jeffrey had suffered, had lived
a life of unimaginable cruelty. His body told a story
of prolonged abuse, a story of neglect that spanned years.
He'd been systematically starved, his body wasting away. But it
was pneumonia that had ultimately killed him. It hadn't developed overnight.

(09:41):
His body was so weakened from starvation that he could
no longer fight off infections. Fecal bacteria had entered his bloodstream,
triggering septic shock that made breathing nearly impossible. That bacteria
had come from his own skin, thick with filth, Jeffrey
had likely placed his fingers in to his mouth, unknowingly

(10:01):
transferring the bacteria to his lungs. His suffering had been relentless.
Open sores covered his fragile frame, scaped over and broken
again and again. His skin, cracked and raw was a
testament to years of neglect. There were no broken bones,
no clear fractures, but his scalp was marred with deep bruises.

(10:24):
He had suffered blunt, forced trauma. This hadn't been a
single moment of violence. This had been a pattern, a slow,
deliberate breaking of a child's body and spirit. The starviation
hadn't started days or weeks before, it had begun as
long as four years earlier. Jeffrey had just been a
toddler when his grandparents took him in. They were supposed

(10:46):
to be his rescuers, but it was clear they had
actually been his tormentors. Doctor Cairns compared the state of
Geoffrey's body to that of an elderly nursing home patient,
somebody in their nineties, frail and confused, scratching at themselves
until their skin broke open. The parallels were horrifying. The

(11:06):
doctor admitted, there are certain details I don't want to
go into, but a five year old does not die
of pneumonia. It's the factors which lead up to the
pneumonia which are being investigated, and those factors all pointed
to one inescapable truth. Jeffrey Baldwin hadn't died by accident.
He'd been murdered. After Jeffrey's death, an investigation was launched

(11:37):
into the conditions that he had endured. Authorities returned to
the home where he had taken his last breath. It
was a comfortable home, at least outwardly. There were two computers,
warm bedrooms, and the appearance of normalcy. Doctor David Giddons,
who was part of the investigation, later recalled no one
was upset, there was no anxiety. Life seemed normal like

(12:01):
nothing had happened, nothing untoward. But the illusion of normalcy
shattered when they stepped inside the third bedroom. A different
world existed behind that door, a world of horror. A
high hook was mounted on the outside of the door,
a lock to keep somebody in inside. The room was
dark and cold. Unlike the rest of the home, there

(12:23):
was no carpet, no decorations. The walls were bare, the
air was thick with the suffocating stench of urine and faces.
On the floor lay a single mattress, soaking, wet with
urine and encrusted with dried faces. A garbage bag sat
in the corner, filled with soiled diapers. A dog bowl

(12:43):
containing remnants of food was the only sign of sustenance.
There were no toys, no children's clothing, nothing to suggest
that a child had ever lived there, but two had.
This was where Geoffrey and his sister Laura had spent
their existence. Both were developmentally disabled, and for that they
had been cast aside. While the other children lived in warmth.

(13:07):
Geoffrey and Laura were locked away and filled in isolation.
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The investigation uncovered the depths of their suffering. Botano and
Kidman had been receiving monthly payments from the Catholic Children's
Aid Society to care for their grandchildren. Instead, they had starved, beaten,

(16:20):
and tormented them. Geoffrey and Lawyer were confined to their
filthy unheeded prison on the second floor. They were locked
inside for ours days without access to a bathroom. A
young neighbor, Zachary, later recalled, I was in the bathroom
one day and through a vent by the toilet, I
heard them moaning and groaning, a soft cry, a sound

(16:44):
of suffering hidden behind closed doors. Geoffrey and Lawyer were
subjected to relentless cruelty. They were beaten with metal spoons
until their bodocks bled. They were stripped naked and washed
with freezing water from a hose. They were forced to
ate their own vomit. If they didn't clean quickly enough,
they were being with a stick. Sometimes they were simply

(17:07):
crying in their cribs when Botano and kidman struck them.
They weren't children to their grandparents. They were called names.
Jeffrey was a dog and Laura was a pig. Their
sister Sarah recalled.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
And he had cleaned the better. Had she had a
clear pool. Its stamped in there They peep peep, called dog.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
The two siblings were dehumanized, treated as less than nothing.
The other children were warned don't be like them. They
were told never to speak about Jeffrey and Laura not
to the teachers, not to anyone in case someone came looking,
in case someone uncovered the truth.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
How come you went on talking about too three at school?
They nave more and Kilson's aide coming and taking y.
Why would childs income taken away? Because because the US.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Along with Botano and Kidman, there were four other adults
living in the home. Two of them were Jeffrey's aunts
and the other two were their partners. One of them,
James Mills, later told detectives a horrifying truth. Jeffrey was
kept as a dog. He was forbidden from going downstairs,
so we drank from the toilet. Miles recollected he would

(18:37):
have to go to the bathroom on the floor in
his room. That's why there was a horrendous stench coming
from that room. He said that Jeffrey would have been
traded better at an animal shelter. The cruelty extended beyond neglect.
Miles remembered a time that he was instructed to take
Jeffrey and the other children into the basement. They were
to stay there for five hours. The adult needed to

(19:00):
talk about family politics. There was no bathroom in the basement.
If the children needed to relieve themselves. They were told
to use a bucket. Mills also recalled the chilling conversation
with Botano. She told him she couldn't seek help for
Jeffrey because it would ruin the check she had received
each month to care for him. On the rare occasion

(19:21):
that Jeffrey received any food, it was scraps he ate
from a dog bowl without a knife or fork. In
the days leading up to its death, Jeffrey was falling.
He could barely walk. He struggled up the stairs. He
needed help just to stand. But Botano didn't see a
starving child. She saw a problem. She called him lazy.

(19:45):
The doing our tasting at the team Indian and he
carefu Serdy Ann Gram and say Graham on a dish,
just be. Detectives pressed James Mills. They were asked why
he hadn't reported the abuse or helped Jeffrey and his sister.
His answer was simple, he didn't want to be kicked

(20:06):
out of the house when confronted with the disturbing evidence.
Jeffrey's grandparents had excuses. They said that he was a
troubled child. They called him borderline retarded. Kidman told detectives

(20:29):
he always eats well, a very good eader. Jeffrey is
always was always a good eader. But this completely contradicted
what Botano said and the evidence. She claimed that Jeffrey
would throw himself on the floor and starve himself. She
said he refused to eat. They both insisted that he
was impossible to toilet train, and that was their excuse

(20:51):
for keeping him locked away. They said he wouldn't be
accepted in Diskill because of it. Kidman even admitted to
locking Jeffrey in the room night. He claimed that it
was to stop him from sneaking out and drinking from
the toilet. They removed all the furniture from his room
and said he would smear faces on his clothing. They

(21:12):
painted Jeffrey as difficult and unmanageable, but their lies crumbled
against the truth. Jeffrey's tiny, starved body told the real story.

(21:32):
Jeffrey's grandparents, Alva Botano and Norma Kidman, weren't arrested immediately
after his death. It wasn't until March the next year
that Toronto homicide detectives determined there was enough evidence to
charge them. Both were arrested and charged with first degree
murder and forcible confinement. As news of the arrest spread.
Botano's lawyer was quick to defend her in the media.

(21:55):
He claimed that she had been devastated by Jeffrey's death
and was even more devastated to be accue of causing it.
But Jeffrey's body had told the story that was impossible
to ignore. He had been starved, beaten, locked away, and
neglected for years, and his investigators dug deeper, it became
clear that what happened to Jeffrey wasn't an isolated case

(22:16):
of neglect. It was part of a long and horrifying pattern,
one that stretched back decades. Botano and Kidman both had
criminal records for child abuse, but somehow this history had
gone unnoticed when they were given custody of Jeffrey and
his siblings. The Catholic Children's Aid Society, also known as

(22:37):
CCAS had placed two vulnerable children in the care of
people who should have been nowhere near them. Botano's past
was especially alarming. In nineteen seventy, when she was just
nineteen years old, she had been charged with assaulting her
five month old daughter Eva. At the time, CCAS had
already flagged Botano and her then husband as unfit parents

(22:59):
with no desire for change. She was given a one
year probation service. But what happened to Eva was far worse.
Eva had died of pneumonia not long after, just like Jeffrey,
but her autopsy revealed something far more disturbing, multiple fractures
in her shoulders, elbows, and wrists. The injuries had never

(23:20):
been treated. They'd likely gone unnoticed until the coroner began
his examination. Despite this, Spotano went on to have more children.
She'd grown up in a chaotic, abusive household. Herself the
seventh of sixteen siblings. She had witnessed her father attack
her mother with an axe and almost sever one of
her breasts. She was sexually abused by both her stepfather

(23:44):
and her brother. At sixteen, she was kicked out of
the house after she became pregnant with her first child.
Her early adulthood followed a similar pattern of instability. She
married a distant cousin had had three children with him
before leaving him in nineteen seven seventy five for Norman Kidman. Together,
they had three more children. Kidman's background was no less troubling.

(24:08):
In nineteen seventy eight, he was convicted of assaulting two
of Botano's children from her previous relationship. He received two
years probation. A psychiatric report at the time described him
as a mixed up and anxious man who struggled with
the role of being a father. Despite their record, CCIS
continued to monitor the couple over the years, but they

(24:29):
never took action to remove any children from their care.
In fact, in nineteen eighty four, CCIS released a report
that painted a very different picture of the household. Botano
and Kidman were described as well meaning and good parents.
Botno had even been given work looking after children in
her home, a job she secured with ccis's support. Just

(24:51):
two years later, concerns resurfaced a child under their care
reported being sexually abused. No charges were ever fined. Wild Then,
in two thousand, another complaint surfaced, this time from a
teenager living in the home who claimed to have been
sexually assaulted. Again, no charges were ever filed and no
further investigation was conducted. Two years later, Geoffrey was dead. Somehow,

(25:18):
despite their history, despite the repeated red flags, despite years
of reports and allegations, Botano and Kidman had been granted
custody of two vulnerable children, and nobody had stopped to
ask why. It was decided that Delvia Botanou and Norman

(25:44):
Kidman would stand trial together for the murder of Jeffrey Baldwin.
Their trial began on the ninth of September two thousand
and five. As the couple were escorted into the courtroom,
they took their seats beside their respective defense teams. The
public gallery slowly filled with onlookers, journalists, legal professionals, and
those who had followed the case in horror. But there

(26:06):
was nobody there for Jeffrey. No grieving family, no relative
seeking justice. He had died alone, and now he was
being tried alone. Prosecutor Bev Richards stood before the judge,
the weight of the case evident in her words, there
was no jury. Instead, mister Justice David WoT would be

(26:27):
deciding the fate of Botano and Kidman. Richards wasted no
time in painting a brutal picture of Jeffrey's life. She
said to the court. His life was something straight out
of a horror movie. He was kept as a dog,
he was skin and bone. He and his sister were
locked in the room. She introduced doctor Stanley's luckin especially

(26:48):
as who had studied malnutrition in some of the most
impoverished countries in the world. He'd worked in Bangladesh, Pakistan,
and Ghana. Place's worst. Starvation was a grim reality, and
yet when he examined Jeffrey's case, he called it one
of the most severe cases of malnutrition he had seen
in Canada or even the developing world. Richard's detailed how

(27:09):
Botano and Kidman had reduced Jeffrey and his sister to
nothing more than financial assets. She kept them isolated. She
said she never got help for them because she was
afraid they were going to call c AS and they
would take away her monthly check. That check amounted to
six hundred dollars a month, money that was given to

(27:29):
Botano to provide for the children. Instead, it became the
price of their suffering. She then turned to the other
adults in the home. None of them had intervened, none
of them had saved Jeffrey. To them, he was invisible.
It was like he wasn't even there to half the
people in the house. The prosecutor said, the neglect had

(27:51):
been so extreme that even the neighbors didn't know that
Jeffrey existed. He'd been hidden away, locked behind doors, wasting
away in silence. His death hadn't been quick, it had
been slow and torturous. It was almost like a death march.
He was waiving to die, Richards told the court. Then

(28:11):
the evidence began. Doctor Stanley's Lockkin took the stand. As
he spoke, graphic photographs of Jeffrey's body were displayed to
the courtroom. There was a quiet gasp from the gallery.
Even seasoned professionals used to the grim realities of crime
scene photos weren't prepared for the images in front of them.

(28:32):
Doctor Slockkin testified, you're literally seeing his patella or knee
bone sticking out. One can literally see every bone in
his rib cage. He described his initial reaction upon receiving
Jeffrey's medical records. I thought there had been a mistake.
He admitted. His weight and height were so low he

(28:52):
paused before adding this child was likely chronically starving. Another
photograph was then presented. It it was Jeffrey as he
should have been, a cherubic little boy in pajamas, baby fat,
still patting his cheeks and belly. The contrast for anyone's
eyes is dramatic, Doctor Slopkin said. He explained that in

(29:14):
the days and possibly even weeks leading up to his death,
Jeffrey had likely been in a semi conscious state. His
body had begun shutting down. He could no longer walk,
He couldn't even climb the stairs.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
This occurred over a long period of time. We're talking
about years, and it was a severe deprivation, not a
minor deprivasion.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
As the graphic images continued, Kidman briefly looked up, but
his face betrayed nothing, no emotion, no guilt. His defense attorney,
Robert Richardson, attempted to push back. He suggested that Jeffrey
had starved himself for emotional reasons, that his condition was
self inflicted. Doctor Slotkin didn't hesitate in shutting the claim down.

(29:58):
There was an absence in Jeffrey's bone marrl. He said
that condition would have taken at least a year to
develop a child. He explained, could not self impose that
level of starvation. After doctor Sluckkin stepped on, the prosecution

(30:22):
called Osiris Philip Loss to the stand. As an investigator
with the Catholic Children's he had society, He'd seen neglect before,
but nothing like this. Osires said he had been at
the hospital the night that Jeffrey died. He had seen
the boy's tiny, lifeless body first hand. Even now standing

(30:42):
in a courtroom, the memory was too much to bear.
He swallowed hard, his voice unsteady as he recalled the
moment he arrived at the Baldwin home. I couldn't believe it,
he told the judge. His composure cracked when he described
Jeffrey's so called bedroom, a barren, filthy speed with nothing
but a soiled mattress. He paused, struggling to collect himself

(31:05):
before he continued. Every adult in that house knew what
was happening to Jeffrey, and every single one of them
failed to report it. Then came the testimony of paramedic
Mark Dugas, one of the first responders that night. He
described the frantic efforts to revive Jeffrey, the desperate attempts
to get his heart beating again. But what haunted him

(31:28):
wasn't just the futility of those efforts. It was the apathy.
Not a single adult had asked about Jeffrey's condition, Not
one of them had gone to the hospital with him,
as if the boy they had let waste away wasn't
worth saving at all. The pathologist Doctor Gregory Wilson took
the stand next. His voice was clinical, detached, but there

(31:51):
was no disguising the horror in his findings. Jeffrey, he said,
resembled a child half his age, a two and a
half year old, not a boy approaching his sixth birthday.
But that wasn't the worst of it. Wilson spoke of
the grime that could a Jeffrey's body, a hardened, cacked
on layer of bacteria that had built up over time.

(32:14):
In all my years, I'd never seen anything like it,
he said. Then the most disturbing discovery of all fecal
bacteria in Jeffrey's lungs. Wilson explained, we all aspirate small
amounts of bacteria, but our bodies can clear them. In
Jeffrey's case, the amount was much greater. It meant one thing,

(32:36):
Jeffrey had been breathing in filth, likely for years. Doctor
Wilson had been a pathologist for two decades, but he
didn't hesitate when he said this was the most extreme
cases I have ever seen. The court room was silent.
He couldn't say exactly how long Jeffrey had been starving,
but his best estimate was up to four years, four

(32:58):
years of hunger, four years of suffering, four years of
being treated as if he didn't exist. Then the prosecution
introduced he had another chilling piece of evidence. Constable e
and Kennedy took to the stand and recounted a conversation
he had overheard just hours after Jeffrey was pronounced dead.
It had happened in the back of his police cruiser.

(33:21):
Jeffrey's biological mother, Yvonne, sat with her mother Botano. Her
son had just died, his body wasn't yet cold, and
yet she only had one thing on her mind. I
wonder if his insurance will cover him. I have insurance,
she said. Botno's response was just as callous. That's accidental death.

(33:43):
I don't know if he's covered. Even in death, Jeffrey
had been nothing more than a check and now the
people who led him waste away were being forced to
answer for it. On the second week of the trial,

(34:06):
the prosecution called James Mills to the witness stand. Mills
had already given detectives a detailed account of the horrors
that unfolded inside the Baldwin home, but here in court
he was different. He answered questions with vague responses, claiming
he couldn't recall the details of the statements he had made.
It wasn't until the judge intervened that his demeanor shifted.

(34:30):
Suddenly he remembered. He spoke of Jeffrey's frailty, how the
little boy had been so weak he had to crawl
up the stairs, one agonizing step at a time. He
told the judge he was just dollars and cents to them.
The kids were her only source of income. She didn't
want to lose that and would do anything in her

(34:51):
power not to. Then he recalled the night that Jeffrey died.
It was around two a m. And he heard Jeffrey
cry from his bedroom, unable to sleep. He turned to
his girlfriend and whispered a chilling prediction, I don't believe
Jeffrey's long for this world. Not long after that, the

(35:12):
house fell silent. When asked why he hadn't intervened, Mills
simply shrugged. He said it wasn't my place. Who am
I to judge what happened in that house. As the
trial progressed, even more disturbing details about Jeffrey's final moments
and the unimaginable suffering he endured came to light after

(35:34):
his death. His siblings were removed from the home and
placed into foster care. In the safety of their new surroundings,
they began to talk. Pauline Simpson, a foster mother who
took in Jeffrey's younger brother, testified that the boy had
confided in her about the beatings. He beats his ass
real good sometimes, he had said. The beatings, they learned

(35:56):
had been punishment for the smallest infractions, like defecating in
the bedroom when he had nowhere else to go. Jeffrey's brother, Julian,
described how he and his sister were deprived of blankets
and hate. Whenever they were deemed bad, they were cast out,
treated as though they weren't even human. Susan Barelli Cisterna,

(36:16):
who fostered Jeffrey's two sisters and younger brother in the
hours after his death, recalled the conversation between them that
revealed just how normalized the abuse had become. Julian had
said grandfather was upset because Jeffrey defecated all over the place.
He's going to get beat His older sister, Sarah quickly

(36:37):
cut him off and said, you need to shut up.
That's for us to know and for them to find out.
But eventually even Sarah spoke. She told her foster mother
that on the day that Jeffrey died, he'd been so
weak that he kept stumbling into the furniture. She described
how Botano had wrapped him up in a blanket, carried

(36:57):
him upstairs, and then, before trying to force feed him milk,
spanked him and yanked him by the hair. Then, as
Geoffrey lay dying, Botano had ordered Sarah to bring her
nail varnish. As more evidence surfaced, it became clear just
how broken these children were by the time they were rescued.

(37:18):
The little girl who had been kept locked in the
bedroom with Jeffrey had been observed drinking from the toilet.
She ate with her hands, scavenged food from the garbage,
and had no understanding of how to sit at a
table for a meal. When she was allowed to sit
alongside the other children in foster care, Sarah was horrified

(37:38):
pigs eat on the floor. She told her foster mother,
Pigs don't share the table. Geoffrey and his sister had
been the pigs. After every meal at their grandparents' home,
the family would scrape their leftovers into a dog bowl.
When the others had finished dating, Jeffrey and his sister
would be allowed to crawl over and eat whatever remained.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
You said that Jeffrey would get the leftovers. Where would
the leftovers come from? The people's kid wouldn't bringish their
second for the other way, and they would get Jeffrey.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
There was also another dark allegations. One of the sisters
alluded to something terrible happening in the bathroom. Bad things
happen in the tub, she said. She pointed to her
genitals and named Kidman. The other children described how he
would beat them with a metal spoon until their bodys bled,

(38:40):
how Jeffrey and his sister were always the bad kids
while the others were considered the good kids. And then
the words that left the court room and stunned silence.
Sarah said everyone knew that Jeffrey was going to die.

(39:07):
After the prosecution rested, the defense presented their case. Elvi
Botnow's attorney, in Nil Kapur, argued that his client lacked
the mental capacity to raise children. He pointed to a
psychiatric evaluation from the nineteen seventies conducted during her previous
criminal conviction, which had classified her as having borderline mental

(39:28):
retardation with an IQ below ere. Doctor Nathan Pollack, a
defense expert, testified that Botano suffered from both narcissistic and
histrionic personality disorders. He suggested that these conditions had impaired
her ability to recognize that Jeffrey was on the brink
of death. Doctor Pollack told the court room, it's difficult

(39:51):
to imagine what it's like to have those limitations. She
doesn't come up with what the average person comes up
within solutions. However, Lee of Ramshaw, who testified for the prosecution,
refuted this claim. Jeargy that Botannou had deliberately exaggerated her
cognitive limitations during evaluations in an effort to appear less

(40:11):
capable than she actually was. According to doctor Ramshaw, Botano
could read at a seventh grade level and spell at
an eighth grade level, evidence that she was fought from
the helpless and capable figure that the defense sought to portray,
and with that the defense rested. During closing arguments, the
defense team insisted that Botano and Kidman had never intended

(40:32):
on killing Jeffrey. Robert Richardson, Kidman's attorney, acknowledged that his
client had done nothing to stop the abuse, but maintained
that child rearing duties had been left entirely to Botano.
Kidman spent most of his time in front of the television.
He's grossly negligent, but not murderous, his defense attorney said.

(40:53):
Now the decision rested solely with Justice David Watt. In April,
his verdict was announced. Alvi Botano and Norman Kidman were
found guilty of second degree murder. In his ruling, Justice
what made it clear that Jeffrey's death had not been
the result of mere negligence. It had been prolonged, deliberate cruelty.

(41:14):
Jeffrey Baldwin didn't just miss a mail or two, he said.
He painted a heartbreaking picture of a once healthy baby boy,
blonde haired and chubby, who had wasted away under the
neglect of the very people who were supposed to protect him.
Both the system and the adults in his life had
failed him. Jeffrey had as much disappeared from the world

(41:35):
into the ragging black hole that was bedroom number two
in his grandparents' home. There was food for others, but
not for him. There was warmth for others, but not
for him. There were neighborhood children for others to play with,
but not for him. Justice Watt said, for Jeffrey Baldwin,
in his short and tragic life, there'd never been much

(41:56):
of anything at all. Alvi Botno and Norman Kidman were
set sentence to life in prison. Botno was ordered to
serve twenty two years before becoming eligible for parole. Kidman
was ordered to serve twenty That means that in the
upcoming few years both have a shot at parole. After

(42:28):
the sentencing, it was announced that an inquest would be
held to examine the role of the Catholic Children's Aid
Society in Jeffrey Baldwin's case. Before the inquest began, both
the CCAS and Geoffrey's grandparents were sued for negligence on
behalf of his surviving siblings and cousins. Meanwhile, Elvia Botano
and Norman Kidman appealed their convictions. Botno's appeal rested on

(42:51):
the claim that she was too unintelligent to understand that
depriving Geoffrey of food would ultimately kill him. However, Associate
Chief jof Justice Denis O'Connor dismissed the argument, noting that
she had been capable enough to properly care for the
other children in the household. Kidman, on the other hand,
attempted to shift all of the blame on de Botano,

(43:12):
claiming that she ruled the home with an iron fist
and was solely responsible for the children. Both of their
appeals were denied. In September two thousand and thirteen, the
coroner's inquest began. By this time, significant reforms had already
been implemented within the ccas and the child welfare agencies
across Ontario. These included stricter background checks, mandatory reviews of

(43:37):
family history, and the requirement that relatives acting as caregivers
meet the same standards as foster and adoptive parents. Previously,
the system had been far more relaxed, so much so
that Geoffrey and his sister were handed over their grandparents
without any oversight. This was despite both Botano and Kidman
having criminal convictions for child abuse, and despite the fact

(43:59):
that Bottle, who had previously caused the death of one
of her own daughters. Retired detective Michael Davis, who had
investigated Jeffrey's murder, testified that the case would haunt him
for the rest of his life. He reflected on James
Mills's harrowing testimony at trial, recounting the devastating image of
Jeffrey's last moments. He said he was trying to make

(44:23):
his way up the stairs, crawling up the stairs as
his little pajamas were falling off his hips because he
had no hips. You deal with it, but you don't
forget it. That's what makes you angry when you see
something like this. What makes me even more angry is
the fact that could have been prevented. Other witnesses also
spoke about the lasting impact of the case. Paramedic Mark Douglas,

(44:46):
who had responded to the scene, described the horror of
what he had witnessed. You see something like that and
it's just so destroying. It was the complete and utter
destruction of dignity to any child or any human being
in my li opinion. He admitted that the memory of
Jeffrey's emaciated, battered body haunted him at night. As the

(45:08):
inquest progressed, systemic failures became glaringly apparent. It was revealed
that once Botano and Kidman had been granted custody of
the children, CCAS had closed their file no caseworker ever
followed up, and no one ever checked on the well
being of the children. Even more disturbingly, no background jacks
had ever been conducted on the couple. No one had

(45:31):
run a criminal record search, nor had anyone reviewed past
child welfare reports, which would have revealed Botano and Kidman's
long history of abuse. The testimony of the inquest marred
much of what had been heard during the trial. However,
more evidence of abuse came to light decades earlier, when
Kidman was convicted of abusing two of Botano's children. They

(45:53):
had been removed from their care. The extent of their
suffering was staggering. They were confined to a bedroom, often
locked in dog cages and forced to wear dog collars.
They weren't allowed to use a proper bathroom and instead
had to relieve themselves in a potty in the corner
of the room. When it became full, nobody emptied it.

(46:14):
They were forced to go on the floor. Whenever they
complained of the cold, Botano would strike them and say
too bad. They were forced to drink their own urine
and were severely underfed. As punishment, they were made to
stand in the corner for ours, sometimes even days without moving.
This was twenty four years before Jeffrey's death, yet the

(46:36):
similarities between the past abuse and the conditions that Jeffrey
and his sister endured were chilling. Unlike at the trial,
Jeffrey's biological parents testified. His father, Richard Baldwin, admitted he
knew something was terribly wrong the last time that he
saw his son, but he said he felt powerless to
intervene as the system had painted Jeffrey's grandparents as model caregivers.

(47:00):
Richard tearfully recalled Jeffrey's playful spirit. Starting he wanted to fly.
He tried jumping off the chair. We had to make
him stop. He dressed up as Superman for Halloween one year.
He was so excited. I have that picture at home
hanging on my wall. He was our little man of Steel.
He spoke about how his son had once loved hugs

(47:21):
and kisses, but after being sent to live with his grandparents,
he likely only received affection when he visited his parents.
When asked why he never sought help for Jeffrey, Richard's
response was heartbreaking. During the initial investigation, he had described
his son as looking like an Ethiopian child due to

(47:42):
his extreme malnourishment, but in his words, I didn't think
he was going to die. Jeffrey's mother, a Von Kidman,
took to the stand and spoke about the year is
leading up to her son's death. She claimed that her

(48:03):
mother had always threatened to take her children away and
insisted she never intended for Jeffrey and his siblings to
be permanently placed with Botano and Kidman. According to Vaughn,
she and Richard were young, struggling parents who felt they
had no choice but to hand the children over. They
couldn't afford legal representation, and her mother had promised that
it was temporary, but the reality, she alleged was much different.

(48:28):
Vaughn told the court that Botano only wanted custody to
remain in social housing, and that she had no idea
about her parents history of abuse. She said, if I
would have known about all this stuff, I wouldn't put
my kids in that spot.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
As far as I know, my whole life is a life.
There's a lot of secrets and so far with the
court that's going on right now, the Chrominal Cork kids,
it's all coming out and it's very shocking to me.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
I tell you one thing, However, the court heard that
Devaun herself had been under the supervision of a Catholic
Children's Aid Society as a child. A social worker had
monitored her throughout her youth, but she had never been
told the truth. She believed that the woman was simply
her sister's godmother. She questioned why, if things were that bad,

(49:19):
she and her siblings had never been removed from the home.
Freya Christiansen, the lawyer representing Jeffrey's surviving siblings, responded, I
think that's the one of the questions we all have.
The inquest ultimately revealed a series of failures by social services.
Red flags were ignored, background checks weren't done because the

(49:40):
arrangements had initially been informal. Social workers failed to conduct
proper screenings before allowing Jeffrey and his siblings to live
with their grandparents. CCAS workers had even considered foster care,
but ultimately believed that sending the children to Botano and
Kidman was the better option. It was a decision that
sealed Jeffrey's fate. On the second week of the inquest,

(50:02):
bought No testified she denied any responsibility for Jeffrey's death,
insisting that she disagreed with the idea that she had
played a role. She claimed she would have disclosed their
criminal past if only social workers had asked as for
how her own daughter had suffered fractures when she died,
She had no explanation. I'm not a child beater, she

(50:25):
told the court. With that, the inquest drew to a close.
In total, seventy four recommendations were put forward. They included
mandatory public awareness campaigns about reporting child abuse, enhanced training
programs for child welfare supervisors, and even integrating lessons on
abuse and neglect into skill curriculums. Better information sharing between

(50:48):
children's the HAD societies was also emphasized. Coroner's Counsul Jill
Wilkins said Jeffrey Baldwin received far more attention after his
death than he ever did in his life. But the
jury went even further, recommending additional measures. Among them, even
if a child protection cases closed, workers should still conduct

(51:10):
annual check ins for children under five living with alternate caregivers.
They also urged the Ministry of Children and Youth Services
to conduct a full review of child protection standards, including
kinship care policies. Perhaps the most significant recommendation however, was
the proposal to merge all of Ontario's child welfare agencies
into one central body, an effort to prevent another tragedy

(51:33):
like Jeffreys from ever happening again. Because of Jeffrey's sweeping
changes were made to Ontario's child welfare system. His cherubic face,
once full of life, and his emaciated frame and death
became symbols of a system that had failed him. The
reforms meant that he would never be forgotten, that no
child should ever suffer as he had, and indeed, Geoffrey

(51:56):
wasn't forgotten. A memorial statue was created in a honor
depicting him as a superhero, complete with the Superman shield,
an image of the little boy who once dreamed of flying.
It was unveiled at Greenwood Park in October of twenty fourteen.
Todd Boys, the local father who raised funds for the statue,

(52:17):
spoke to the crowd gathered in Jeffrey's memory. There's so
much supporting compassion for Jeffrey, so much that he didn't
have in his life, but he has it now. The
statue stands as a tribute to the child the world
failed to protect, a little boy who wanted to be Superman,
but no one came to save him. Well, Bestie's ad

(52:58):
is it for this episode of Morbidology. As always, thank
you so much for listening, and I'd like to say
a big massive thank you to my newest supporter album Patreon, Brittany.
As you all know, Morbidology is just a one woman's team,
so the support up on there seriously go such a
long way, and I really am eternally grateful. This case
is one that I've written about before up on my

(53:18):
website and it's one of them ones that just sticks
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(53:38):
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Until next time, take care of yourself else, stay safe

(54:01):
and have an amazing week.