Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - EVIL-STEPMOM-TURNS-KILLER

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

Nanny cam footage captures the extreme abuse 9-year-old Emrik Osuna suffered at the hands of his stepmother and father. Police say the young boy was tortured regularly until his body gave out. An investigation reveals the boy, who weighed just 44 pounds, was made to exercise as much as 12 hours a day. Some days, he was made to exercise for 20 hours. The other children in the home, including an infant, did not appear to have been abused, investigators said. The video footage showed Ermik Osuna’s siblings, stepmother, and father eating dinner while he ate nothing. The 9-year-old could be seen sleeping in a hallway closet or on the living room floor as everyone else slept in their bedrooms.Joining Nancy Grace Today: Jason Campo - Chief Prosecutor, 107th District Court Cameron County, 5 years Leading the District Attorney's Office Family Violence Unit, Domestic Violence Task Force Dr. Jenn Mann - Marriage and Family Therapist, Host 'Couples Therapy' and 'Family Therapy' on VH1, "The Dr. Jenn Show” on Sirius XM, Author: "The A to Z Guide to Raising Happy, Confident Kids" Dr. Tim Gallagher - Medical Examiner State of Florida www.pathcaremed.com Dan Scott - Retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sergeant, 26 years with Special Victims Bureau Specializing in Child Abuse  Angenette Levy - Emmy-nominated Reporter & Anchor, Twitter: @Angenette5 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I vividly remember my children at age nine. It was one of the very best years where they could walk and talk and feed themselves, but they still were full of wonderment and believed in magic and everything was so incredible. That's why I'm really confounded to learn that a beautiful little boy, Emmerich, just nine years old, has been found dead. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Emmerich has been found dead.

The way his body was found, the condition in which it was found, is very disturbing to me. He was vastly underweight. He was pale. And he had trauma to his penis, like a rubber band had been tightened around it. And let me assure you, that's just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, when I would prosecute cases like this in front of a jury, it would pain me. I might choke on the words, but I would tell them every graphic detail. For your benefit, I am not doing that because the case is very, very disturbing. But superseding that, I want his killers to rot in hell. A beautiful little boy, just nine years on this earth. First of all, take a listen to this. Family friend Hannah Berry drove to the Osuna

home the night Emmerich died after receiving a message from the stepmother that the boy was ill. Around 8.30, Barry found Emmerich covered in blankets lying motionless on the floor. She told police that when she held Emmerich's hand, it was cold to the touch. The parents then tried to lift the boy to his feet to wake him up, but say the boy stopped breathing. It's now 9.40 p.m. 9-1-1 is called and Monique Osuna begins performing CPR, causing a milky liquid to spew from the boy's nose and mouth. I'm just taking that in right there. Your child's on the floor.

And instead of calling 911, you call a friend. You know, that's something for me to analyze, which I would love to pick apart in front of a jury. But let's move forward. Take a listen to our friends at KTVB 7. Meridian police say that shortly after 9 30 last night, officers were called to a home on West Broadway where they found the boy was not breathing and had no heartbeat. Officers performed CPR until medics arrived. Sadly, the boy died at the hospital. This little boy, age nine, dead at the hospital. Let me introduce to you an all-star panel to help me analyze exactly what happened and exactly what's going to happen now.

With me, Jason Campo, chief prosecutor, 107th District Court, Cameron County, five years leading the DA's Office of Family Violence Unit and the Domestic Violence Task Force. Dr. Jen Mann. You can find her at drjen.com. All spelled out, no abbreviations. Marriage Family Therapist, host of Couples Therapy, Family Therapy on VH1, The Dr. Jen Show Series XM, and The A to Z Guide to raising happy, confident kids. Dr. Tim Gallagher, renowned medical examiner, forensic pathologist, the medical examiner for the entire state of Florida. He is a professor of medicine at the University of Florida Medical School teaching forensic medicine.

He lectures quite often and is about to lead the Daytona Beach Death Investigators Conference in September. Dan Scott joining me, former L.A. County Sheriff Sergeant, 26 years with the Special Victims Unit specializing in child abuse. Former lecturer at UCLA. But first to Anjanette Levy, Emmy nominated reporter and anchor on Twitter. You can find her at Anjanette5. Anjanette, let's just start with the 911 call. Where did this take place? Meridian, Idaho? Where is that? Yeah, it's a small town in Idaho and they called 911 hours after. Who's they? Who's they? Monique Asuna, who was Emmerich's stepmother. She had actually called a friend first to come over to the house because she said that Emmerich was ill. And then she called 911. She

and her husband are there. know what hold on angie levy i just want to follow up on something you've just said i find really interesting dr jen man have you ever noticed in for instance fairy tales um there's always an evil stepmother we have an evil stepmother in hansel and gretel we have an evil stepmother in cinderella we haven't is there an evil stepmother in snow white i think it's the okay yeah. We have an evil stepmother in Cinderella. We have an, is there an evil stepmother in Snow White? I think it's the, okay, yeah, the queen is an evil stepmother. There's a reason that they are portrayed as evil.

Have you noticed this? Oh, I have noticed a trend. And yet at the same time, I think that- Oh my stars, I thought you were gonna say, I have an evil stepmother. No, no. But there's a reason that art imitates life. And I think one of those reasons is Monique Asuno.

Well, I do think that there are a lot of amazing stepmothers out there who are doing a spectacular job. Not my question. But not my question. I do see the trend, especially in Disney movies and some stories for kids. Well, I can see you totally dodged that bullet. And I give you great credit for that. But that's why people just like this woman, Monique Asuna, the little boy's stepmother. That's why stepmothers are portrayed the way that they are.

Okay, sorry for that deviation, Anjanette Levy. Back to you, the stepmother and friend. Call 911. And it's late at night. You know, another question to you, Dr. Tim Gallagher, medical examiner. Have you noticed that so many mishaps occur at night? I remember my dad was a heart patient almost his whole life, starting in his mid-30s. And I studied it and researched every procedure he was having

throughout his life. And I learned that a majority of heart attacks occur in the early morning hours. I've thought about that a lot. And I wonder if it's because you're getting up and you're rustling around trying to get ready to leave and go to work. And I wondered about the correlation between the morning hours and heart attacks. I've noticed that a lot of these incidents regarding child abuse, 911 is called at night. Have you ever noticed that correlation? Well, that's true. You know, we have a saying, and a lot of law enforcement people know this one as well, nothing ever good happens after midnight.

Nothing ever good happens after midnight. Okay, did you steal that from me, or did I steal that from you? Because I've told juries that a million times. Nothing good happens after midnight. Now the twins run around saying it. They're just 13. I must have heard it from a very wise woman somewhere. Dr. Tim Gallagher, there is a correlation.

So it's not just me. You've noticed it too. Oh, absolutely. When you are sleeping, your heart rate is very low. And, of course, you're horizontal. But as you get up and start to wake up your heart rate increases you now become vertical so the heart has to do more work and if you do have a pre-existing heart condition such as a blocked artery or hypertension or hypertension high blood pressure that's going

to become exacerbated or worse when you do start to wake up and that's typically when the heart attack what about these child abuse issues doctor um you know have you noticed that as the hours pass the emergency room line gets longer and longer and longer and here they're not calling 9-1-1 till 9 45 at night the little boy's already cold to the touch i think he's already dead most likely he is yeah or has a very very thready type of heartbeat. But you're absolutely right. I guess most people wait until the very last possible moment to take their child into the room because they don't want to be, you know, with this child who has all of these bruises on them and then charged with child abuse. The people in the emergency room have a keen eye in these cases and are always looking for signs of child abuse.

And they will call the police on very low suspicious accounts because they'd rather be wrong than miss a case. So they're very acute to looking for these types of injuries. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we were talking about a little nine-year-old boy. For some reason, the evil, oh, did I say that? The stepmother calls a friend before she calls 911 with her child, her stepchild, lying in the kitchen floor cold. With me in All-Star Panel, I want to go now to Jason Campo, Chief Prosecutor out of Cameron County, who is leading the DA's office in the Family Violence Unit.

Jason Campo, I will not belabor the point much longer, but I do notice an uptick in reports of child abuse as the hours go on in the day. You don't get a whole lot of reports at 8 o'clock in the morning. That said, it speaks volumes to me that this stepmother and don't, I'm not letting the bio dad off the hook, he's home too, are waiting until the little boy is cold to the touch and they cover him up with a blanket and call a friend. I mean, right there to me, that's child abuse. They knew what they were doing. I believe there was a text between the father and the stepmother at 5 o'clock in the evening.

And so they should have taken him to the hospital right then. I think they were afraid that they were going to get arrested and have to face the consequences of what they'd been doing to this little boy for all this time. You know, Jason Campo, I really like the way you think. Once you go to law school, and I really think once you become a prosecutor or at least a trial lawyer, you start every bit of evidence you hear, every fact you hear, you think of how it relates to proving the case. And you're so right. I'm talking about how this isn't reported until like 945 at night when the boy's already cold to the touch. And I haven't even gotten to the abuse signs yet. But the reality is to Anjanette Levy, this started much before 945 p.m. And we know that because of a text sent between the stepmother and the father.

Do you know about the text, Anjanette? Oh, I sure do. And it was at 5 o'clock in the evening, that evening. So you would have to deduce from that text where he said to Monique, Dad says to Monique, I know you're scared, so am I. And they were saying he needed to go to the hospital. He was still alive. The boy probably could have still been saved at 5 o'clock in the evening,

yet they still let him lay there, according to the prosecutors, for hours. And then I think that she calls the friend. I'm deducing that she calls the friend to try to set up some type of alibi to say, oh, I'm concerned. I was concerned trying to take care of him. So it's horrifying. This abuse went on for weeks. I want to talk about that text because as Jason Campo, chief prosecutor, has pointed out, it's probative. In other words, it proves something. Jackie, let's play our cut

25 from our friends at Crime Online. Police say the day Eric Osuna died, he had been struck with a dog leash and fed rice and water. When the boy threw up, he was then forced to do a one-legged stand. Eventually, he was allowed to lie down on the floor. By 5 p.m., it was evident to the family that something was wrong. Eric Osuna texted his wife to say they needed to take the 9-year-old to the emergency room and face it. He wrote, if you don't want to go, that's fine. I'll go.

I know you're scared. I am too. So Jason Campo, chief prosecutor, they're not worried about the little boy, Emmerich. They're worried about their own skin, saving their own skin. I'm afraid. I'll go if you don't want to go. We've got to, quote, face it. They're worried about what's going to happen to them, Jason.

Absolutely. They know that this is about to be exposed and that they're about to go to jail and that their lives are going to change. And when they had all the power over him, they showed no concern or remorse for him. But now that it's going to be about them, that's when they're scared and they don't want to face the consequences of what they've been doing. You know what I've been doing, Dan Scott, former L.A. County Sheriff Sergeant specializing in child abuse? I've been avoiding discussing the details of what happened to Emmerich. In your career, Dan Scott, have you ever seen cases that are so heinous, sometimes you just don't want to think about them?

Unfortunately, all the time. I have seen so many of these. Gabriel Fernandez was mentioned. This is almost identical, though, to Danny Hillman in the Lakewood area where grandma murdered her four-year-old grandson. It was a torture murder. And he was forced to do things very similar to this case. You're right. And the abuse went on for months. And the only difference is we didn't have it in a text that they were avoiding bringing the child in to get caught. They know that they're going to get reported for child abuse because they know exactly that's what they're doing. This case is

unusual in that you have a text, but they all say that to other people. Well, I couldn't take him in because they'd report me. You know what, Dan Scott, once again, you're absolutely correct. But the time has come. Our duty is not to turn away from the truth, but to face the truth and wrestle with it. I want you to take a listen to our cut 22 more probative evidence. As Jason Campo and I were discussing earlier, when your parents remove the nanny cams, there's a reason. Listen. Nanny cams document the disturbing abuse Emmerich Osuna suffered for months.

Meridian police say they were able to review more than two weeks of footage. In one video recorded the day before he died, the little boy is standing shirtless in the kitchen. He is balancing on one leg with both arms raised above his head. As he stares straight ahead, he wobbles to keep his balance and his arms shake. The little boy is painfully thin and his entire rib cage protrudes from his skin. This nine-year-old weighs only 44 pounds. Dr. Tim Gallagher, medical examiner for the state of Florida, lecturer at University of Florida Medical School.

Dr. Gallagher, how much did a nine-year-old boy weigh? I mean, right now, my son is tall and thin, but he weighs about 180 pounds, and he's only 13. At nine, I think he weighed about probably 80 or 90 pounds. Yeah, this child is grossly underweight. This child should weigh between 85 and 95 pounds at this age. So this is just an awful, awful visual of this child and very malnourished. It's just unbelievable. You know, there's something, I don't know how to say it, Dr. Jen. Maybe you and Dan Scott and Jason Campo can help me with the right words to verbalize it. But I prosecuted so many child abuse cases. There were times that, you know, when I would meet with child victims, I would hug them and I could feel their ribs like sharp through their skin. And there's something that is just inherently instinctively. You almost recoil because you instinctively know I don't need a doctor to tell me there's something wrong.

You inherently know there's something very wrong when the child's ribs are just sticking out dr jen yeah and and look you can feel the trauma and in this case in particular with this nanny cam footage that shows a child who is being tortured over time and dying on camera it is so horrific. And what you said before about the text message of, you know, the parents' fear of being caught also shows that they had a clear understanding that this was child abuse, that they had empathy for each other, but for some reason they had no empathy for this poor dear child who they've been torturing over time, which really shows such, I mean, it's just such horrific, disgusting behavior. And typically when we see this kind of stuff, and I know you have enormous experience with this,

it tends to be someone who either is a drug user or who is deeply pathological. But what is revealed in this is that they have an understanding of what they're doing is wrong and they're about to get into trouble. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Now you heard from our friends at Crime Online, you see the little boy, even in the nanny cam before they removed it, the ribs are sticking out and you can see that on the nanny cam. So given the quality of nanny cam video footage, it must have been very severe to show up on the nanny cam, but also he is standing on one leg balancing with his arms above his head. Why? Take a listen to this. Meridian police found Emmerik Osuna on the living room floor, bruised and without a heartbeat. Officers say the nine-year-old was tortured so much so that his body gave out.

An investigation discovered the child was forced to do grueling physical exercises for long periods of time, including wall sits, one-legged stands, and more. An average day, investigators said, would see him exercising for 12 hours a day, sometimes as much as 20 hours of constant exercise. Detectives say in the footage they reviewed, Emmerich is never seen playing with a toy, nor does he receive any affection from other family members. When other family members would eat fast food, he is not allowed. And at bedtime, he would curl up on the living room floor or be forced to sleep in a hallway closet. Guys, we were talking about the just heartbreaking existence that a nine-year-old boy endured before his death.

The parents, stepmother Monique Asuna and Eric Asuna Gutierrez, in my mind, must rot in hell. And that's after a little pit stop in jail. So far, you have only heard the tip of the iceberg on how the other children were allowed to eat, but not him. How sometimes he had to exercise 20 hours straight. Take a listen to our friend. Embrace yourself. Shira Matsuzawa at KTVB7. On the night Emmerich died, prosecutor Tamara Kelly says law enforcement found the nine-year-old without a pulse.

They say he appeared malnourished, pale, and covered in bruises and vomit. But this wasn't the first time he was beaten. The defendant told police that she would hit him with a frying pan, wooden spoon, struck him with a back scratcherer hard enough that it broke that back scratcher. She also struck him with a belt. She later moved to a dog leash and she admitted that she struck him with a dog leash because it was heavier than the belt. During today's hearing, the prosecutor revealed Monique would starve Emmerich and lock him in a small closet at night to sleep. She added the boy's father, Eric, admitted to knowing and observing the physical abuse of his son by his wife and admitted to doing nothing to save his son.

The prosecution says after the boy's father called 911 on the night Emmerich died, he then took down nanny cameras inside the house and gave them to someone else to hide. Police have since recovered those cameras. The judge set bail for both Eric and Monique at $2 million with a no contact order when it comes to their three other children who are currently in the care of health and welfare. To Jason Campo, chief prosecutor joining us out of Cameron County. Jason, most of the cases that I dealt with prosecuting child abuse and molestation cases did not involve denial of food, although I did see it. Also, I noticed then, as anecdotal, I don't have statistics on this, but I did notice

that even in very large families, one child is often picked out to be the scapegoat, to be tortured more than the other children. And that's what I'm seeing here in the case of Emmerich Asuna. That's absolutely correct. There's so much to unwrap in that clip that you just played about the evidence and the abuse that that boy suffered those last couple of weeks. The fact that they caught it all on the nanny cams is amazing. You don't normally have that kind of evidence as a prosecutor. You basically have his last two weeks of his life and everything that he was exposed to. And the picking out of one child, they actually have a name for that. It's called the Cinderella

syndrome because this is something that we see occasionally in these child abuse cases. And of course, for our viewers, if there are any, and listeners that don't know about Cinderella, explain. Well, Cinderella had her evil stepmother and treated the other daughters, the daughters that were hers, better than they ever treated Cinderella. She was kind of like the help and the servant at the house, and the other kids got everything that they wanted. And, you know, unfortunately for this little boy, there was no fairy godmother to come and save him in the end. I want to go to Nancy. Is this Dan Scott? Jump in, Dan. Yeah, we also call it the whipping boy syndrome where one is targeted. targeted and oftentimes some of the other siblings will participate in the abuse to please the the

main attacker in this case the stepmom because they know that as long as they stay on her good side they won't be targeted next so a lot of times they're forced to actually participate and abuse their brother or sibling. You know, Dr. Tim Gallagher, a medical examiner for the state of Florida, as an aside, now I say that because in court you have an aside or a bench conference, which means you go out of the hearing of the jury. It's also a statement made that does not have any bearing on the case in chief. It's an aside statement. But Dr. Tim Gallagher, after you deal with so

many child abuse cases like this, you know, sometimes it's hard to remember that I grew up in a really happy home with a great brother and a great sister and a great mother and father. Because when you see case after case after case like this, it's kind of overwhelming. When you see a child's body wheeled into the morgue for you to autopsy, does it ever just hit you like a ton of bricks? Oh, absolutely, Nancy. You know, you have to remember that, you know, your medical examiner is a person too, and they have family and they have children as well. You know, one of the, you know, and it does hit them emotionally. And I've had doctors who had requested somebody else do a case because the child abuse or the physical signs were just so

bad that they could not bring themselves to do it but we have to remember that in spite of all the emotion that we go through when we do these cases one of the hardest things is to remain unbiased you know we've had a couple of cases come in where it was alleged to be child abuse and the results did not support that you know so we have to remain to have a clear mind and not to let the emotions get it in the way of coming up with an accurate diagnosis because a lot of people's lives are depending on what our report says, and we have to keep that in mind and keep unbiased and fair judgment about what we find during the procedure. And Jason Campo, chief prosecutor, joining us out of Cameron County, I assume you, like me, I was often overwhelmed with the violence, especially directed toward children. Of course, you have to keep a clear head in court or you'll lose your case.

Absolutely. I mean, the things that we see sometimes, it makes it difficult when you go home to your own house and you have your happy house and to leave that stuff in the office. But, you know, the victims need you to be able to speak out. This is just one of those cases, though, that I think that, you know, this will leave scars on the prosecutors, on the officers, on the jury, on everybody who's involved. This is just going to be one of those ones that they'll never forget. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. You know, to you, Dr. Tim Gallagher, medical examiner for the state of Florida, you were saying that you've got to keep a clear head because sometimes it's not child molestation or child abuse.

In this case, this little boy, just nine, was found weighing only 44 pounds with trauma to his penis. Like a rubber band had been tightened around it after the stepmother and bio dad basically starved him to death in lockdown. Now, is there any way you could believe this was not child abuse? What little boy would tighten a rubber band around his penis so much the way this child was found? Well, that's a very good question, Nancy. And actually there is, you know, there are some digestive diseases where a child cannot absorb the nutrients from the food and they will be underweight. You know, so just because they are underweight does not necessarily mean it is child abuse. We have to eliminate the possibility that this person had a digestive disease such as

Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis or a problem with their intestine. And maybe that's why they're not underweight as far as what the really well what would you say about his body being covered in bruises and vomit dried in his hair okay that would be a different story right that would require a greater degree of explanation and it certainly would uh uh suggest that there had been some uh previous injury to the body but we have to look at and we have to date the wounds. You know, are these wounds that happened during one event or these wounds that are in different stages of healing that happened over a long period of time? You know, so all of these things have to

come together before we can submit a diagnosis of child abuse, which would be a homicide. Mm hmm. Well, all right. If you say so to Dr. dr to anjanette levy let me go to her she's an emmy award winning reporter and anchor anjanette i find the uh intense workout regimen to be abusive in its own right and i've seen it. I want you to take a listen, Anjanette, to this case that I worked on at HLN, the case of little Savannah Hardin. This is our cut 17. Last Friday afternoon, about three o'clock, nine year old Savannah Hardin comes home from elementary school with her grandmother. She was fine when she left school. She gets back to her house. And that's when investigators say the grandmother discovered that at some point,

we're not sure exactly when this was, maybe it was Friday, maybe it was the day before, the grandmother found out that Savannah had had a candy bar. Now, she was not supposed to have chocolate, according to the grandmother, 46-year-old Joyce Garrard, because Savannah had a bladder condition that they believed chocolate could exacerbate or make worse. So to punish her, according to investigators, Joyce Gerard began making her grandchild run around the house. And this continued, they say, for about three hours until she collapsed into a seizure about 6.45.

That's when her stepmom, 26-year-old Jessica Harden, who, by the way, at the time was nine months pregnant, called 911 and said, my stepdaughter is having a seizure. Medics come out to this scene in rural Etowah County, northeast of Birmingham, take her to a local hospital. They decide she's in bad enough condition. They're going to airlift her to Children's Hospital in Birmingham. And that is where she died at noon on Monday.

You were hearing our friend reporter Jonathan Hardison speaking. So they make the little girl, the grandmother. And by the way, mommy pregnant was on the front porch watching all this, having a cig, watching the step-mommy, let me correct myself, as the little girl,

Savannah, holding an armful of logs just to add to it. But listen to more. Take a listen to our cut 18. Right now, the stepmother and the grandmother are being held on what charges?

They are currently being held on murder charges. And what is the mode of murder? Because in any murder indictment, you have to say they're shot to death, they're stabbed to death, they're bludgeoned to death, they're asphyxiation. What is the charge? What is the mode of murder in the charges against the stepmom and the grandmother? This is felony murder on aggravated child abuse. So with felony murder, child abuse means that when you're not sure about the mode of death, you can charge a felony, i.e. child abuse, and the child died during the child abuse. So no specific intent to kill is required for the prosecutor to prove.

Now, there we see a bizarre case of forcing a young girl to run and run and run until she literally drops dead. But there is another case. Take a listen to our story of little Charlie Bothuel. This is our cut nine. Charlie told investigators he was forced to get up at 5 a.m. by his father and complete 100 push-ups, 200 sit-ups, 25 arm curls, and thousands of revolutions on the elliptical trainer twice a day, seven days a week. The 12-year-old said he had to complete the grueling routine in under an hour or he'd have to do it again. Charlie said sometimes he couldn't finish because he was in too much pain, pain allegedly caused by his father

hitting him with a PVC pipe on his feet. Those are our friends over at HLN speaking in the case that I covered. So, Anjanette Levy, joining us, reporter and anchor, what were the so-called exercises that were forced on Emrick Asuna between the beatings? Oh, it was awful. He was forced to do jumping jacks and then do wall sits for very long periods of time. What's a wall sit? A wall sit is kind of an exercise that you can do it's supposed to tighten your quads and kind of your rear end you basically it's like you go up against the wall and then you sit as if you're sitting in a chair and you make it so that

your knees and your legs and your thighs like it's a 90 degree angle so essentially like it sounds horrible well i've tried it i'll just tell you right now it's no fun um and i've done it in the past as a workout and it's hard and it's supposed to strengthen your legs um but he was forced to do that along with the jumping jacks and he would only be allowed to stop for a moment according to the prosecutors and i i just what i don't understand is why you would force a child to do such a thing jason campbell have you ever seen anything like it where children are forced to exercise which normally in this world it's applauded when someone over exercises but

you exercise children to death i mean i'm looking at a shot of eric Asuna right now. And he's smiling and seemingly happy. Apparently, the world had no idea what was going on at home. It's definitely something that you see occasionally. I think it's still kind of rare, the over-exercising. I think maybe it's a way that they can torture or punish the child, but without leaving the typical bruises of child abuse so that they can torture or punish the child, but without leaving the typical bruises of child abuse so that they can still have that psychological power over them, but not have the physical evidence. And I think in this case, I think one of the things that we have to remember is that with the COVID lockdown and schools being closed, he was at home 24 hours a day, right? He didn't even have that break of being able to go to school and get out of the house and get away from her because she was working from home and he was at home for school.

And I think that's probably also something that led or at least sped up to this end for him. Yeah. And also, Dan Scott, former L.A. County Sheriff's Sergeant, there weren't the safety nets you get if a school teacher sees a child undernourished, starving, covered in bruises, vomit crested in their hair. They, I hope, will report it. But he wasn't going to school. He was at home in the lockdown. Exactly. And teachers are very good at mandated reporting. And our caseload would always jump in September when kids went back to school. They're great. Anybody would have seen this. You know, looking at it from a doctor's point of view on proving child abuse is one thing. But any person that saw this child would have

suspected in their mind child abuse. The question is, would they have called? The teachers would have. That child would have probably been saved, although Gabriel Fernandez had school teachers calling left and right, and he still succumbed to the injury. So it's a tragedy any way you look at it. Frazier told the court Emmerich's penis appeared to have horrific trauma, like someone had left a tight rubber band at it. Frazier told the court Emmerich's penis appeared to have horrific trauma, like someone had left it a tight rubber band around it. This is according to KTVB.

We see also the withholding of food. And I saw that. Let me go to Dr. Jen Mann joining us from Sirius XM. We saw that in the Turpin case in California where the parents would, the house of horrors, where the parents would bring home pies from the deli and food and they would eat it in front of the children, but not let them have food. They would starve the children. Another form of not only mental and emotional abuse, but physical abuse because they're starving the children. They did that to this little boy, too.

Exactly. And it's food is a basic primal need. We we are wired, obviously, to need food. And when we are starved, when children are starved, our brains are less able to cope with trauma and stress. We go into a survival mode. I mean, this poor child just suffered on so many levels. And these parents just hit. I don't even know why I'm calling them parents. These people just hit him on so many levels of abuse, psychological, physical, deprivational, neglect, abuse, trauma. It's just so horrific.

It's just overwhelming. Yeah. You know, I want to ask you, I want to ask Anjanette Levy a question. Isn't it true that the father is now claiming mentally incompetent he's mentally incompetent to stand trial yes which is shocking because he allowed this to go on he's not accused of actually participating but he knew about it and didn't stop it how can that be jason campo he stood by and let his bio son be murdered at the hands of his wife, the child's stepmother. How can he now skate out of this thing?

The differences between what he did versus what she did, everything is shown in those two weeks of the nanny cams. I think him trying to claim incompetence when he was the one who ran around and collected all the nanny cams to give to the friend to hide before the police got there. Shows that he knew exactly what was going on. He should be up for capital murder just like she is. Yes. Now, in this jurisdiction, Idaho, I'm pretty sure there is a death penalty.

We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.