Law&Crime Sidebar - Aunt, Boyfriend Broke Baby's Neck and Skull While Babysitting: Cops

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

After Kali Moore died in a children’s hospital last weekend, Memphis police arrested her aunt, Kiya Moore, 21 and her boyfriend Dejon Smith, 34. The couple gave conflicting statements to police, each blaming the other for the baby’s death. They are each charged with murder. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber analyzes the techniques involved in child murder investigations with former crime scene investigator Alina Burroughs.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Save money and time for your business today with Odoo! → https://www.odoo.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY 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.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Police in Memphis, Tennessee, say a woman killed her one-year-old niece while she and her boyfriend were supposed to be babysitting. We're digging into these heinous charges filed against the couple and how investigators were able to determine how the child got these brutal injuries. We'll break it down with former crime scene investigator Alina Burroughs. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

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The domain is free for the first year when you use our link, odu.com slash LC sidebar. Little Callie Moore was just one years old when she died last weekend. Memphis police say she suffered horrific injuries while in the care of her babysitters, her aunt, 21-year-old Kaya Moore, and Moore's boyfriend, 34-year-old Dajon Smith. According to investigators, the two had been watching. Cali since Thursday. Around 3 a.m. on Saturday morning, Callie was rushed to a children's hospital out in Memphis, and she went into cardiac arrest and died about an hour later. An examiner found that Callie had a skull and neck fracture, massive bruising on her back, bleeding from her bottom,

one years old, by the way. And that is when Warren Smith were arrested. So to talk more about this investigation and what we could learn from this, I want to bring in Alina Burroughs, a former crime scene investigator friend of the show. Alina, good to see you. Good to see you. Again, wish it was under better circumstances. Always. Before we even get further into the injuries that Callie sustained, in your experience, though,

is it immediately obvious in a case like this that there was abuse or can it sometimes be hard to recognize? Especially when we're dealing with injuries this severe that, coincide with what we would refer to as shaken baby syndrome uh those results can be immediate after uh the trauma is incurred and in the hours after so immediate onset uh four to six hours post we would definitely be seeing um some of these symptoms and and i think the age of the child right so if you were dealing with a six year old who had injuries and then it becomes a debate where they fall on the playground were they messing around but when you're dealing with a child who's one years old, I don't think it gets more defenseless than that, then it could be more of a

straightforward answer. Exactly. And when we deal with infant death cases, these are primarily autopsy reliant cases because we lack the physical evidence that we would have with other traditional types of crime scenes, right? We don't have weapons. They're usually hands. The infants can't run or move or defend or fight. So we really rely on the autopsies in these cases to paint the picture of what happened from a human point of view how tough are these cases to investigate especially you know a one-year-old yeah these cases are very difficult on all of the investigators you know from crimes and investigators to homicide detectives the general public right everybody hears about these cases and like you mentioned these are are particularly helpless

defenseless part of the population they're they're hard and I wish I could say that I hadn't worked a lot of these in my life, but I've probably worked 20. I'm sorry. I mean, I have no other way to say it. I'm just I'm really sorry. These are the cases that you had to work on. I want to get into the details of this a little bit. So investigators, they went to the home in Memphis where Callie was believed to be living with her mom, more sister. But there wasn't any indication that the baby was home. It didn't appear that there was anywhere set aside for the baby to sleep. And when investigators spoke with the couple, at the police station, they both reportedly waived their rights and then gave allegedly conflicting

statements. So I want to look at the affidavit of complaint that was filed with the court, and it reads, quote, more advised that she left the residence and left Ejean Smith with Callie. She stated that when she returned, she found Callie more unresponsive. She stated that he refused to tell her what happened and told her to say that she fell asleep in bed holding Callie and she fell off the bed and hit her head on the nightstand. So Alina, let's first start there. What do you make of that statement? Typical.

We typically see three things with infant deaths. We see the response of, I don't know what happened. I just found them like that. Or we see I left them with fill in the blank. And when I came back, found them like this. Or they fell off of fill in the blank, right? Usually a bed, a changing table, something like that. So those are the top three stories that are given in these infant death cases.

None of this is surprising. To be clear, though, even if we accepted this is true, falling off the bed, would that have resulted in these kinds of injuries that I talked about? Right. So one of the jobs of a crime scene investigator on a case like this is to document whatever they say in their statements that they fell off of and the distance between that and the floor. So they're taking a lot of measurements and they're also documenting the substrate, right? Is it a concrete floor? A tile floor? Is it carpeted? Because infants are actually a lot more resilient than we would think. And they are not going to receive the type of injuries we're seeing here, you know, brain bleed and skull fractures from falling the typical distance of about three feet off of a bed or changing table. That's a good point. And with that in mind, as I mentioned, we have conflicting stories because Smith's story, very different, according to the affidavit from Memphis police, quote, Smith advised that Moore was yelling in the back room with Callie and he heard crying, meaning Callie was crying, and he then heard Moore slam Callie into the floor, walls, and wooden furniture six to ten times. He advised that he asked her what she was doing and she stated nothing, but Callie was crying too much and getting. getting on her nerves. He advised that when he entered the room, Moore stopped and he observed

Callie unresponsive. He stated that after attempting CPR and putting cold water on the child, Moore phoned a family member and requested that they take Callie to the hospital. And he advised that Moore stated to him that Callie fell off the bed and hit her head on the nightstand. So again, that aside, the idea of falling off the bed and hitting the nightstand, that kind of excuse, this is a he said, she said. What do you make from that version of events? I think this is where the investigation is going to turn to detectives to do their interview and try to find out obviously one of these parties is not telling the truth. And we really need to find out who is responsible. But in the meantime, they've charged both of them for this

reason. And I would say, in my opinion, this other version of events, you know, it's, I can't, it's tough for me to say, but slamming the baby into different areas would be in recognition that the injuries were severe. And you need a good explanation for why those injuries were more severe than, oh, you know, the baby just fell. Right, right. And I think I've heard that the sister has even come to the defense saying, you know, that my sister would have never done this. And any of the bruising that you see on the back of the child was a result of birth marks, which are very common. It's called dermal melanocytosis. And these are dark, gray, bluish spots that are found more readily in Asian and African populations. And those are on the

baby's shoulders, usually on the buttocks or the lumbar lower area. So we see someone coming to defense saying, no, those aren't even bruises. Those are just this dermal melanocytosis, which is very easily to distinguish the two upon not only just visually, but on autopsy. And I'm sorry. from repeating myself, I'm just curious, what can the injuries definitively prove? How much can they tell the story here about who's telling the truth or whether any of this, any of these versions are actually accurate or both are wrong? I mean, what can the injuries actually tell us? The injuries are going to tell us more about the events that took place and less of who was behind the injuries taking place. When we look at shaken baby syndrome, which is a brain injury,

We typically see swelling. We see skull fractures. We see retinal detachment. We have some of those injuries here. The impetus for shaken baby syndrome is almost always crying, which we have already heard from one of the parties saying, baby wouldn't stop crying. And then this results as that. So they're going to look at that. They're going to see, are we talking about multiple fractures and where are the fractures? You know, fractures on rib cage of a child usually indicate somebody holding them tightly or squeezing them. We might see bruising on ankles, arms, wrists that might say they were being held by that body part and then trauma was received after that. So injuries can kind of lead us in a certain direction. But on the whole, the first thing we see is that the child has rectal bleeding. That tells us that we've got internal injury. And internal injury to organs is not always going to be a direct result of shaken baby. So I feel like we have more than that going on. And it does, in fact, to me, sound like the baby was forced against a harder object.

And just to amplify that, we have the brain bleed, a bruised kidney, high enzymes in the blood that were consistent with abdominal trauma, and blood in her lungs. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that just tells you the amount of injuries we're talking about the severity. of the injuries with a child, this would lead me to believe more likely that it wasn't a single incident that there were multiple types of forceful injuries that are taking place here. You know, the bruising of the organs and that interior bleeding, that to me would indicate a little bit more than just picking up the child and shaking them.

Yeah. And both Smith and Moore, they've been charged with aggravated child abuse and aggravated child abuse neglect and first-degree murder. And I will tell you, and this is a shocking update, we now know that Kaya Moore was actually out on bond on another aggravated child abuse case. Yeah, the details on what exactly happened. They're a little bit limited, but based on court records, Moore was arrested for a February 2020 incident

where she, quote, treated a child eight years old or younger in such a way as to inflict injury. The victim allegedly had serious bodily injuries and she had been out on a $90,000 bond, which has now been revoked, not a shocker there. And Smith, reportedly has two young children of his own, also apparently has a lengthy criminal history in the Memphis area, because in 2022, Smith was apparently charged with aggravated assault when he fired a gun towards his child's mother during a custody exchange. The woman claims that Smith was angry that she brought her new boyfriend to Smith's home to pick up

her son, so she sent her two young daughters to the porch to get the other child. and when Smith came out of the house, he allegedly fired two shots into the air, also pointing the gun at the girls in the car, demanded that they get off his property. He pled down to reckless endangerment, was sent to jail for a year. According to other court records, Smith pled guilty to assault with bodily harm in 2019. And back in 2017, he was apparently arrested for allegedly threatening a woman with a sought-off shotgun, believing she had reported him and his girlfriend to the Department of Child Services. He's also apparently been arrested multiple times for alleged theft of property.

So Alina, when you hear about this history and these rap sheets, how does that factor into this? We see shaken baby syndrome. The perpetrator is usually male, not always, but usually. I think we need to look at both of these individuals' background and what the commonality is that leads us to the abusive situation. So we see the female previously with abusive situations. we see the male threatening, firing guns at people. The commonality here seems to be impulse control and control on the whole. Because when you're dealing with infants, they, especially under one,

they're not going to be able to verbalize their needs. They can't say they're hungry, they're tired, they're thirsty, they cry. And when you can't control that behavior, you cannot make it stop. This sounds like two individuals that already have issues with control. Look, and yes, I know I will say this from my attorney background. There are innocent until proven guilty. I get it. But obviously given the gravity of these injuries, given the conflicting statements, there's significant evidence here, and they'll have an opportunity to fight this in court. But it seems like kind of an uphill battle. Again, what signifies to me the most is the helplessness of the child. As I cover a lot of these cases, that's what just stays with me, how young and defenseless this child was. But right now, both. both Smith and Moore, they're being held without bond. And a judge has told the couple that this could potentially be a death penalty case, which given the circumstances is not surprising.

Alina Burroughs, thank you so much for coming on. Good seeing you once again. Thank you. You too. All right, tough case, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us here on Sidebar. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. We very much appreciate it.

I'm Jesse Weber. Catch you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.