Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Missing Baby Boy Beaten and Hung Prior to Tragic Death: DA

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A vehicle crash leads to an investigation into a missing child and how he disappeared. I go through the graphic details of what detectives say happened in the case of Caleb Collins and his family. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy.

Starting point is 00:00:26 I want to tell you what you are going to hear about the little boy in this case is so incredibly disturbing. It's heartbreaking. So I just want to warn you. This all started last month when a truck crashed in Winfield, Alabama. A father and his daughter were killed and the little girl's mother was critically injured. But sheriff's deputies would learn that one family member, a one-year-old boy, was missing. On December 8th, a crash report said that Stephen Collins was driving 92 miles per hour when he lost control of the truck and crashed into a tree. Collins was thrown from the truck and died at the hospital, while his two-year-old daughter, Riley, was also killed

Starting point is 00:01:05 because she wasn't strapped into the back seat. The mother, Wendy Pam Bailey, was sitting in the front passenger seat and was critically injured. Now, when family members living out of state heard about the crash, they were incredibly concerned because there was no mention of the youngest member of the family, Caleb Collins, who was only one. Where was Caleb? Deputies started looking, and what deputies found is hard to describe. Late last month, Pam Bailey was arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse, first-degree domestic violence, and abuse of a corpse related to what happened to Caleb. Investigators believe that Caleb is dead and that he has been since July of 2024,

Starting point is 00:01:45 and they say his mother did nothing to protect him, to save her baby boy. According to the complaint, she recklessly engaged in conduct, which created a grave risk of death to Caleb Rowan Collins after being notified by Stephen Collins via message that he was going to kill Caleb. These photos depicted Caleb hanging aloft with a rope with blood present on his body and lying supine on the floor with extreme bruising present on his body. Following the photos, Stephen stated, he won't move. I'm so sorry. To which Pam responded, he just looks wore out and tired and hurt. Hopefully that's all. Unbelievable.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Detectives go on to say that Bailey disposed of Caleb's body. The complaint states the toddler's corpse was treated in a way that outraged ordinary family sensibilities by placing Caleb's body into a bag and stored it in an outside storage building for a brief period prior to final disposal at an unknown location. Before Pam Bailey was taken into custody, the children's grandfather, John Elton Bailey, was arrested for failure to report a missing child. According to family members, he was living at his daughter's home around the same time Caleb was murdered. The criminal complaint mentions that no resident in the home reported physical injuries to the child or that the child was removed from the house and taken to an unknown location. More than a week after the crash, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency issued an emergency missing child alert.

Starting point is 00:03:15 The alert lists September 4th as the last time Caleb was seen, but court documents indicate that the abuse that ended Caleb's life was in July, three months earlier. So it's not clear why September was listed on the missing persons poster. And now it's only Pam who could face the consequences of causing the death of her two children since Stephen Collins died in the truck crash. You know, I've covered a lot of big cases over the years, everything from the Stephen Avery case to Johnny Depp, Alec Murdoch, and Luigi Mangione. So I know that some outlets can be a little bit slanted. That's why I want to tell you about Straight Arrow News, an app and website that's focused on objective reporting. I'm always researching for crime fix. So I take a look at Straight Arrow News for unbiased reporting to just get the facts.

Starting point is 00:04:01 The site has great tools like the media landscape, which shows you where outlets fall on the political spectrum and the media mist tool, highlighting stories mainstream media might be skipping. You can also check out Straight Arrow News for yourself for free by downloading the app with the QR code on your screen or by clicking our link, sand.com slash crime fix in the description.

Starting point is 00:04:23 Supporting Sand means supporting journalists like us committed to delivering the truth. I want to bring in Marion Bracha. She is a professor of law at Temple University School of Law and also a former prosecutor. Marion, we were just talking before we started here about how bad the allegations in this case are. I mean, this is a one-year-old little boy, and the treatment that he received from his father, according to these court documents, is just beyond the pale. It's abhorrent. It's appalling. I think while trying to retain some sense of objectivity to kind of look at the evidence and look at what needs to be proven. I'm trying to temper some of that with the more perhaps maternal responses

Starting point is 00:05:16 that I get to the, that I have to the information in this case. But I think the word to describe how this child was abused and treated is just sheer disgusting, disgustingly. abused this. I mean, he's a baby. He's a one-year-old baby, totally incapable of defending himself, doing anything for himself. And the mother, according to the text messages cited in the documents, was fully aware of what was going on and thought, oh, maybe he's just a little bit hurt, according to what was written. So they cannot find his body. They cannot find Caleb's body. So they believe he was buried somewhere. There have been some local news reports that the sheriff's office and others have been digging up some areas trying to find this poor baby's body. We know that that doesn't keep a case from going forward,

Starting point is 00:06:27 though. Obviously, they're going to want to have his remains, but they can still move forward with a prosecution without it. Sure. Right. Caleb is presumed deceased, and that is certainly likely the case. No one has seen him since the summer of 2024. And it only came to light that no one had seen him for weeks when there was the car accident that brought the mother of this baby into contact with authorities. What concerns me most about locating the body, locating any remains of Caleb, is that Fayette County, Alabama is a highly rural area. If you look at it on the map, it is not at all densely populated. The population of the whole county is somewhere less than 17,000 people. If you look at the satellite, at the aerial view of it,

Starting point is 00:07:19 it is almost entirely green, meaning it is so rural and covered in undeveloped land that there is a significant area to search for Caleb or any remains that would lead to him. There are some bodies of water in the area, which also concerns me. One of the more disturbing details was that his body was just stored in a bag near an outside storage container for a period of time. And from there, who knows what atrocities were perpetrated against this child when finally mercifully deceased. You know, Pam Bailey, she is in jail right now. She's facing very serious charges, but her father is also in jail. And he's accused of not reporting, you know, a child being missing. He was apparently living with them. You know, they're not saying anything.

Starting point is 00:08:17 I've reached out to the sheriff's office. They have not called me back, you know, trying to get some more information about what's going on here and where where they stand in this investigation and where they are in the process. Obviously, the only person who can be charged has been charged. But they do you think they are trying to put some pressure on Grandpa here, John Bailey, to to possibly tell what he knows, because he apparently was living with them at the time. They obviously probably think that he knows something. Right. I think that's probably right. And my question would be, though, what is the extent of his knowledge?

Starting point is 00:08:59 If he was living with them and had contact with Caleb, saw that at one point in time, Caleb was a living, breathing child, was occupying the residence with them. And then at some point in time, Caleb was not, again, seen or heard from. Now, was John Bailey there for the abuse? Was he there to see what was happening to the 15-month-old Caleb? That is a question that might trigger some additional charges. But really, the question is, why? Why wouldn't any of the adults in this baby's life do the right thing by him, defend him, nurture him, care for him, even hand him over to the authorities, put him up for adoption if he couldn't be cared for?

Starting point is 00:09:45 Why was this child subjected to a life of such grotesque abuse and horror for the short 15 months that he was on this earth? That's really the question. And it's stunning because obviously, Pam Bailey, according to the documents, according to what's alleged, she's innocent until proven guilty. She was aware of what was going on. She was sent photos. She was sent text messages. And it's just beyond belief as a mom that you would be aware of any of that going on and you wouldn't do something. Certainly. Yeah. And I think that that's probably why you and I especially are having a hard time talking about this case today because it just triggers everything that you know in your core and your soul about being a mom, about having some maternal instinct to protect and to care

Starting point is 00:10:39 for this young child. Having to put my prosecutor hat on for a moment, though, I'd have to consider what the basis of charges would be. You're absolutely right that there were communications between the father and between the mother, that there was disclosure about the abuse that had happened. There was even disclosure from Stephen Bailey saying that he was going to kill the child, so there was some statement of intent ahead of time. When I consider a conspiracy charge, though, if I were to consider these two acting in concert, acting together, what would need to be proven to a fact finder would be a meeting of the minds,

Starting point is 00:11:17 would be an agreement beforehand to take some substantial step together to accomplish an end. To say that the mother knew that this abuse was happening, unfortunately, in the eyes of the law, doesn't necessarily mean that she participated in the object of that conspiracy. So in order to charge her, I think prosecutors would have to consider how much involvement she had or if she had any involvement in taking that substantial step toward committing the abuse herself. Knowing about it, not doing anything about it, I think prosecutors would have to look at the Alabama statutes to see how far they could interpret the statutes to see if her knowledge and then her, frankly, her neglect of duty as a parent

Starting point is 00:12:07 would be enough to rise to the level of a homicide or a murder charge. Well, you know, she was arrested last week or, you know, arrested on charges, put in jail last week. The case will likely go to a grand jury. So the investigation is still underway. We will have to wait and see what comes of it. Marian Bracha, thank you so much as always. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Anjanette. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Missing Baby Boy Beaten and Hung Prior to Tragic Death: DA

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Missing Baby Boy Beaten and Hung Prior to Tragic Death: DA

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