Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Shocking Twist in Baby's Alleged 'Strangulation' Death

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Jared White is accused of leaving his son in a bouncer for hours at his home in Clovis, New Mexico and causing his son's death. The baby died in July 2025 and police said a witness told them she saw White strangle the baby. But White's attorney has asked that the case be dismissed claiming prosecutors ignored autopsy results that show the baby was not strangled. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes over the back and forth in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/CrimeFix Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: John DayCRIME 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/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Honestly, I thought he was asleep. He was laying into the thing on the bed in his little bouncer. I swear to God, I don't remember. Light detector now. That was Jared White in the interrogation room after his little baby boy was found dead in his bouncer. I have a baby unconscious friend. I'm not breathing about our CPR. White was charged with a crime, but now there are serious questions being raised about what exactly caused the baby's death and testimony presented in court. I'll explain. I'm Ann Janette Levy, and this is Crime Fix. There's a reason that Morgan and Morgan is America's largest personal injury law firm. It's because the firm fights for its clients and they win a lot in court.

The firm has more than a thousand lawyers that have recovered $25 billion for more than $500,000. In the last few months, a client in Florida got $12 million when the insurance company offered just $350,000. In Pennsylvania, another client won $26 million. that was 40 times the insurers offer. Morgan and Morgan makes it really easy to fight for what you deserve. You can even start a claim from your phone. It's just that easy. So if you're ever injured, you can start a claim at for the people.com slash crime fix. Click the link below or scan that QR code that you see right there on your screen. In September 2025, we told you about Jared White, a 35-year-old man who was accused of causing the death of his baby boy by strangling him and then leaving him a bouncer for hours. White was charged with two felonies, child abuse resulting in death for the

little baby's death, and abandonment or abuse of a child related to allegations involving White's older child. But now there are serious questions being raised about what exactly caused that baby's death and whether the five-month-old was actually strangled. I'm going to get into that. But first, let's look back at the bodyworn camera footage from that day in July 2025 when Clovis. police officers went to White's home. 24 p. I need you a speed of response to the ambulance. I have a baby unconscious friend. I'm not breathing.

About our CPR. I was in officer mom. I can't office. My mom. It's my baby. And I noticed it flipped. Nobody was in that room either. Like I was in here with Jerry the entire time.

He's also a touch and let me get a free beat on it. Okay. Keep going. Yeah. When police arrived, please, he's getting him. I get him a little. I can't get him out of your baby. Or get him out of here.

When police arrived, that baby was laying on the couch, he was blue and had blood on his face and it was running down his neck. The cops cleared out the house. That baby three months. Corrections to be a three-month-old-old-year-old baby? Three-month-old baby. My dad is three years. Okay. He was just okay.

So can you ask me what happened? I have no idea. I was on the phone with my girlfriend. and he was good he had his bottle and everything she was just back there a little bit ago I went to go let my dog out because he had to go to the bathroom

and nobody was in that room there's nobody in the house besides me and him and I was on the couch with him he was fine an hour ago we gave him his bottle I went to let my dog out and I noticed because the bouncer

that he was sleeping in I don't know how it rolled Can you guys come on me over here real quick I don't know I just don't want anyone inside the home right now okay I appreciate it I was going to go over the horse.

And I told Jared, I said, you need to get in here because I think he's dead. And none of them, we was there an hour ago to check on him. And he was fine. He changed his diaper and everything. Okay, and he was on that couch the entire time? No, I was on the couch. On the rocker? He was on the bed and his little bouncer.

And that thing's never rolled over. So we don't know how to get rolled over. Okay. Do you have an idea on you, man by any chance? Yes, it's in the house. Okay. It's in my car actually. Do you have an idea on you?

Mine's in the house. I'm trying to get a hold of my dad. It might be in the house. It might be in the car. Do me care, man. Stay out here with me. Hey, I know. I'm not giving you my license number. Okay, I'll do that. Just stay out here. I don't want anyone to go in the home right now just because everything happened, okay? I don't want you to go in there or something happen. Dad, hang out over here by the car from me, and then I'll get your license number, okay?

There's another baby. Okay. There's another one in a number. Okay. Okay. Hey, where's the other baby at? Vasquez. Vasquez. Vasquez. Hey. How old is the other?

baby where's that out is there another bedroom baby yes ma'am hi hi yep i got her she's right back here she's okay does mom want her oh it's not mom oh she's not mom she's got a fool dagger so that gives you a clear picture of what police found jared white said he tried to save his baby boy he was in the bedroom and on his in his bouncer okay and then you guys brought them out to the couch He was asleep. I brought him out because I was trying to get breathed. As I was on phone with dispatch, they were like lightly push, well, kind of push on his chest, you know, not like really hard because of his size. Yeah. But give him a few breaths, try to do CPR. No, I moved him somewhere flat. It was like, okay. Okay. Until you guys got here. A friend and White then spoke to police. because he was cleaning out his crib and everything. So that's the only reason why he was in the bouncer.

He was fine. I went to go check on him literally not too long ago and let my dog outside because he had to go to the bathroom and I found it tipped over and him on his face. And he was blue. And I screamed and I ran over to him and I said, you need to come get your son because I think he's dead. How old is he? Like three months or maybe?

Four months. There was no sounds, no nothing. Anything falling? Yeah, because once he, once he fell asleep, I put him in his rocker and then I just closed the door and I let him asleep. These two that are in the home, the two kids? Yeah. Okay.

And then you both live here? I don't live here. I live over on Ash, but I stay with him like 99% of the time. Later, Jared White is in the interrogation room and he's adamant that he did not harm his baby. So you took him out, laid him flat on the bed, put a blanket over him, and then Jasper found him? I didn't put a blanket over him. Well, it was not a blanket over him. Who are you lying to?

No, you're lying. No, I am not. Obviously you are, because that's what Jasper told us. There was not a blanket over him. We're getting this information from Jasper. There was not a blanket over him because I carried him out of that room and met paramedics outside my house. Call my mother.

Your mother's here, and don't get a tongue with me, please. Don't lie to me. I'm not lying to you. You're the woman that's obviously lying to us. How do you explain the injuries under his neck? The injuries under his neck? That wasn't injuries. I'd love to know because that was dry blood.

That's not dry blood. What is it then? Because that's what I thought it was. It's strangled. It's something around his neck. I have no idea. I thought it was dry blood. I didn't know what happened.

I'm sorry to my child and you're calling me a liar. You're not taking care of your kids and that's very obvious. You put him in a freaking room. There's no way a five-month-old sleeps from six at night. All the way until six in the mind and next day. Did you see the condition of his diaper? No, I did it because I told you guys. He's been setting a shit for hours.

I didn't know. I'm sorry. I didn't know. I did not do anything to my children. I would never before my kids got hurt. And right now I wish that was me. What did you do to him? I didn't do anything to him.

I will take a... Polygraph right now. You don't have to act like that. Sit down. Quit calling me a liar. Sit down. Quit calling me a liar. Right.

You're not too. Get a polygraph in here now. Meanwhile, police are questioning Jared White's friend. She was actually watching the children while he was away. Jasper, he didn't. He didn't die of natural causes. He didn't die as his, he didn't die as his positional as fixia. It looks like somebody strangled him.

I had nobody did anything to him. I didn't strangle him either. When I found him, like that, I did not check his body. I went immediately to Jared and told him to go check his son because I think he's dead. I promise you, I did nothing to his child. Now, that woman would later tell police that she saw Jared White strangle the baby boy around 1 a.m. by wrapping him in a blanket and lifting him by his neck. That woman testified at a preliminary hearing last year. That's where a judge determines whether there is enough probable cause to send the

case to trial. But Jared White's attorney has filed a motion to dismiss the charges accusing the prosecution of, quote, intentionally concealing material exculpatory evidence from the defense and the court, as well as making a calculated decision to omit this evidence from its presentation at the preliminary hearing. The defense wrote in the motion, the prosecution violated Mr. White's due process rights, violated its obligations under the rules of professional conduct for prosecutors and committed a fraud on this court. Now, those are really strong words and claims. White's attorney claims the medical examiner found no evidence of strangulation at autopsy. The attorney wrote in the motion, at the August 4th, 2025 preliminary hearing, the state argued that

Mr. White intentionally strangled or suffocated Joseph causing visible traumatic neck injury. At the August 4th, 2025 preliminary hearing and over-defense, counsel's objection, lay witnesses were permitted to testify that Mr. White strangled his infant son. Now, you heard earlier, the police told White's friend that the baby had been strangled. Well, the pathologist didn't find that. The defense wrote, the final OMI report signed September 15th, 2025 by Dr. Helmrick and Dr. Guyenne found that the cause of death was positional asphyxia and the manner of death was accident. The report includes the following specific findings. There was no trauma on baby Joseph's body that would cause or contribute to death and no trauma of the neck.

Postmortem insect bites were present around his neck, consistent with postmortem injury. Soft tissues of the neck reveal no abnormalities. The hyoid bone in larynx are intact. No patechial hemorrhages were present on the eyes, face, or mouth. So what does the prosecutor say about this? Well, he says the friend of Jared White's, Audrey, did testify. to witnessing the strangulation, but the defense didn't object to the testimony. Defense asserts withheld information from the defense prior to the preliminary hearing. However, information was not

provided to the state until after the hearing was held. None of the information or arguments made by the state during the preliminary hearing were false. The prosecutor argues the cases, the defense cites, and its motion aren't on point, and that evidence was not withheld, and there was no breach of duty in the case. The prosecutor wrote, it should be clear that the state does not accept the opinions contained in the September 15th, 2025 OMI report and is continuing to investigate the matter. However, even had the state been in possession of the OMI report prior to the preliminary hearing, it would not have changed the outcome. Child abuse is the intentional causing a child to be placed in a situation that may endanger the child's life or health. Even under the opinion of the OMI report, the defendant intentionally placed his

child in a bouncer on a bed unattended for more than 12 hours in a room, where the child was being eaten by roaches and where the child could fall off of the bed and asphyxiate. Even under the scenario, there is still probable cause to believe that the defendant committed child abuse. Right now, Jared White is free on bail. He has pleaded not guilty to these charges. I want to bring in John Day. He's a criminal defense attorney in the Santa Fe area of New Mexico. I've actually been in New Mexico and covered some cases with him there. So, John, thanks so much for coming on to discuss this. This case, you know, I covered it last summer here on Crime Fix, and there's been kind of a strange turn of events. I don't know if I've ever seen anything like this, where you have

prosecutors who put an eyewitness up saying, I saw Jared Waite do this, strangle his child, yet the medical examiner is saying there's no evidence of strangulation. I mean, what is going on here? And, you know, thanks for having me. I have not seen anything like this either. And I've been a prosecutor in New Mexico and defense lawyer for about 30 years now. And I thought I had seen everything, which you have in this situation is the district attorney's office saying, well, we have an eyewitness who says this, the state office, the medical investigator, basically the coroner, you know, the agency that the DA's office relies on for any case involving, you know, a death, they're saying, well, you guys are wrong, and our eyewitness is right. And so we're going to have to try to discredit the office of the medical

investigator, our own state agency, with some other expert. It's, It's actually bizarre and it's a little bit troubling to see that the state has, the DA's office, has so much confidence in the credibility of their eyewitness that they would use them over the, you know, the medical investigators who testify hundreds and hundreds of times in New Mexico courts. That's what's so strange to me because they do an autopsy, and this is an autopsy on a child. And so, you know, autopsies, you know, I don't want to get too graphic, but they really go in and they look at what the cause of death was. And so they didn't even put the medical examiner up as a witness at the preliminary hearing. They put the eyewitness up as a witness apparently.

And so the case is bound over for trial. And the defense attorney is saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, motion to dismiss, you know, you're putting all this stock in this eyewitness. You didn't even have the, you know, you put, you don't even put your medical examiner or your expert up to testify to this information. I'm like, what? What is going on here? And if there were, if there were medical evidence of strangulation, wouldn't we, wouldn't that be clear on an autopsy? Right. I mean, sometimes, of course, we know that when our autopsy's done, the pathologist, the forensic pathologist can say, well, I can't make a determination. one way or the other, but this is not one of those cases. This is the case, if you read this,

the medical investigator, the pathologists, the people actually who are trained and licensed and hired by the state of New Mexico are saying, for example, in this case, they're saying the only, what we see on the neck is evidence of insect bites, but there's nothing about strangulation. So they're very specific in saying, this is not a strangulation case. What makes it so bizarre is that, of course, there are all these allegations by the defense that the prosecutor didn't turn over evidence, you know what also highlights the differences between the responsibilities of a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. Prosecutors have a heightened obligation, of course, under the law of New Mexico and the U.S. to turn over evidence that's exculpatory, that helps the defense.

And they're required to do that. It's Brady. It's Brady versus U.S. So every prosecutor knows that from day one. And so in this case, the defense is saying, you didn't turn over stuff to us. And then also you have the situation where you're going to have to discrerect. your own medical experts who work for the state of New Mexico, who you probably use in every other case involving a death. So it's a real weird situation. It's actually very puzzling why the prosecutors are going down this road. They must have so much faith in their so-called eyewitness that that eyewitness is a better witness for them than their own pathologists. John, it almost seems like the prosecution is looking for an ME.

or a pathologist that will back up the eyewitnesses account of witnessing this strangulation. I'm a little confused by that because even in their response to the motion to dismiss, the prosecutor writes, it should be clear that the state does not accept the opinions contained in the September 15th, 2025 OMI report and is continuing to investigate the matter. However, even had the state been in possession of the OMI report prior to the state. to the preliminary hearing, it would not have changed the outcome child abuses, the intentional causing a child to be placed in a situation that may endanger the child's life or health. Even under the opinion of the OMI report, the defendant intentionally placed his child in a

bouncer on a bed unattended for more than 12 hours in a room where the child was being eaten by roaches and where the child could fall off of the bed and asphyxiate. Even under this scenario, there is still probable cause to believe that the defendant committed child abuse. But that's a far cry, you know, that's a far cry from manually strangling your child. Yeah, it's almost like saying, you know, the facts don't matter as long as we get the result we want, and we're going to be open about that. And that's why this is so odd to me, again, as a former prosecutor, first of all, if you have that kind of doubt, you have an obligation as an officer of the court and as a prosecutor, you know, your obligations as a prosecutor. You know,

your obligations as a prosecutor are different than a defense lawyer. You've got to be, you know, doing the right thing here. And instead of trying to back up your theory, which, you know, is taking some hits, apparently, and saying, well, we're going to go find someone who's going to support what we say. I mean, you're giving the defense, you know, a huge basket of gold there because you're saying, all right, defense, you've got all these things you can use to attack the case, attack the credibility, attack the facts. And so if you're the defense lawyer, you're saying to the prosecutor, thank you. for being so open about how bad this case is and how much lack of credibility there is. But it's just so puzzling that the prosecutors are following that path. I mean, you know, they can do that. They have the power to do that. But when you have a prosecutor saying we don't believe the state of New Mexico's own, you know, experienced, well-trained and respected medical examiners, pathologists, we're going to – we don't believe that they're right.

we're going to find someone who supports our theory. I've never seen that. After this hearing was kind of held on the motion to dismiss, the judge granted bail in this case. So what does that signal to you? Because to me, I was kind of watching this to see how it unfolded. And I'm thinking to myself, this judge is probably like, we can't have this guy with, this seems messy. We can't have this guy locked up like this. you know, holding this guy with this contradictory stuff going on. I mean, that's how I read it.

Yeah, the judge obviously feels after hearing some of the evidence that it's okay to release the defendant from custody. You know, he had been held. In New Mexico, the presumption is as you're a defendant, you're going to get out unless the prosecutor convinces the judge that you're dangerous or that you're a flight risk or there's some reason you need to stay in jail. And in this case, it looks like the judge said, you know what, I've heard some of this evidence and I feel comfortable letting this person out. It does give you a sense that the judge's own view of the evidence is that this is not as strong in a case as the DA says it is. And it's one of the puzzling parts of this is that, you know, you've got a district attorney telling the court, you know, we're going to get up here and attack the state of New Mexico's own doctors. And we're going to say we don't believe them.

We're going to say that they did this, that they're wrong, that they're incorrect, that they don't know what they're doing. and that's bizarre. That's just weird. John, I think obviously you've prosecuted and represented more defendants in cases than I've covered, but I've covered a lot of cases over the years. And we know that, you know, pathologists don't always get it right. But a lot of times they do get it right. So I guess I just don't see the beef here that the prosecutor has with the medical examiner. Yeah, what we're not seeing, at least in the pleadings. Now, you know, they didn't put it in there.

We didn't see the district attorney's office say, well, we have an expert who says the medical examiners are wrong, that the state of New Mexico's pathologists are wrong. They didn't say that. They said, basically, we're going to try to find someone who backs up our position, so just give us a little time. That's admitting the weakness of your position, right? That's starting off by saying, you know, we don't have the credibility. right now to support what we allege, but we're going to find it. I mean, that shoots holes in your

case as a prosecutor, and I think the idea that they're somehow going to challenge the medical investigator, their medical examiners, you know, remember every single case in New Mexico that involves, say, a murder that goes to the OMI, office of the medical investigator, has the pathologist working on it, those are the guys who testify for the prosecution in all those cases. So in every other case, the prosecutors were saying, yeah, we vouch for the credibility and the experience and the reputation and the skill of these pathologists. They say that in all the other cases that they present to a jury, this is the one case where they say, these guys don't know what they're talking about. Yeah, it's confounding to me. And we all know, too, eyewitness testimony can be very unreliable.

I mean, there have been so many studies about that over the years. We don't know how reliable that eyewitness is or is. not. So that's another piece of this puzzle. Well, yeah, the DA obviously believes this eyewitness, who apparently was a housemaid or a roommate or some kind of acquaintance of the defendant is much more credibility than the state's own experts. And again, that's why this is such a weird situation. So it's a bizarre turn of events. It really is. Well, we're going to keep an eye on it and see how it unfolds. There's some time between the next court hearing and now. So we'll keep an eye on it, John Day, thanks for your expertise as always. Good to see you. Thank you. Good to see you.

A hearing on this motion to dismiss has not yet been held. The judge has called this a complicated case. Again, Jared White is free on bail and he has pleaded, not guilty to the charges. We'll keep an eye on the case and tell you what happens. 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.