Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Shocking cause of death of tot girl, Mariah Woods

Episode Date: January 25, 2018

The autopsy of little Mariah Woods reveals the North Carolina girl died from chloroform poisoning, leading to murder charges against her mother's live-in boyfriend. Nancy Grace explores the newest evidence in the case with forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, New York psychologist Caryn Stark, and Jacksonville Daily News Mike McHugh,  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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With the first order, you get an extra 30-day supply of Supra Beats free and indicator strips to check how Supra Beats is working for you. Free shipping! 800-516-0683 or go to nancysbeats.com today. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, channel 132. The search is still on tonight for three-year-old Mariah Woods. The girl was last seen by her mother at her home in Onslow County. The mother tells me she last saw her daughter in the home at around 11 p.m. when she checked on her. This is my world. This is my angel. She said her boyfriend saw the toddler around midnight when he got up, and she says he told her to go back to bed.

Remains believed to be the little girl were discovered along a highway. Now there's an arrest. 32-year-old Earl Kemery, Mariah's mother's boyfriend, no one is charged with causing her death. Kemery's charges only include concealing a death and obstruction of justice. More charges likely to follow and maybe others charged. We are not ruling anything out. Imagine waking up to find your three-year-old taught girl is gone.

You search all the bedrooms. You look in the den. You look at her hiding places. Then you look outside. Then you look in the bedrooms. You look in the den. You look at her hiding places. Then you look outside. Then you look in the car. Then you look around the yard. And then it sinks in.

She's gone. A three-year-old tot girl vanishes from the family home in North Carolina. And today, a bombshell that is cracking the case wide open. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Joining me, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, renowned New York psychologist Dr. Karen Stark, Ashley Wilcott, lawyer, child advocate, and joining me, special guest, investigative reporter from the Jacksonville Daily News, Mike McHugh. Mike, thank you for being with us. Take me back to the night that Mariah Woods goes missing. Well, it started on a beautiful Monday morning here in Onslow County, North Carolina, on November 27th.

The call went into the Emergency Operations Center approximately around 630. And law enforcement went out to this area. It's in a rural part of Onslow County. And they began searching for a three-year-old missing girl. And we were notified in the middle part of the morning. And I went out there, and when I arrived on scene, there was a helicopter flying over the house at a low altitude, scanning the woods behind the home,

and Sheriff Hans Miller was about to start a small interview with two TV stations and myself. It was 11.35 in the morning. Okay, hold on. Let me get my timing straight. Let me get my timing straight. With me on the scene, Mike McHugh, investigative reporter. Mike, you go there immediately when you learn the three-year-old girl is missing. There's a helicopter hovering above.

The sheriff is in the front yard. The press is there. This all starts at 630 in the front yard the press is there this all starts at 6 30 in the morning and that is about the time the 911 call comes in what do we learn about the night before when was Mariah last seen well that was one of the challenges the investigators had was to create a timeline and ask Pete and to find out when she was last seen they had gone up as a family to the Raleigh area where Mr. Kimrey's people are from. And they returned back Sunday night to their home. That is to say the two boys ages five and 10 and Mariah age three and Christy

and Earl. So the five of them returned back to Onslow County sometime Sunday evening. They go to bed that night, correct? Correct me if I'm wrong. They go to bed that night, and the mom, Christy, says the baby, Mariah, gets up around midnight, and the live-in, Earl Kimrey, takes her back to bed, puts her back in bed, and he comes and gets back in bed. That's my understanding of the way it goes down. And that's our understanding as well, too, as far as what we've heard and what they have said and what law enforcement has said. As a matter of fact, take a listen to the mom's desperate plea to find her baby. Please bring her back.

And I love her. I'll do anything that I can, whatever you want. Just bring her home, please. Safe as sound. She's my baby. She's my everything. What does she mean to you and your family in this community? She's like an angel. I had my tubes tied and burnt on each side. I fell down. I was pregnant with her. So we call her our little angel.

She's got the personality of make you laugh. She's goofy, outgoing, talkative. She knows how to make your day brighter. A lot to this community and people that are here looking for her. Love her to death. What would it mean to you to see her face again? Everything in the world. Just to be able to touch her and hold her and not let her go again.

Like if anything. Talk to Onslaught County Sheriff Department please and let us know and if whoever has her please I'm begging you bring her home safe. So we take it from there and then explosive claims arise. We learn that the timeline may not be as it has been stated. The entire investigation is thrown into, you know, disarray. The timeline is everything. To Joseph Scott Morgan, Forensics Expert, Professor of Forensics at Jacksonville State University, why is the timeline so crucial, Joe Scott Morgan? Well, because that's what the entire case is built upon, Nancy. Estab, establishment of where this child was, what time she was last seen. And also it goes to individuals in the future trying to alibi themselves. As you well know, over cases that

you've worked over the years, the devil is in the details. And people trying to justify their placement, the placement of victims, the placement of assailants. And it paints a picture when you finally get into court of what actually happened for that jury. And it's a very compelling piece of information. One other part here, Nancy, is if we're looking for a body, for instance, from a forensic perspective, timeline is important for us because if you've got an individual that is telling us something as far as when the person was last seen, but that doesn't marry up, for instance, with, say, the decompositional changes in a body, then you know that something stinks. When police arrive at the home in a very bucolic and rural setting, very low crime rate, they learn that Mariah's home showed no signs of forced entry,

no indication whatsoever an outsider had entered the home. There were five people in the home that night, as Mike McHugh is telling us. You've got the mother, Christy, the longtime boyfriend, Earl Kimrey, and the three children, a 10-year-old boy, a 5-year-old boy, and 3-year-old Mariah Woods. Why her? Now, according to police, the mom, Christy Woods, tells police, quote, the last time I saw her was around 11 p.m. Sunday when I went to check on her. Now, that right there, already, Karen Stark, a veteran New York psychologist joining me, right there, we've got the other statement that she saw her at 12 o'clock

when the child woke up in the night and wandered into mom's bedroom, right? That's two conflicting statements right there. I know it sounds like not a significant conflict, but it is because I can tell you last night when I saw the children last before I got up this morning. All right. I distinctly remember it. So how can it be when I put her to bed, but oh, wait, no. Then in another statement, it was at midnight when she wandered into my room. Well, that tells you that something is going on and that she's cooking up some kind of a different story. And especially like you said, Nancy, a mother would know when she saw her child last.

So she's telling one story, and then all of a sudden, she remembers, well, no, she actually did get up. You have a child that's missing. All of a sudden, she remembers that she got up. There's something wrong. that doesn't make sense now we know that it is the mother that goes in and finds her missing the next morning and very often to you joseph scott morgan that's where we start an investigation who discovers the child is missing it was the mother correct yeah? Yeah, yeah, it was.

And, you know, what mother doesn't go in and check on her children? And you can imagine the terror that rose up within her relative to this. And, again, this is the point in time where we begin to physically establish a timeline from an investigative standpoint, that's going to be pinned in time relative to the cops, because when the police show up at the scene, they're going to ask for clarity on this point. And I'm talking about the initial officers. I'm not talking about detectives. When did you last see the child? When did you last see the child? Did you get up during the middle of the night? Did you hear her moving around during the middle of the night? Are you sure about that time when you woke up? So this is imperative.

It is absolutely imperative that you establish this time and the point in time in which she discovered that the child was missing from the home. Then we learn the horrific discovery just a couple of days later. Mariah's remains are found. At first, not sure it was her. Face down, the three-year-old little girl in a creek, a creek, Shelter Creek along Shaw Highway in Pender County, North Carolina. The child missing since Sunday. When investigators discover remains, they believe to be the little girl. How did this little girl go from sleeping

in her bed, a three-year-old tot, every photo I see of her, she's decked out in pink, wearing a tiara or a headband and little fake earrings and little socks and shoes with her baby doll in pink and even a pink baby bottle for the baby doll. Always perfectly appointed in every way. How did this beautiful angel end up from her home sleeping in the room next to mommy and her brothers in the home? How did she end up face down, dead in a creek? Well, now an explosive discovery has cracked the case wide open. Take a listen to what the distraught father tells us. Have they told you how they think she was killed, Alex? No, not yet. As soon as they found her body, they rushed her to Greenville, North Carolina,

where they was going to perform the autopsy. And I'll find out further information on how, when, why, well, not why, but how and when and all that information. Alex, do they believe that Mariah was molested? I have not. I do they believe that Mariah was molested? I have not. I do not know that. Me, thinking, yes, I think so. I hope and pray not, just for the peace of mind, but I think so, yes.

I have not heard that from nobody because, you know, they're now just doing the autopsy, so I don't know. Alex, was she clothed when she was found? I have no idea. They did not tell me. All they told me was that they found my baby girl. They found Mariah about 20 minutes away from where we're at. 20, 25 minutes away from our home. Before we take you back on the scene and the breaking news in the Mariah Woods investigation, I need all the energy I can get to raise the twins, work all day, put supper on the table, and keep going into the evening when they've got all

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Then explosive documents are revealed. I have them here with me and they are defects. Department of Family and Children's Services documents where it is alleged the live-in boyfriend, Ed Kimrey, had been abusing, had been sexually abusing baby Mariah. How do we know? According to the documents, one of the brothers observed it. Not only that, there had been a previous issue where one of the brothers had been beaten, allegedly, by Kimmery.

And it all blows up during the search for baby Mariah. When her body is found face down in that creek, miles away from home, in the middle of the night, all H-E-double-L breaks wide open. Take a listen to what the local sheriff says. Today we reached enough probable cause to charge Mr. Kimberley for murder because it took a long time to do that but we wanted to make sure that the protocol was properly followed, that the report was received from the medical examiner and sometimes science takes a little bit longer so that was the delay now most citizens have been very patient with this but I think those who were not we would like them to know that we have an obligation we have a responsibility to follow a good protocol to make sure that we present a case to the district attorney that he can provide to court.

So there's going to be justice for Maria. Justice for Maria is something that was heard a lot in our county because this county came together. We've had support from the federal government. We've had support from the federal government. We've had support from the military. We've had support from the state. We've had support from other local agencies, law enforcement, fire, EMS, social, any kind of human services that we actually had, the business community came out and supported us because we were very busy and during the search we had intended to make sure that everything was followed, the protocol must be followed and it was done properly. So today we reached the position where we could charge the defendant with murder.

The defendant was already in custody, so he was not going to go anywhere. Will there be any more arrests? Well, arrests in our system of justice, an arrest is only made if probable cause is achieved. We have tried very actively to explore every lead, every bit of evidence was used and at this point we do not have any additional evidence that would lead to another arrest. That does not mean that this investigation is close. That means that we're just not there to make another rest at this point. Can you talk about how the mother, Christie Woods, has been involved in helping with this investigation? She has been cooperative and

she has provided information that led to this investigation. And again, to re-answer the other question about any additional arrests, this investigation is not over. However, we have to make sure that we have probable cause. Without probable cause, no arrest. What motivated, what prompted this murder? Well, that will be up to the prosecutor to bring out in court, and it will be up to the defense. So at that note, it's really a court case.

We have been very active with the district attorney's office. District attorney Ernie Lee has provided some very helpful information to my investigators. And he has all the information that we have. And he asked us to protect the court case, and that's exactly what we're doing. We're putting out to the public any information that we can put out without jeopardizing the case in court. And once again, the medical examiner's report yesterday is what led to today. Yes, sir.

We had to make sure that we had the actual cause of death. We had suspicions, but until we get the actual report, until we have the report in hand, then it's a suspicion. Were there any visible signs of a sexual assault? Well, again, that's going to be part of the court. And I don't, well, I understand that you want a lot more information. So we ask you to please respect us and let that case come out in court. Let that information come out in court because we don't want to jeopardize the court case and we certainly

do not want to poison the jury pool. Sheriff, your father or grandfather, obviously this case has become something that's not only incredibly taxing, but something that's stuck with you, I imagine, something that you take home with you from the office. Tell me about this case and how it's affected you and your law enforcement officers. Well, it was not only myself, because obviously this community was affected by that. Fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers. When a little child is murdered, and, you know, it's, if you're a human being, you have to be affected by it.

But not only that, this is the stunner. While Mariah Woods' little body was in the county morgue, we couldn't seem to find out the cause of death. It was guarded very secretly. We were wondering, what's taking so long? What's happening? What will it reveal? To Mike McHugh, reporter, joining us there from the Jacksonville Daily News,

Mike McHugh, this has cracked the whole thing wide open. What have you just learned? Well, we learned that the cause of death, what took young Mariah life, was chloroform toxicity. And this came out in the warrants that were served to Earl Kimmering. His arrest warrants, in addition to the murder charge, he was then charged as well with child abuse, inflicting serious injury. And in that, it read that he did intentionally inflict serious bodily injury, chloroform toxicity on Mariah K. Woods.

I got to tell you, Karen Stark, renowned psychologist, joining me out of New York, in a nutshell, I'm blown away. I mean, this gets rid of any suggestion that there had been an accident in the home and they were afraid and that they got rid of the body, which to me is completely far-fetched. If there's an accident, you call 911. Karen Stark, you lived through it with me when my son, John David, had a horrific blow to the head.

Yes, Dan. I don't know how I picked him up. I don't know how I did it and climbed four flights of steps with him in my arms with me screaming to somebody go get my car. I don't have time for an ambulance even. I didn't go drag his body off and hide it for Pete's sake. But I mean, my mind was open to entertain. There had been some freak accident and they were afraid they'd lose custody, blah, blah, blah. My mind was open. But this rules any possibility of an accident out. Chlorooform at Karen Stark that's premeditated

and it also this what we've learned now that there was a little boy her brother who actually is reporting that there was abuse of this little girl and And then you start to think, Nancy, what was going on in this household? Where was the mother? How much did she need to be with this boyfriend that she was allowing this or aware of this and doing nothing about it? Straight back to Mike McHugh. Also joining me is Joe Scott Morgan, forensics expert, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University. To Joseph Scott Morgan, explain to me the whole chloroform. I mean, it brings to mind Tot Mom, Casey Anthony,

who had been searching how to make homemade chloroform, and we find traces of chloroform substance, you know, related to little Kelly's death. What is chloroform? I always call it the knockout drug, but it's not to be confused with gamma hydroxybutyrate, the date rape drug. Talk to me about chloroform. School me, Joe Scott Morgan. In words, regular people like me can understand, Joe Scott. Don't go all Warp 4 on, you know, the technical

lingo. Go. Well, you're right. It's not GHB, Nancy. Chloroform has got a long history. I won't go into every bit of it, but just suffice it to say that when it was initially synthesized back in the early 1800s, people saw it as a way to use for anesthesia. But then one of the things they discovered with development of ether was that chloroform was highly unstable and it could be volatile for one. And secondly, it could be highly toxic. That's what we have in this case. And what happens is that it's not something you can just run out to the store and buy. Certain people have the ability to buy it, but it can, like you mentioned, it can be produced or synthesized at home.

But you have to have the ability to do this and the knowledge to do it. How does it affect a person? Well, I'll tell you. It has a direct impact on the nervous system. It also causes your liver to shut down, which is called hepatic failure. And it also causes the kidneys to shut down. And one of the things that keeps us kind of moving and grooving in this life and gives us life is the substance of potassium. And it blocks the uptake of potassium that causes the kidneys to shut down. It's highly toxic, even in small doses. And I can imagine whoever administered this to her has no clinical background. We'll just go ahead and say that and doesn't understand how it is administered and it goes to what karen and you were talking about just a second ago to me i like

to use two words specific intent why are you going to apply chloroform to a small child you know what's nutting me up okay i as you're sitting here talking in all of your lingo that you lost me after about 15 seconds i said how do you make chloroform and i don't know what happened after that that's the last thing i remember i blacked out on about your third sentence so i went to google and of, first I put how to make CH and it came up chili. Okay. That was my, obviously my last search. Now I've got to chloroform. Joseph Scott Morgan, they even have little tutorial videos. Look, Jackie, how to make chloroform. And they've got a big thing of bleach right there. I actually, here's how to make chloroform at home. You know what? If somebody got a hold of my iPhone, they'd think I was the next top mom. How do you make chloroform at home? Why would

anybody be looking at it? I've said that a million times. Why would you look that up? And here I am looking it up. You have proceed by using the haliform reaction of bleach and acetone. What do I need to make, to make this? this what are my ingredients not that i want to help anybody out but how do you make it what what goes into it well that's one of the things at home i was trying to avoid that but yeah it does require bleach you can use common household bleach in order to facilitate chloroform in a spray bottle is quite flammable. Can you just answer simply? This is now my fourth time asking you, how do I make chloroform at home? Obviously, I need bleach because I can see that picture.

Oh, it's making me go to another super secret website. Okay, I'm going to keep going. Continue with Google. So how do I make it? Is Google going to beat you or do you know the answer? No, I'll let you go ahead and run with Google, Nancy. Okay, stop everything because I've got to actually look it up now. What you need is acetone and a gallon of 6% sodium hydrochloride bleach.

I guess that is just very simply bleach that you use with your laundry. You pour bleach in a large glass container so you can see it. And then you add in the acetone. I think it's just as simple as that. So tell me, Joe Scott Morgan, in regular people talk, please, you make the chloroform out of bleach and acetone and then how would we find it if it's breathable if it was held over mariah woods say nose and mouth in order to knock her out to potentially i guess assault her how do you you find that postmortem? How does that display or manifest in a dead body? Yeah, that's why it's taken the toxicology to come back for so long.

Remember, her body was found back in early December. Chloroform is not something that you're going to look for on a standard panel, toxicology panel. So what they're going to have to do is, particularly considering that her little body was decomposing at this point in time, this is going to be totally reliant upon tissue samples. So they will go and take samples from the lungs and other tissues that are still viable in the body. And when I say viable, I mean like that can be examined even after this period of time and look for traces of it in there. And that's why it's taken so very long in order to get the toxicology back.

One other thing that people have to understand, chloroform is a naturally occurring substance. It's given off in plant life. Even you can find it in seaweed. You can find it in fungus. All these things that are in the organic world, you can find it. So when they're doing the examination in the laboratory, they have to account for the natural occurrence of chloroform in nature as opposed okay just stop right there a three-year-old little girl asleep at night with her mom and dad is not going to be out inhaling chloroform from plants to the extent that she dies that's not what i'm saying that's

not what i'm saying that's what it sounds like and she's decomposing in this environment which is a watery environment with fungus and moss and all these other things. And you have to account for that when you're doing the examination post-mortem. So they have to delineate between those two. That's why it takes so long to get these examinations back from the state crime lab. And they want to make sure that every dot and tittle is covered in this before they come forward with this information. That's why it's taken so long.

So the amount used ends up killing her. To Mike McHugh, our reporter, joining us from the Jacksonville Daily News with this latest discovery. Is this the COD cause of death? Is it chloroform death or was she strangled or what, Mike McHugh? Well, I think this last conversation is going through the supposition that the chloroform was applied to the child's face. Could it not be that the child was in an environment where chloroform was present?

Perhaps some illicit activity like we have in this area. We have methamphetamine labs. And if you look at meth. What would chloroform be doing in a methamphetamine lab? I think it's used. It could very well be a byproduct. Byproduct or an agent to purify, take out contaminants of methamphetamine. Let me throw this into the mix, and then we can talk about it.

When I arrived out at the scene, again, it was around 1130 on Monday morning. She had been reported missing for several hours. I walked down to the home itself. It was roped off of crime scene tape. investigators in white hazmat suits, top to bottom, crawling underneath the home, what would be the kitchen area, which was in the rear portion of the home. They would emerge from the house. They would go back under. They did this for two days. And I asked, I said, why are they there? Why are they in that type of suit? And they would tell me that they were there looking for,

they were inspecting the house, they were trying to preserve the crime scene and if they came in contact with any evidence. That's why they were in the hazmat suits. I've seen when the SBI, that's the State Bureau of Investigation, investigates and busts a meth lab, they wear similar outfits. I'm making a stretch,

but when I saw the report yesterday in Clorehorn, I thought it started to connect some of the dots that I had seen early on in the investigation. And let me just say this, this stays with me. It'll stay with me till the day I die. I was standing next to Mariah's home the afternoon of her disappearance, and I was talking with a woman who is the preacher's wife of their church. And Ann Edwards would drive Mariah to Chapel Hill for her medical treatments. Remember, the child had ambulatory issues with her legs. So she would make the three-hour trek up to Chapel Hill, North Carolina with the child, just her and the child. The mother trusted her with that trip. And so she would do this.

I said to Ann, I said, trying to get an idea of the layout of the home, I said, where was Mariah's bedroom? And she said, Mike, I don't know. I said, what do you mean you don't know? You pick up the child, you take her to Chapel Hill, you bring her back home. She said, I've never been allowed inside the home. Earl always meets me at the door. He hands off Mariah to me. When I return, I get him back. I've never seen the inside of the home. Earl always meets me at the door. He hands off Mariah to me. When I return, I get him back. I've never seen the inside of the home. They moved in that home in August. Before I take you back to the scene and what the sheriff is telling us, I want to pause and thank our partner making our

investigation today into the death of Mariah Woods, the three-year-old little North Carolina girl, possible. And it is LegalZoom. LegalZoom, thank you for being our partner. Everybody, New Year's is over, and now it's time for you to write your own success story for 2018. LegalZoom can help you do that. Make this the year you get serious about launching and running your own business. LegalZoom can help you rest easier at night knowing your family's future is squared away with the right estate plan. It's on you to take care of this. As a matter of fact, LegalZoom has

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LegalZoom, where life meets legal. LegalZoom.com. To Mike McHugh, reporter with the Jacksonville Daily News, that leads me to the question of the mother. How could she not know what was going on in the home, Mike McHugh? What do we know about possible charges on Christy Woods? Well, it's, uh, at the press conference, uh, held yesterday, um, after, uh, Timree's first appearance, um, Sheriff Hans Miller came out and he was asked that question. And, uh, right at the moment, there's no probable cause, uh, to pursue charges, um, uh, on anybody in the case,

but that has been the resounding question throughout the community, both with citizens and in the courthouse and everywhere you go in town. The mother had to know. This story exploded in this community. We hadn't seen a story like this since 10 years ago when Cesar Lorien killed Maria Lauterbach in his garage. And there was the same question that was floated around then. Christina Lorien, the wife of Cesar, had to have known that this went on in the house.

And that same echo, that same lyric is playing through the community today, saying, Christy had to know she was in the house at the time. Again, this is not a large dwelling with neighbors on either side separated by about 30 feet of grass, no foliage or trees. Neighbors see neighbors. And it's just hard to fathom that something like this could happen with not all the occupants in the house not knowing what was going down. It's incredible. So the two lines of reasoning to forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan are that chloroform was some byproduct of a drug or drug manufacturer in the home, or chloroform was used intentionally on this child to knock her out. Now, it seems more likely to me that if the degree of chloroform is so much

that it's found in the lung tissue that it was inhaled directly. My question to you, Joe Scott Morgan, don't you remember when the biological father, Alex Woods, told us, and I believe it's in the defects documents as well, that the mom knew what was going on in the home at the very least that amounts to child abuse or neglect that resulted in death joe scott morgan yeah she was exposed if this poor little child was exposed to this over an extended period an extended period of time.

But as an investigator, I'm going to say, so you're telling me you put the kid to bed, and you suddenly arose in the middle of the night, and you discovered that she passed away as a result of, I don't know, exposure to some kind of hazardous material? No, I'm leaning more toward this idea that it was directly applied. And also, it does not have to specifically be inhaled. It can also be ingested through the mouth. So it could be mixed with something. It's highly toxic.

So you would have to pick it up in the lungs. You could also pick it up in the lining of the esophagus, in the stomach. But it's going to take time, as I had previously stated. So let me just say, it's my firm belief there is no coincidence in criminal law. Kimmery allegedly sexually abused baby Mariah and her two younger brothers were abused, according to police, by hitting them with a belt, causing a bloody nose to one of them. by Alex Woods. One of the boys tell investigators they saw Camry sex abusing baby Mariah and I'm quoting the mother knew about

the alleged abuse and Camry's drug problem. So, that right there is a felony murder to me. You neglect or abuse your there is a felony murder to me. You neglect or abuse your child in a felony way, allowing your child to be exposed to sex abuse and drug abuse and bloody noses and beating with belts, and then a child dies? Yeah, that's a felony.

And I don't understand, Mike McHugh, why there are not charges against the mother. You're telling me she's cooperating. Do I care? No, I don't care, because you could take this case to a jury right now and get a murder case on both of them. Why do we need her cooperating? Why aren't there charges on mommy? What, mommy's going to walk Scott free on this queue? It's a question that's asked every time that I'm in front of Sheriff Hans Miller or District Attorney Ernie Lee. And the reply they send back to us or say back to me is that we have

one chance to get it right. We want to make sure we have everything in place before we move forward with charges. It's an ongoing investigation. It's the same reply that we get. They're playing their cards very close to the vest. This district attorney's been prosecuting for more than 30 years. He's a DA for the past eight. He knows the game. Sheriff Hans Miller is a much different sheriff than the sheriff that you spoke to, Nancy, 10 years ago, Ed Brown, in the Lorien case.

He's a forensic cop. He's a tech geek. He's a former SBI investigator. He's done these cases before. They're playing their cards real close to the vest. I'll tell you what. I appreciate that. I do.

I really do. I'm not being sarcastic, but I tell you what, it would be a cold day in H-E-double-L that if I had to drive the taxi myself, I would take this mom straight down to hell if she knew what was going on in that house. And these children say that she did know. All all right so this child this three-year-old baby was exposed to sex abuse to drugs to her brothers being beat with a belt the bloody nose and now she ends up dead mm-hmm and oh now granted Joseph Scott Morgan Karen Stark you know me well I've argued to many a jury that sometimes you got to go to hell to get the witnesses to put the devil in jail. All right. But I would not enlist Beelzebub. I absolutely would not. I would lose before I would let the mom walk after what this child went through.

Karen Stark, can somebody throw me a bone for Pete's sake this little girl according to her own blood brothers was sexually abused at eight before age three age three and under sex abuse help me Karen am I the only about what am I the only lone voice in the wilderness if the mom knew that she should have gotten that live-in out of the house with a butt full of buckshot there's no doubt that she should have Nancy but how many times have we been up against these kind of cases where the moms know and they don't do anything about it they are so desperate to be with the person that they're with, that they are willing to give up their children in order to keep the relationship. And it's not anything that makes

logical sense, but there's that emotional connection that you can do nothing about in these cases where the children do not come first. And what I'm wondering about right now with what you're saying is will she eventually be you know be considered a part of this and they are just saying that she's cooperating because they want more details on what exactly happened I can't imagine that she's going to walk away. That doesn't make any sense to me. I'm so mad I could chew a nail in half. Okay, Mike Mehu, I know you are not personally responsible for this, okay?

But you are the bearer of bad news. But for all I know, they could have a deal in the works with her for a more lenient sentence, not life plus life plus life, if she cooperates. But I just, Alan Duke, I know you're there in the background lurking and listening. Do you remember when you and I talked to the dad, Alex Woods, and he told us that he believed the mom knew about the abuse? Do you remember when you and I talked to the dad, Alex Woods, and he told us that he believed the mom knew about the abuse? Do you remember that? I remember it well, yes. I remember it too.

I just don't see how this cannot be a charge on her. Now, Joe Scott Morgan, I keep asking you, begging you to dummy down for me. But let me try it one more time. Joseph Scott Morgan. to dummy down for me but let me try it one more time joseph scott morgan how are the ways i'm understanding you're saying there's two ways that chloroform can appear in a child's dead body in the tissue and you were saying by direct inhalation such as someone holding it over her nose or mouth yes like in what this state said in Totmom or did you say appearing naturally because I find that pretty hard to believe you suck in enough chloroform you die naturally no what I'm saying is is that it occurs it's a naturally occurring organic compound in nature

it's given off by by moss fungi all other things and okay are you suggesting mariah was out on a nature walk that night at midnight and she sucked in some chloroform from a fungi i.e a mushroom no okay that's what i say talk regular talk how else could she have it in her lung tissue well she if it's in her lung tissue what i'm saying is just as i had previously stated that my try to act all calm to make me sound crazy okay i know you're game joe scott back to how could she get it in her body uh it would most likely as far as i'm concerned it would be through uh inhalation what you would have me through all this when at the very beginning i said somebody held it over her mouth and nose i.e. Kimmery not somebodymery, and now you start talking about funguses

and naturally appearing and all that. You believe she inhaled it directly? I believe that that's a possibility, yes. I'm taking you to the woodshed if I can only get my hands on you. Mike McHugh, reporter at Jacksonville Daily News. I'll send you my address.

Oh, I know where you live. Mike, what's happening now? Yes, Nancy. Please, what's happening now? Because I am not going to be able to put my head on the pillow knowing that the mom allegedly allowed her tot to live this way. And now the baby's dead. And because she starts gabbing to police she's gonna walk scot-free the as what the district attorney and the sheriff's office

continues to report it's an ongoing investigation but in the meantime with mr. Kimmery housed in the Onslaught County Jail under no bond the district attorney told me yesterday that he's going to try to get him into the grand jury February. That's the next time they convene here. And then once they come out of the grand jury, if they have an indictment, which they should have an indictment, they have a small window for a Rule 24 hearing to see whether or not they proceed with capital charges. And you know how that works. It's, I believe, a 10-day window after the indictment, I'm sorry, or hand it down, that they go through that process.

On Mr. Kimmery's front, he also has a court date of April 2nd for the first charges leveled against him on December 1st, and that was the felony disposing of a body that died upon natural causes. That set the wheels in motion for the discovery of the body the following day on December 2nd. So he's got a busy winter and spring ahead of him. And in the meantime, Christy Woods is free, and she is somewhere in the Onslow community. We're not certain where. We do believe at the home in which this all occurred, she is no longer residing

there. I was out front of the home several times in the ensuing days after the discovery of the body. And Christy would come by the home, drop in for maybe 10 minutes or so and pick up items and leave, usually driven by somebody else. And I would approach the vehicle in which she arrived and they would have no comment. They'd roll the windows up, tell me to scram off the property. So I'd go across the street and observe. But she would walk out of the house, hands over her head, her hoodie pulled over her face, and she would go back into the vehicle in which she arrived, and they would drive off. So it's a tragic, sad case.

Where is Camry being held? He is held. I'm actually parked outside the shadow of the jail. He's in the Onslaught County Jail, which is in the Justice Complex where the sheriff's office is housed and the magistrate's office. It's all in one square block. The DA's across the street.

The courts are just across the street. So that's the local jailhouse, which is a far cry from the penitentiary. What do we know about how he's being held? Is he in a single cell? I'm not certain of the arrangement of the cell, though he is being – it was mentioned yesterday, and I don't know the exact words that Sheriff Hans Miller used, but that question was brought up in the 10-minute presser yesterday about Mr. Kimmery in the jail. They're looking out for his safety, as they do with all inmates. But he was pressed, the sheriff was, why he was afforded more security. You remember his first court appearance when he appeared

in court on the December, in December 4th, he came into the district court for first appearance wearing underneath his orange jumpsuit a bullet resistant vest for his own safety, the sheriff told us afterwards. We've never had incidents here in the courtrooms with any type of violence other than maybe a scuffle or two, but that was very unusual out of the protocol of most first appearances. His first appearance yesterday, he appeared in the same courtroom, in the same jumpsuit, but without the body armor. I'm just wondering if he is with a cellmate to whom he may talk. The Onslow County Jail there in Jacksonville, North Carolina, with me on the scene, Mike McHugh, reporter with the Jacksonville Daily News. You're saying that right now she, the mother, is still walking free. Christy Woods is a free woman.

She's walking the streets of Onslaught County, Jacksonville, wherever she chooses to go. She is not in custody. As what Sheriff Hans Miller said yesterday in his press conference, that she is cooperating, and she has cooperated throughout the ongoing investigation. I bet she is. I did not see this coming. A three-year-old girl found dead face down in a creek. The timelines don't fit. We don't know what happened.

Days pass, weeks pass. They won't give us a cause of death. We speculated why, and now we know. It was not due to delay on their part. Very sensitive and complex testing was done on this child's lung tissue, and now we know this little girl, likely sex molested, this three-year-old tot dead of chloroform toxicity in her little body. Ed Kimring being held. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend.

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