Cold Case Files - REOPENED: In The Care Of A Killer

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

When a toddler dies under the care of a babysitter, everyone assumes it was the result of a tragic accident. That is until eight years later, when a second child dies in the care of the same babysitter. Read more about this case on the A&E Real Crime Blog: http://aetv.com/realcrime  Apartments.com: To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place. Aura: For a limited time visit Aura.com/Trust to sign up for a 14 day free trial and start protecting your loved ones! Progressive: Progressive.com  ZocDoc: Check out Zocdoc.com/CCF and download the Zocdoc app for free! 

At the Freedom Church of Christ Cemetery in Link Creek, Missouri, there's a gravestone with three names written neatly in a row. At the top is the family name, Blankenship. Underneath, on one side, Sandra Lynn, mother, and on the other, Billy Dion Jr., father. Both of those names are followed by a birthday, but not a date of death. In the middle, etched in the marble, is the name Billy Deon III, followed by the birthday, October 23, 1988, and the date of death, November 16, 1990.

He was just two years old when he died. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Sandra, Billy's mother, will never forget the last time she saw her little boy. It was November 15, 1990. She'd gotten herself and two small children ready for the day. She was going to work, and Billy and his sister were going to their babysitter's house. When they arrived, Sandy took the kids inside the house to see their babysitter. Her name was Tawny Gunter. She was 28 at the time. Here's Sandy Blankenship, Billy's mother. I remember him looking at me that morning with, he was about ready to start crying,

and Tawny was holding him so I could get out the door, and I wanted to turn around and go back, and I didn't. She drove the rest of the way to work and started her day the same as any other day. But it wasn't a typical day. During lunch, Sandy's co-worker and friend told her that she needed to get to the Warrensburg Hospital. Little Billy had fallen down some stairs. Billy's parents rushed to the hospital and made it just in time to see the doctors preparing to airlift Billy to the children's hospital in Kansas City. Billy was unconscious. He was in critical condition. This is Sandy

Blankenship again. I pulled his eyes up just to look at his eyes because he was just laying there like he was sleeping, and his eyes were real gray. And the lady told me, go ahead and talk to him because he can hear you. So I was talking to Billy on the way to the helicopter, told him we'd be right behind him, you know, we would be there. At Children's Mercy Hospital, Billy was x-rayed and scanned to see how extensive his injuries were. The CAT scan image, similar to an x-ray of his head, showed a fracture in Billy's skull. The parents waited in shock and anguish for the doctors to assess the damage of their two-year-old's brain. After 24 hours, the doctors had determined that Billy was brain dead.

When a person is brain dead, there's no activity in their brain at all, not even the parts that control a person's basic functions like breathing or the circulatory system. Every vital process to survival has been controlled artificially, either through machines or chemicals. There's no chance that Billy would have ever regained consciousness. Sandy Blankenship shares her last moments. I got to hold him for just a little bit, and we talked to the doctor again and discussed organ donation, signed the papers and stuff, and then they told us they would let us know when it was all over.

And that's pretty much the way it went. Sandy, trying to make some sense of the world collapsing around her, asked Tawny, the babysitter, to explain what happened. It was lunchtime, Tawny starts to say. She had taken two-year-old Billy to the basement to play while she prepared the food. She said she told him to play downstairs, but apparently he hadn't listened. She said she heard a concerning noise and then found him lying at the bottom of the stairs. Likely, he had hit his head on the steps, causing his injury.

Five days later, two-year-old Billy Dion Blankenship III was laid to rest in a plot that he would share with his parents. His death was ruled a tragic accident. Eight years later, a familiar scene occurs. A mother with a young child needs a babysitter. Amy Yount needs to work to support her daughter, three-month-old Mariah. At the last minute, she can't find anyone, and a certain sitter's name keeps coming up. Tawny Gunter. This is Amy, Mariah's mother. As far as anybody that I knew, she was the only person left that I could send her to to watch her. And I wasn't really scared that something would happen. I just knew that there was an accident, and I just really didn't want to take her there.

It's not surprising to me that Amy was faced with such a tough decision. I did some research, and throughout the 90s, the Springfield Newsleader, a local paper, reported on the babysitter crisis. But perhaps it would have been better labeled, a crisis for lack of babysitters. Amy wasn't the only mother desperate for child care, so it's no wonder that her only option was to leave Mariah with Tawny. On the morning of August 3rd, 1998, Amy takes her three-month-old daughter to Tawny Gunter's unlicensed home daycare. The scene becomes even more familiar. Amy goes to work and has a typical morning, and a few hours later she gets a message. This is Amy.

My secretary come and told me that, you know, they brought the baby to the hospital. And so my sister took me to Warrensburg. And then, you know, nobody really told us anything other than they couldn't get her to breathe on her own. Tiny, three-month-old Mariah is lifted to the Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. She survives the flight, but Mariah didn't make it through the night. Here's Amy again.

I touched her and she was real cold. And, you know, the nurses and everybody was crying and I just told her to wake up and she wouldn't. The medical examiner conducts an autopsy, but isn't able to confirm what happened to Mariah. He leaves the cause of death undetermined, noting that the babysitter responsible for taking care of the infant girl wasn't new to on-the-job tragedies. In the way of small towns, news of Mariah's death was known to everyone, even before social media. In my small town, people gathered at the small convenience store or the restaurant that was only open on weekends. In this case, though, news was even spread through a doctor's visit. Billy Blankenship's aunt, Terry Holtkamp, was at a doctor's visit when she heard something she didn't expect. Here's Billy's aunt Terry to explain. He just nonchalantly made the comment

something along the lines of, well, that's really terrible that that baby died with that same babysitter as Billy. And I just about fell over. I was literally sick. Terry had always had an uneasy feeling about the circumstances around Billy's death. But she hadn't shared them. Hearing that another child had died while in Tawny's care was enough to make her change her mind. Here's Terry again. It was August the 17th, 1998. I had made my decision. I had to be a voice for him. I had to stop her from babysitting. I had to stop her from

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Second, in all other child death cases, the coroner must consult with a child death pathologist. Finally, if the fatality meets a certain criteria, then the situation will be reviewed by a panel specific to each county to decide the next course of action. Mariah's case was being reviewed by a panel of county members, and among them was a friend of Billy's aunt, Terry. His name was Paige Bellamy. I remember thinking that lightning was striking just too many times at one household. And as we discussed the case amongst ourselves, everybody was suspicious that too many kids are getting hurt and too much is going on in one babysitter's home.

The panel determined that further investigation was needed at Tawny Gunter's home. So state investigators, led by Gus Collis, took recording equipment and visited Tawny's house. They were tasked with recording Tawny reenacting what happened with Mariah. Here's the audio from that reenactment. I turned her over real fast. I could see her lips were blue. Her feet were really, really white. She was kind of a light white color. I picked her up real quick and I said, Mariah, Mariah. I started trying to get her. She was kind of limp, but I couldn't tell if she was out unconscious or asleep. I went down the hallway. The reenactment was consistent with the medical examiner's report, and an accidental death can't be ruled out for Mariah. The investigators then look into the death of Billy Blankenship eight years prior. The investigators ask Dr. Lori Frazier, an internationally renowned expert on the study

of child abuse, to review Billy's health records and share her findings. This is Dr. Frazier. To me, it was shockingly clear that this was not the mechanism of injury. You could see it in a kid who fell from a building two or three stories and landed with their head on concrete. You could see fractures of children who were hit by cars and thrown. You'd see it maybe in a child who was an unrestrained passenger in a motor vehicle accident. Something that has some force or velocity to it where the child's impacted forcefully. After conferring with Dr. Frazier, the investigators returned to Tawny's home for another reenactment, this time a Billy's accident

eight years earlier. Remember, Tawny said she'd been makingenactment, this time of Billy's accident eight years earlier. Remember? Tawny said she'd been making lunch, and Billy was supposed to stay in the basement. Here's the audio of Tawny reenacting a second time. I remember walking over to the refrigerator, taking something out of it, um, went to the microwave. Shortly after I turned the microwave on, I heard a thump and then another thump. She then rushes over to the top of the staircase before saying, Went down the steps. Billy was whimpering. I picked him up and I asked,

Billy, what are you doing? And when I bring him upstairs, he kind of started going limp on me. I thought maybe he was trying to go to sleep on me. I remember Billy, wake up, wake up, said, wake Billy. Like in Mariah's case, the investigators couldn't find anything to disprove Tawny's story of what happened. They asked the investigator, James Ripley, to come in as a fresh pair of eyes on the case. Lieutenant Kyle Marquardt also joins the investigation. The two new members of the investigative team watch the videos for any inconsistencies.

They really try and read what Tani Gunter does and says, not just with her words. Their discussion is to follow. First you'll hear Ripley and then Marquardt. Sergeant Kyle Marquardt was right next to me and I said, you know, why don't you look at this tape? And he looked at the tape and he said, did you see this? I noticed that when she said that she heard the child fall down the steps and then she said, I thought I just knocked the wind out of him. They thought they heard Tawny then she said, I thought I'd just knocked the wind out of him. They thought they heard Tawny say the words, I thought I'd just knocked the air out of him.

Here, listen again. What do you hear? Billy was whimpering just for a couple minutes. I thought I'd just knocked the air out of him. I picked him up like this. I struggle with this because when I heard it the first time, I didn't know what I was listening for. I heard, I thought they'd just knocked the air out of him. When I listened again, knowing what the investigators heard, I could see where they were coming from.

Here's investigator Ripley again. She goes to the bottom of the stairs and says, I thought I'd just knocked the air out of him, which is not at all consistent with what she's telling you is an unwitnessed fall. And now suddenly, as she's recreating it, she's put herself in the position of being the person responsible. Ripley then calls Paige Bellamy. Remember, he's on the county-appointed team reviewing child fatalities. This is Paige explaining what happened next. For her to make an admission, placing her there with Billy at the time he's basically been injured,

was an admission of guilt as far as I was concerned. The trouble was that Paige's confidence had no evidential value. He needed something that could be presented as evidence in a trial. In an effort to convict Tawny Gunter, he makes an earth-shaking decision. To have the body of two-year-old Billy exhumed. This is Paige Bellamy again. I'm sure people had said prayers and placed him in a casket,

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by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. On March 11, 1999, a small casket is unearthed and taken to the medical examiner. This is Jim Ripley. I've been in law enforcement for 25 years, and when we opened up that casket and that little boy's body was there with his little blanket and ninja turtle, and it just took the air out of that room. Billy's body had been decomposing for eight years, which presented some challenges for Dr. Dix, the medical examiner. This is Dr. Dix.

Well, the body was intact. However, the skin and the tissues had degenerated considerably. As soon as I saw the fracture, I thought, this child didn't receive the injury from falling down the stairs. This was at least a four-inch break in this child's skull. And this is Jim Ripley to explain the significance of that discovery. The skull is kind of divided up by suture lines, and it had this significant fracture to the back of his head that went across the suture lines, which would be, I guess, comparing it to if you cracked a window and then you put a second crack in the window, it would jump across the first crack, which is significant. You know, it would take a lot of impact to do that. He said,

go back and tell the lady the facts don't fit the story. She has to come up with a different story because these facts don't fit her story. It didn't happen that way. So, State Investigator Ripley and Lieutenant Marquardt need to seek out some more answers from Tawny Gunter. Here's Marquart. At that point, we had no doubt that this was more than what Tawny Gunter was telling us. And then we had to take that information and confront Mrs. Gunter, see where that would go for us. I need to press pause for a second and check my bias. I have personally met more than one woman

who was wrongfully convicted of child abuse by inaccurate science. It's harder for me to be objective here than in most cases. I hope the investigators also check their biases. Just because a person is told a lie doesn't mean they're guilty of something terrible. People lie all the time to make themselves more likable to those around them. In this case, it's possible a lie was

covering up an accident that didn't look so great for Tawny. I'm not saying she's innocent, but just that people lie for all kinds of reasons. On March 29, 1999, Marquardt and Ripley interview Tawny for a long time. Lack of a better term, she was very stubborn. She was very difficult. I mean, we interviewed her for a long time, and the truth is, she got up to use the restroom, I think, maybe to wipe her eyes or something, and Sergeant Marquardt says she's not going to tell us. Tani returns from the bathroom and sits in her chair.

Then she begins to speak to Ripley. Here's the audio from that conversation. I went to the basement steps to tell the kids to pick up the toys that lunch was in the microwave and hid it. As I got around the corner of the steps, Billy was at the top of the steps. I think we both scared each other when I saw him and he saw me. And she sat down and said, I saw him go down the stairs. And that was a revelation because up to that point, her story was she's at the microwave and she hears thump, thump.

I kind of took him and I turned him around and told him to go back downstairs and pick up the toys before lunch, which is when he fell down the steps. When I see him falling down the steps, I went down the steps after him. He landed face up at the bottom of my steps and I went to pick him up. I didn't think he'd be hurt. When Billy got to the top of the stairs, you were directing him to go back downstairs to help pick up the toys. Is that what you told us? And during the interview, you said you kind of spun him around and that's when he went down the stairs. Is that right? Yeah, I'd kind of taken him by the top of the shoulders to turn him around. And I didn't I believe that version of events is possible.

Investigator Ripley claims that he asked one last question after he turned off the camera. She's crying, and I just looked at her and I said, Tawny, you pushed him, didn't you? And she just nodded her head, yes, I did. She didn't say I did, but she nodded her head. She faced a charge of murder in the second degree, which means that the defendant killed someone without any justification. The defenses most commonly used to challenge murder in the second degree are innocence, intoxication, self-defense, or lack of intent, like an accident.

That charge comes with a life sentence. Tani pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter, which is like an in-the-heat-of-the-moment killing. Voluntary manslaughter can bring a sentence of 5 to 15 years. I'm not very good at gambling. If I had to choose between a definite release date and a possible life sentence, it would be a very tough decision. Especially if I did feel at least in part responsible. Tani pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and the judge imposed the maximum sentence. especially if I did feel at least in part responsible. Tani pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and the judge imposed the maximum sentence.

With respect to count one the court sentences and commits the defendant to the custody of the Missouri Department of Corrections for a period of 15 years. I tried to find out more about Tani but very little information is available about her today. It's believed that she's out of prison, since her sentence would likely be up by now. She did pop up last year to sign an online guestbook in her old home of Concordia, Missouri. Mariah's mother, Amy, passed away on June 14, 2018.

I'm going to leave you with another mother's words. This is Sandy Blankenship in the courtroom on the day Tawny was sentenced. Tawny Gunner took from us something that can never be replaced or forgotten. The grief we have endured has been a parent's worst nightmare and impossible for us to come to terms with. It has been the most horrifying experience of our lives. We trusted her with the care and safety of our most precious son, and now we deal with the constant pain of his death. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn, Scott Brody, and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler.

Music by Blake Maples. We're distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case File TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at aetv.com and by downloading the A&E app. For more information on this case, visit A&E's Real Crime blog at AETV dot com slash real crime.

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