Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Mom Murdered Toddler Son, Tossed Him in Dumpster: Investigators

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

Jury selection in the trial of Leilani Simon is scheduled to begin this week in Savannah, Georgia. Simon faces 19 counts including felony murder in the October 2022 death of her 20-month-old son, Quinton Simon. Leilani Simon reported Quinton missing and claimed someone must have kidnapped him. The boy's remains were later found in a landfill. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes over the case and what to expect at the trial in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lccrimefix and access information about almost anyone!Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guests:Darryl Cohen https://x.com/DarrylBCohenMari Maddox https://www.youtube.com/@justice4quintonsimonCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 Georgia mom is going on trial for the murder of her young son after the boy's remains are found in a landfill. I have the sad details of the murder of Quentin Simon, the many charges his mom faces, and what to expect at her trial. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. When Quentin Simon was reported missing exactly two

years ago, people in Chatham County, Georgia rallied around the family and launched searches to try to find him. The story gripped people. A 20-month-old adorable little boy was missing. Now, if you're a mom, you know how it feels if you're in a store or a public place and you turn your head for a second and your child is gone. Maybe they took off to look at a toy or something and you get that sense of panic, that sick feeling in your stomach, and then you find them and it's all okay. But that's not what happened with Quentin Simon. On October 5th, 2022, Quentin was reported missing from his home by his mother, Leilani Simon, and her boyfriend. Here's part of the 911 call.

Can you take someone? Can I kidnap? I can't find my wife on your own side. I won't go because my door is open and his wife is in an empty place. You have one year on the side? Yes. please open the door. So you think someone broke in and they're inside the break-in? No. No break-in. The door was open. Was it unlocked?

Yeah, but the front door had bolts. Now, it's difficult to hear Leilani Simon in that 911 call. This is how the call was dispatched. Dispatched, Chad, on 7-2, 7-1. County West Sargent. We have a signal 56. 5-35, both calls to roll. 5-35, both calls to roll.

Complaint about her one-year-old son is missing. She woke up. Her door was open. He's unable to open a door. I think someone came in and took him. It's going to be a tan-skinned child with dark brown hair, green, blue eyes. Last seen at 6 a.m. this morning. Who did you receive?

It was Leilani, and her son is Hawaiian. Now, when officers got to the scene, they spoke with Leilani Simon and her boyfriend, and it was recorded by body-worn camera. I have a period, so I'm out before I go to school. Look, my son is not in his plaything. The three-year-old son's there, the daughter's there. But my boy, you're on the phone. He can't get out of the place by himself.

He can't. He can't even open doors. Yeah, I'm at work at 6 o'clock. She called me at 9 o'clock. And the front door was open. I said, he's gone. And she said about two weeks ago, she told us that she's seen a car stay down probably about two weeks ago. A massive search unfolded from there, and there's nothing more urgent than a missing child. People searched on foot and by air, and there was no sign of 20-month-old Quinton. Two days after Leilani reported Quinton missing, the police chief updated the county commission about the search. We made the scene, did an initial assessment, got our drone out there as quick as possible looking because the initial report is that he wandered off. Over that span of time,

we had aviation, mosquito control came out, helped us doing an aerial search. We set up a grid search, had volunteers show up. SEMA assisted us again as well. We've exhausted that grid search at this time. We have yet to locate Quentin at this time. It's still a missing person's case, but we are actively investigating this. Our detectives have worked 18-hour days since this has started. The FBI has come in and offered us assistance. They've been a tremendous resource for us. The murder of Quentin Simon really got me wondering, what do we know about Leilani Simon? I turned to truthfinder.com,

a public record search service and a sponsor of Crime Fix to find out. I searched for Leilani Simon to see what would come up, and the results I got showed that she does face charges in Quentin's death, which include murder and making false statements. Other cases also appeared showing misdemeanors like shoplifting going back a couple of years. Now, what's really great about Truthfinder is that it will show you address histories, relatives, and criminal and traffic records, as you saw. And you can also find sex offenders who live near you. So why not give truthfinder.com a try?

You can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to truthfinder.com slash LC Crime Fix and start accessing information about almost anyone. Publicly, at this point, there was still hope that Quinton was still alive. But as each day passed, the situation became more dire. The chief talked at that point about what else they were doing to try to find Quinton. We've tried to use every available resource that we can that makes sense within our scope of the investigation to try to get a better understanding of what's happened to little Quinton. Um, my detectives today or our detectives today are continuing

to aggressively investigate. Um, look at all investigative avenues again, working with the FBI, downloading technology, looking at that data. Does that take us in one direction or another? So, um, we hope that we can get some more information or more understanding of the situation as we go forward. But unfortunately, that's all I really have to report today. A week after Quentin was reported missing, the Chatham County Police Department posted on Facebook, We believe he is deceased. We have named his mother, Leilani Simon, as the prime suspect in his disappearance and death. However, no arrests

have been made and no charges have been filed. Quinton's body had not been found at this point, but investigators believed that Leilani had killed Quinton on the morning of October 5th, sometime after 6 a.m. The search for the toddler continued. Then on October 18th, 13 days after Quinton was reported missing, the chief made an announcement about a new search. A short time ago, we began what will be an extensive search of the waste management landfill located here in Seattle County. After every step we have taken in this case, the need for this search was based on where the evidence led us. We have spent the last several days preparing and deploying extensive resources to support

the search team and the investigators. Police, FBI, and Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents searched the landfill tirelessly for weeks. The search for Quentin Simon went into November. The chief provided another update to the county commission about the search. We continue to search the landfill. That's our primary focus right now. And these pictures represent, you know, to some degree, the magnitude of work. If you look at the larger photo with our officers accompanied by FBI agents, GBI agents, DNR, Chatham County Sheriff's Office, we're all out there dressed up in Tybec suits and vests and hats and N95 masks to go out and search an extremely large and voluminous area to look for the remains of Quentin Simon,

who we absolutely believe is there. So I just wanted to kind of capture a little bit. It's maybe hard to appreciate from the average everyday person the amount of work that has gone into and will continue to go into in our effort to seek justice for Quentin. Three days after that presentation to the County Commission, a grand jury indicted Leilani Simon on 19 counts, including malice murder and felony murder. The indictment stated the accused did make an assault upon the person of her son, Quentin Simon, with an object that when used offensively against a person did result in serious bodily injury, the nature of the object unknown to the grand jury at this time.

A third count of felony murder states the accused did maliciously cause her son, Quentin Simon, a human being and a child under the age of 18 years, cruel and excessive physical pain, and a manner unknown to the grand jury at this time. Leilani Simon is also charged with concealing the death of another. The indictment says Simon did unlawfully conceal the death of another by discarding him in a dumpster at Azalea Mobile Home Plaza, which hindered the discovery of whether Quentin was unlawfully killed. Leilani Simon faces a number of other counts, including false report of a crime for telling police that Quinton had been abducted. Quinton Simon's case has touched many people, like Mary Maddox, who runs a Facebook page about the case. It's very close to home. There's many reasons. I don't know. It just caught my eye immediately because there was a

missing child so young, so close to home. I guess baby Quentin's age. I had a grandson that age. They reminded me of each other. And I honestly, he described me like he did thousands. Maddox says her Facebook group is a tight-knit community and they want justice for the little boy. I couldn't believe it. I made the group and it just grew and then I had to make it private. It was amazing how many fans, voices that baby Quentin had. A lot of love. And she wasn't arrested. So that upset a lot of people.

I want to bring in Daryl Cohen. He is a former prosecutor, also a lawyer down in the Atlanta, Georgia area. So Daryl, tell me how challenging is this case going to be for prosecutors when they can't tell the cause of death for Quentin, as far as we know at this point in time? Every case poses its own challenges. This one obviously would be better if there was a witness or two that saw what happened. It would be better if after an autopsy they could have found out why this child died. But there's also what's called circumstantial evidence. As you know, last night I went to bed, there was no snow on the ground. And if you live in Chicago,

you woke up the next morning and there's snow on the ground. Did you see it snow? You did not. Do you know it had to have snowed? Absolutely. So that's what we have here. We have a mother who said, my child disappeared. And then he's found dismembered close to where mom lives. And her story is exactly that. In my view, it's a story. I think the prosecutor is going to have a very easy time of being able to prove that she murdered her child. You know, there's a very tight timeline here. The boyfriend leaves for work at 6 a.m. The 911 call is sometime after 9 a.m. that she calls. So we have a tight timeline here. And she's saying, you know, he they can't he's he can't unlock the door. He's 20 months old. You know, he can't get out of his playpen by himself.

And she is saying when the cops arrive, I have a theory. And she's espousing some theory. And so is that a typical reaction of somebody with a missing child to just right off the bat, I have a theory about what happened? Oh, my gosh. I'm a theory about what happened. Oh my gosh. I was, I'm a dad. If my kids going back many years, one of them disappeared for 10 seconds, I would be panicked, petrified and everything else you can say. I have a theory. How about, oh my gosh, I am just mortified. Oh my gosh. I don't know what to do. Where is my poor 20-month-old baby? Where is he? No, it doesn't ride. It doesn't ride at all. One thing that's really concerning about

this case as well is that technically it sounds like she didn't even really have custody of her kids. Her mother was supposed to have custody, but the kids were in her care. You know, it's just it's a real mess. And she went on TV and she gave interviews. Lalani did saying, you know, if I did anything wrong, I would walk myself right down there to the police department. But within a week, you know, within a week of Quentin being reported missing, the police were saying she's our prime suspect and we believe he is dead. So there was evidence that they were gathering early on that led them to believe poor little Quentin had been murdered, he was dead, and that she was the prime suspect. They just had to collect that evidence. And Daryl, they spent weeks and weeks combing through that landfill. How tedious is that? I mean, they were literally looking for a needle in a haystack

and they found it. Look what happens when investigators do not only their job, but they go over and above what they should do. The smell in the landfill, the mission they were on overwhelmed them. They found what they needed to find and didn't quite frankly want to find. They were hoping that child was still alive, but he wasn't. 20 months old, mom responds the way she responds. That's unconscionable on a good day. So she wasn't even a good actor, not even a good female actor. She just was a person who committed an evil act. And I would love to see the district attorney's case file. That would be so interesting. If this case goes to trial, there's a lot more that we have not been told. And as they used to say with the old

men's warehouse, I guarantee you. There was some reporting in the New York Post that I think put a lot of people off. And she was complaining to a reporter at the New York Post about the conditions in jail. And, you know, she's maintaining she's innocent, which she has the right to do. But, you know, she's complaining about the conditions there. She only gets this much time out in the rec yard or what have you because she's in protective custody. Probably doesn't bode well for her in the public eye. I mean, she's already this is a case where you have a 20 month old child who is missing. Anytime you have a case involving children, it really gets people's emotions stirred up. I mean, people were hoping that this child,

Quentin, would be found alive. And it really, really pulled at people's heartstrings and got people really upset. So this doesn't bode well for her in the court of public opinion. Is it possible that that evidence comes in at trial? It should not come in in trial unless she testifies and opens the door. Having said that, Savannah is a small town. It's at least in relation to other cities. People know what's going on. No longer do we rely on newspapers. No longer do we rely exclusively on television stations. There's something called social media and there's something called person to person. And let me assure you, the entire city knows that she's been arrested.

The entire county of Chatham knows that she's being prosecuted. And everyone knows she's complaining about the conditions of the jail where the last time I checked, it's not a Holiday Inn. It's not a Hampton Inn. It clearly is not a Ritz and should not be. Do you think her defense team goes with the theory, her theory about the child being abducted, that he was kidnapped? Somebody came in and kidnapped Quentin and she's being blamed because she was the mom and was the last person seen with him. That's a very difficult question to answer. I think if I were representing her, and I would not, by the way, I would wait and see what the prosecution has to say with their case in chief, their main case, and then I would begin to frame her defense otherwise.

And the reality is the prosecution has to complete their case by finding, the court finding, meaning the jury, finding her guilty beyond and to every reasonable doubt and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt. So if I were her defense team, I would think they were going to be able to turn on a dime and look for something, something in that case, somewhere where there are witnesses that don't testify in their view the way they need to in order for her to be convicted. In other words, play it by ear. Part of me wonders if we'll see kind of a Casey Anthony-esque defense here. The child may have died. It was an accident.

She freaked out and put the baby, put Quentin in the dumpster. How likely do you think it is that we see something like that? I think it's a definite maybe. I'm not surprised whatever her defense would be. And I'm still disappointed in the Casey Anthony verdict. Well, we will see how this unfolds. Daryl Cohen, thank you so much. Thank you. Nice to see you. Take care. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with

me. I'll see you back here next time.