Suspicion - S1 Death in a Small Town | E5 A Mother Fights Back

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

What is normal behaviour when your child is dying? Rose-Anne and Kent confront doctors and learn what they were saying behind their back. Rose-Anne digs deeper and discovers missed clues. Audio sources: Toronto Star, CTV News London

The Billionaire Murders is brought to you by Havelock Metal, the only roof and siding you'll ever need. The following content contains discussions of child injury and death, including frank discussions and displays of emotion surrounding that loss. Listener discretion is advised. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is Death in a Small Town, Episode 5, A Mother Fights Back. I want you to hear a story a cop told me when I was just starting out as a reporter. It's the story of the man in the cemetery. There's his husband and wife, Jenny and Michael.

They have a good marriage, but every month, around the same time, Michael leaves on an overnight business trip. He always acts odd before he leaves. When he comes back, he's his normal self. Maybe even a bit happier, more at peace. After one trip, Jenny finds a receipt for flowers and Michael's coat. One for a bottle of wine, too. She starts putting things together

and decides he's cheating on her. Jenny hires a private investigator. When that monthly business trip rolls around again, Jenny kisses Michael goodbye. Her investigator, he's waiting. He tails Michael to the next county, sees him buy flowers at a shop and a bottle of wine, then heads across

town to an area with a strip of seedy motels. Gotcha, the investigator thinks. He calls Jenny, says he's on to something. But Michael drives by the motels and goes out into the country and into the gates of a cemetery. The investigator watches from a distance. It's the oldest trick in the book, he thinks. This guy is trying to shake him. He gets as close as he can, sees Michael stop his car at a line of headstones. Michael gets out. The investigator can see him open the bottle of wine and take a drink, then leave. Instead of following him, the investigator walks over to where Michael had been standing. There's a bouquet of flowers on a headstone and a woman's name. The detective chats up the cemetery manager. It turns out Michael never told Jenny but he had been married before. His first wife

was troubled. Ultimately, she took her own life, for which Michael unfairly blamed himself. Michael's actions were suspicious, but he was not a guilty party. This is what the nurses were saying. This is what the BCCU attending was saying. But we need to know what they were saying, because bizarre doesn't help me. Basically what they were saying there was that mom really wasn't making a lot of sense. Mom was really defensive of issues. Mom seemed very secretive of issues kind of thing. That it was something that they hadn't typically observed.

That's Dr. David Warren. He's the medical director of child protection at the London Hospital that treated Nathaniel. He made those comments to Kent and Roseanne two years after they buried their son. The meeting with Dr. Warren is one of a series of conversations Nathaniel's parents had with doctors and social workers

in what became an almost all-consuming hunt for information. Now, none of the doctors or social workers knew they were being recorded. Roseanne, who'd never had a cell phone before Nathaniel died, became quite adept at using Kent's iPhone. She always pressed the red record button before they walked into each meeting. What day is it? March.

Night. No. 13th. 14th. March 14th. I right, 14th. I'm just about to go in and do a sequence. Once inside, Roseanne simply placed the phone

in its bright orange Otterbox case face down on each meeting room table. Nobody noticed. Some of these meetings ran two hours long. Recording a conversation like this is not illegal in Canada, as long as one party to the conversation gives consent. That's Roseanne and Kent in this case.

There's small talk at the start of each recording. Kent talks about his work. Roseanne talks about their kids. Dr. Warren makes small talk about his neckties. I have a collection of different ties. My problem is that I can't find any for the Paw Patrol ties.

Oh! Because that's the big thing. For my series in the Toronto Star and this podcast, I let all the doctors and social workers know they had been recorded, and I invited them to give me an interview. All declined, citing the ongoing investigation as the reason. Dr. David Warren, he's a child abuse specialist you've heard before, wrote me a short

email saying he did not appreciate the use of material from his private communication with the family. He added, Now, some might raise an eyebrow at the parents secretly recording the doctors. But let's look at it from their point of view. The McClellans had been the target of suspicion for two years. They wanted not only to hear what the doctors had to say about their son's case, they wanted a record. In these recordings, you'll hear a lot of back and forth. Small talk over, they get intense. Here's Roseanne talking to Dr. Warren. The police have told me that you stated that my behavior was abnormal. And CAS has told me that you stated

that my interactions with staff in the PCCU was bizarre. It was. Starting on the day Nathaniel was rushed to hospital, police pursued the theory that his parents, particularly Roseanne, caused his death. Dr. Warren confirms that. He tells Kent and Roseanne he is now free to speak because he has learned they passed police lie detector tests.

Warren explains that if they were still suspects, he would worry that any information he provided, such as specific medical results, could be used down the line as a defense in court. See, I can tell you now, because I've heard you, you've done all your all the photographs, police without a clue. They were really pushing that you were the one who did it.

My question over these last four years is why? What made detectives from both the Strathroy and Ontario Provincial Police so strongly suspect Nathaniel's parents? I have thought a lot about this. I think there are a couple of reasons.

The first is baggage, another case that may have weighed on the detectives' minds. The second, a tunnel vision approach to police work, a known problem in the criminal justice system. Let's deal with the baggage first. Some of the officers involved in Nathaniel's case, including Gilles Fillon, the lead Strathroy detective, had just completed another child death investigation. It was a horrific case that began with a 911 call. I know, but they have to get you quick. They have to get you quick. No, the baby is dead.

Okay, I'm asking you a question. Is the baby awake at all? No, it is dead. It is cold. Breathing normally? The baby is dead. It is cold. I know, but they have to get you information, okay? Stop yelling. The child in that case was known as Baby Riker. The year before Nathaniel died, and just around the corner from the Strathroy School where Roseanne taught,

police responded to this frantic 911 call. Riker, just 20 months old, had been scalded by hot coffee three days before and his burns, covering nearly one quarter of his body, were left untreated by his mother and her boyfriend. That's the voice of the boyfriend's mother who called 911. You can hear her voice telling the dispatcher the baby is dead. This investigation was heading to court around the time Nathaniel died, and both Riker's mother and her boyfriend would eventually be convicted of criminal negligence causing death and sentenced to nine years in prison. Here's CTV London reporter Nick Pavarella reporting on the

case. Little Riker DePonte Michaud suffered unbearable pain before he eventually died. Justice Renee Pomerantz said instead of getting the child much-needed medical attention, Riker's mother, 31-year-old Amanda Dumont, and her former partner 28 year old Scott Baker went out to pawn off stolen jewelry. The judge said this was not a momentary lapse. Riker suffered for three days and they continued on a course of callous neglect. They made a conscious decision to ignore his injuries. The mother and her boyfriend were as different from Roseanne and Kent as two people could be. The boyfriend had over 40 convictions for domestic violence and violence against animals. The mother had no criminal record, but she was a crystal meth user, and the two had a tumultuous,

violent relationship. Still, they were the parent and partner of the parent of a dead child, and those close to the McClellan family have long wondered if the baby Riker case made the police suspect Roseanne and Kent. If one set of parents were bad actors, maybe another set was guilty too. I asked the Strathroy police and the OPP about this. They did not respond to my questions, citing their own ongoing investigation of Nathaniel's death. Despite the cloud of suspicion, and partly because of it, Roseanne and Kent have continued to push for answers. That's all I do. All I do. Roseanne said she is constantly digging for information.

She's filed dozens of freedom of information requests for records related to Nathaniel's case. Police, Children's Aid Society, hospitals, the coroner's office, everyone. She's learned about child death investigations by reading government inquiry reports. They've launched a lawsuit against the police, both forces, Strathroy and OPP. They've sued Megan, the babysitter, too. All of those civil cases remain before the courts.

When Roseanne has a spare moment, she calls up experts, coroners, and specialists. Because I want to know what went wrong. I don't understand. My son was alive, and he was healthy, and he was happy. And then he was dead. And nobody, nobody has answers. And everyone, nothing they say makes sense to me. And so I dig. And Kent, he's been right there with her on this hunt for answers.

I hope that it will lead to justice for Nate. I hope also that trying to do that, that there will be future moms and dads that hopefully don't have to go through what we are going through with the dysfunctioning that's going on. When I started investigating this case, it was 18 months after Nathaniel died. The parents had lots of suspicions, but nothing concrete. I started looking for proof that the Strathroy and OPP detectives really did have tunnel vision, focusing almost entirely on Roseanne and Kent.

I found some answers in more than a thousand pages of documents on the McClellan case, released to me by a judge. I've mentioned these before, documents related to searches police carried out. To give me a crash course in search warrants, I talked to a former Toronto homicide detective, Dan Nielsen. Dan's retired from the force. He's got nothing to do with Nathaniel's case, but a lot of experience with warrants.

Dan, why don't you just talk to me just a little bit about the whole concept of search warrants. When do police investigators use search warrants? Well, search warrants are a tool to gather evidence. And in this country, under Section 8 of the Charter, everybody has an expectation of privacy and against unreasonable search and seizure.

So in order to gather evidence where there's an expectation of privacy, the police have to get judicial authority, which is a search warrant. It allows them to access a place, a building, a receptacle, to search for and gather evidence in respect to an offence. For a judge to authorize a warrant or a production order, those are for medical and banking records, cell phone information, the police need to prove to a judge that they have the grounds for taking such invasive action. We don't want police just walking in and looking at our stuff.

Our society allows it as long as a judge approves. To get a warrant, your first step is what they call an information to obtain. An information to obtain is a written account of the investigation outlining your grounds for your request. The warrants for the McClellans' house, trucks, and Kent's cell phone. They fill a couple of large binders on my desk. Warrants are always sealed at the request of police. They're a secretive bunch.

The media has to go to court to get them released, and that's what I did. The McClellan warrants are packed with police notes of interviews with doctors and social workers at the Strathroy and London hospitals. The notes are in point form. Police list what they think they need to convince a judge to issue a warrant. Here's a couple of examples, all from the first days of the investigation. Dr. Warren, he's a child protection expert from London. He tells police he was with the parents in the ICU and he found it

very strange that no one asked, how did this happen? He also told the detective that Roseanne commented, I don't care how, I just want to know if he is going to live. One of the London nurses told police she saw Roseanne in the hospital quiet room, kneeling and praying. Sue McLean, a London hospital social worker, told police that Roseanne and Kent's behavior differed from other families in difficult situations, though she did say the fact that they were Catholic with a strong faith may be a factor. Still, police report her saying they were not overly curious about what happened. Now, there's a bit of broken telephone in these warrants, a little bit too much hearsay for my

liking. Jen Guthrie, she's a London children's aid worker, relays to police that Dr. Warren told her that ICU staff told him that they found interactions with mum bizarre. Kim Jenkins, she's the nurse manager

at the Strathroy Hospital. She told police that Roseanne and Kent never asked what was wrong with Nathaniel. She also said that, at one point, Kent's parents were trying to get Roseanne to leave the quiet room and stand beside Nathaniel's bed. She said Kent snapped at his parents, This is all while doctors are trying to stabilize Nate.

Nurse Jenkins says that, just as Nathaniel is being ready for transport, she does observe Roseanne and Kent go to Nathaniel's bedside, and she says Roseanne kisses her son and holds his fingers. Then, she tells police, both parents stand on opposite sides of his hospital bed.

Another doctor, a London hospital pediatrician, Dr. Anna Gunns, made detailed notes in Nathaniel's chart describing a discussion over removing Nathaniel from life support and how Roseanne kept saying that she did not need to know how Nathaniel was hurt. It is done, the doctor records Roseanne saying. These notes are referenced in the warrant as indicative of Roseanne's unusual behavior. Remember my story about the man in the cemetery? Perspective, baggage, false hunches,

they can all lead to suspicion. After I read the search warrants, I interviewed family members who were in both hospitals with Kent and Roseanne. Here's Pamela Spreet. She's Roseanne's cousin and a nurse at the London hospital, though not involved in Nathaniel's care. These are her observations. I was touch and go. We just waited at his bedside and hoped that it would get better. I know the nurse was saying, showing us what good numbers were and what bad numbers were. And there was pressure,

there was a number for the pressure on the brain. And if it got over a certain amount, that was not a good thing. And so each time it did, Roseanne would just pray. And I know she has told me that they felt her behavior was abnormal, but I'd like to know what's normal behavior when your child is maybe dying in front of you.

She asked a lot of questions, which I would ask if I was in her boat, we're very similar. She asked each person that came the questions she wanted answers to, because maybe there could be something from each person that she could put together and have it make sense to her. Roseanne's sister Joanne was also at the hospital. I don't remember there necessarily being anything unusual. I mean, she was very distraught. You know, she was, you know, showering him with kisses and I love you, you know, come back to us, you know, like, honestly, no. But I also remember thinking, too, how do you behave when your child is on life support, and it doesn't look like he's going to make it, you know, like, I,

I thought she was doing remarkably well, was all things considered. Diane McClellan, she's married to Kent's brother Craig, had an even stronger reaction when she learned what was in the warrants. She and Craig were back and forth to the London hospital. If something happened to her son and daughter... You could write, mother is acting in a bizarre way. Mother is acting. Mother has lost a ship. In their warrant applications, police also included their interviews with Nathaniel's three brothers, age 6, 8, and 10.

Police asked if their 15-month-old brother liked to climb. Luke, he's the 8-year-old, recalled how Nathaniel had figured out how to climb up on a chair and then get up onto the table. He told police his mom would then get Nathaniel off the table and set him back down on the floor. For any non-parents listening, that's a pretty normal experience with an active toddler. All of this information provided enough grounds for a judge to authorize search warrants.

And remember, police had already been at their home twice without a warrant. These legal documents allowed police to officially enter their home, access their phone and computer, and check their internet search history. Now, I have to tell you,

the day I finally got my copies of these warrants, I read them from cover to cover several times. The police theory jumps out in the way the warrant applications are written, each supposition building on the next.

That Roseanne and Kent were somehow responsible, either overtly or through negligence, in their son's death. Maybe it was the door bump the night before. Maybe Nathaniel

was left on his own to climb around the foundations for their new addition. Maybe Nathaniel was left on his own to climb around the foundations for their new addition. Maybe he fell and hit his head. That's what made detectives so interested in the comments from doctors and nurses about Roseanne's behavior. Maybe, the detectives speculated, Roseanne did have something to hide. And the chart notes from the pediatrician, at a time when they were discussing taking Nathaniel off life support, cut Roseanne the deepest. This woman judged us in our darkest hour. That's all she did. She came in and judged. That's it.

We'll be right back. This is Kevin Donovan. I've been around building and renovation projects my entire life, so I can tell you it's important to make your next roof the last one your house, cottage, or building will ever need. Do it once. Do it right. Do it now. Have luck metal. Request your quote today. From the police perspective, if Roseanne was at fault and in fact knew how Nathaniel was injured, that would explain her lack of interest in asking how it happened.

In the conversation Roseanne and Kent had with Dr. Warren two years after Nathaniel died, a London hospital social worker who is present speaks up, along with Dr. Warren, and says that the assumption of guilt in stressful situations is a real problem in these investigations. Staff want parents to grieve a certain way. So staff want you to cry, but not cry too much. You can be hysterical, but not too much. Right? You can be angry, but not too much. But if you get too much, we'll call security on you.

Right? But what police were not taking into account was the science and history, medical and otherwise, of Nathaniel and his family. That made me want to learn, who was this family that was targeted by the police? I rang up the country doctor who delivered all the McClellan boys and cared for the entire family in the Park Hill, Arcona area. Wayne Johnson, a family physician in Ararkona, Ontario, for about 40 years. Dr. Johnson is tall, slim. He keeps fit skiing and hiking. I get a bit of a Dr. McCoy vibe off him. Plain speaking. Direct. Yeah, I retired and my wife is a Quebecer. We lived in Ontario, of course, most of our

raised kids and everything. So, I'm in London, so I promised her when I retired I'd come to Quebec. It's great. Trying to get my French going better, that's all. One of the warrants police obtained was for Nathaniel's medical records and one for Roseanne and Kent's. Dr. Johnson thought it was ridiculous that detectives were going down that road. But he complied, made copies, dropped off the package to the police. Detectives interviewed him twice. Basically, they were curious about

how good Roseanne and her husband were as parents and so on. Whether I had any suspicion of anything. Just no way. This is exceptional parents. Not the least bit of suspicion whatsoever of anything. And talking to them, they were alarmed about how the police seemed to be very, very much concerned about them. You know, there was a lot of suspicion that they had done something wrong. Made them feel awful guilty, you know. So I couldn't understand the strategy of that sort of thing, you know, from the police point of view.

It seemed very negative, you know. Nathaniel was healthy, well-nourished, and he hit all his development markers. There was never anything that made me think of anything unusual or unhealthy about him. No, he was a very healthy kid. When Dr. Johnson heard from Kent and Roseanne about the door bump the night before Nathaniel went to hospital, he asked them questions about Nathaniel's behavior immediately after and the next morning.

The police theory made no sense. Totally ridiculous, yeah. Because Roseanne, I think he had some minor thing where he bumped in the door or something, but just like a kid does, but absolutely no result from it. And perfectly healthy the next day. And these injuries that he had were terrible. Like, it takes a significant...

I mean, I might guess that he'd had an awful fall somehow. I just don't know what happened. But he had a really bad injury, so this isn't just some little thing that he bumped and was missed no no to me this this kid was perfectly healthy he would behave normally he had breakfast that one was totally normal in his behavior and the morning that he died that he you know had this injury so when she left him at that daycare i'm sure he was just nathaniel just a perfectly healthy guy so yeah they brought that up and and I just, you know, I just, totally ridiculous.

But it made her feel guilty, and she's very conscientious, just like that. She would think about every little thing that might have happened, that I do something wrong. But there's no way, just no way. Dr. Johnson's comments are close to what the specialists determined. They just never told Roseanne and Kent for two years. All of these doctors' voices you're about to hear were recorded by Roseanne in the years following Nathaniel's death. First, a quick recap on how Nathaniel presented when he arrived at the London emergency ward. Here's Dr. Ram Singh. He wasn't quite sick. He had a severe trauma to his head, what it looked like, based on the CT scan, skull fracture, and hemorrhage

in the different part of the brain. And when that happens, the pressure in the brain is very high. So you try to monitor the pressure, number one, and manage the pressure. Because there's some suggestion that if you manage the pressure, maybe you'll make a difference. Dr. Warren was called in to consult because of Nathaniel's unexplained injuries. A bit of background on him. Dr. Warren trained in family and emergency medicine. He worked in Strathroy at the start of his career.

His specialty is pediatric emergency medicine, and he helped form the child maltreatment section of the college that regulates doctors in Ontario. He's often called to testify in court cases. He tells Kent and Roseanne in this meeting that he often coordinates information that goes between children's aid investigators and police. As Roseanne points out to him during their meeting, he was one of the doctors whose comments fanned the flames of police suspicion. But that's in the past, and in this meeting, he's doing his best to help them. In Nathaniel's case,

we knew that he had an injury, that we had imaging and we knew his findings and we knew he had an injury. And that we also knew that some of the components of the injury, like we knew there was

a whack to the head at some point, there was a blow to the head because of the components of the injury, like we knew there was a whack to the head at some point, there was a blow to the head because of the fracture. We also knew from some of the findings in his head and some of the findings in his brain that at some point there was some acceleration to the head, that there was some rapid movement of the head. And we also knew that there was also some findings in the neck, that somehow there was

a stretch or movement of the neck. But we never had any history of what that was. Dr. Warren takes the parents through the basic anatomy of the skull. His biography mentions that he frequently lectures at conferences on child abuse, and it's not hard to imagine him in front of an audience. Just underneath your skull, you have something called the dura, which is actually quite tough. It's almost like leather, but it's fairly thin, but it's quite tough. And then between that leather covering and the next layer, there's really what should be a potential space. Basically think of it as you have a bag, and it's collapsed,

and on one side you have the Duran, and on the other side you have the other material from the bag. Well, normally there's nothing in there. Like, it's like pretty blank. Okay. Except for your blood comes in from your brain from the bottom, comes in from the vessels in your neck, comes in from the bottom, goes through your brain, and then comes out in the top

through what we call bridging veins. So it basically comes out from your brain and then comes out in the top through what we call bridging veins. So it basically comes out from your brain and then goes across and it all collects in this thing called the sagittal sinus, which is a big vein at the top. Well, those vessels go through this empty space. Well, if you have a really bad blow where the force is all the way through to that level, it can break those vessels. But also, if your head moves back and forth a lot, it's basically like the little paddle ball with the ball, and you basically stretch the elastic too much, the vessel snaps. And so what happens is you get the blood in that space called the subdual space.

How that happened, Dr. Warren says nobody knows. He gives one possibility. Let's take the nicest scenario, okay? That he is running along, goes and runs along basically off the second floor, goes running off or about the stairway, basically goes flying in the air and strikes his head on the step kind of thing for him and then bounces another time

onto another step. And somebody goes running down and goes, oh my God, what's happened to you? You know, and then when it first happens, you oftentimes don't breathe very well.

You sometimes gasp. But then oftentimes your breathing will settle down. And you'll get better for a bit. Because basically, when you have that fall, it takes your brain to stop breathing for a bit. Sometimes even your heart stops for a few seconds. But then your brain tries to tell you to start breathing again. And then once that happens,

basically now you get blood and you get oxygen getting to your brain. So your brain now starts sending messages properly for you. And then so you look a little bit better. Roseanne and Kent recall sitting in that meeting upset but hanging on every word wondering is this what killed their little boy? But then what happens is you start getting the problems associated with that where oftentimes with that little bit of bleeding around your brain, blood is very irritating. So it causes you to seize. And he was seizing.

He was. When he got this round. Oh, he was seizing when I got him. As soon as I got him. He was seizing. And that may have just been from the irritation of the blood. That, well, when you're seizing, now you're using more oxygen,

you're using more oxygen, you're using more energy for your brain. So your brain's got a problem, and now you're seizing. So now you're causing even more problems for the brain, because you're seizing. And then you've also got the effect that that lack of oxygen and that lack of blood flow to the brain basically causes it to swell just like if you hurt your muscle. And so the brain starts swelling

and those cells start expanding and they sort of get all this sort of gingery reaction just like you deal with a bad bruise in the brain. And so that's why you start progressively getting worse and worse and worse. And you start getting more swelling and you get more problems and you get the increase in pressure. And that's where you

develop into the problem we can't control. We can only help if your brain swells and gets so much inflammation. And after that, we don't have anything to do. Now, Dr. Warren's scenario of falling down the stairs, that's a hypothetical. He says he's just trying to explain how

Nathaniel could have been hurt. Then Dr. Warren justifies his reason for silence until now. Why when we know there's an injury do we not tell everybody all the details of the injury?

Because from the standpoint from the police, from the standpoint from CS, from the standpoint from me trying to investigate these things, that basically if somebody goes and tells me afterwards that this is what happened, if I've gone and told you all the details of what I know right off the bat and told you

this is everything there that we found. Now, I've had smart people, I've had active people in murder cases have gone off or that and found, well, how can I create the story? But they already know the story. Timing was critical in Nathaniel's injury. When did it happen? Who was looking after him when it happened? The problem is, CT and MRI scans cannot pinpoint the time of a skull fracture. That makes the observation of behavior of the person injured

of critical importance. Remember, Nathaniel was with his family Monday evening, overnight, and in the morning. He was dropped at Megan's on Tuesday at 8.30 a.m. and was with her until just before noon. That's when Roseanne was called to pick him up and she rushed him to the hospital. The doctor who was ultimately the most helpful to the parents was the London hospital's Dr. David Ramsey, a neuropathologist specializing in the brain and spinal cord.

Dr. Ramsey studied at the University of Glasgow in Scotland and was at Oxford. He came to Canada in 1990. Roseanne and Kent met him at the office of London senior coroner Dr. Rick Mann. These two doctors who have devoted their lives to the study of the dead, they seem different than the other doctors, more compassionate. You're going to hear Dr. Ramsey first. So how are you doing? Struggling a bit, I would think. We've less bad days now. It depends on what week you're on. It depends on which week.

Now you think that it's different, it's hard because something will happen and you want to be happy. And you are, but it's like a very narrow window, you know? Yeah. I know exactly what you mean because it's not the same thing. My parents died. My dad recently. It's still the same thing. I'm still not over it.

That was a year and a bit ago. That's in the normal scheme of things. When Kent breaks down, saying he cannot concentrate and fears he will lose his business, Dr. Ramsey kindly but firmly tells him, you need to get help. Grievement, grieving, when it starts interfering substantially in your life,

is an illness, just like you've got pneumonia or a heart attack or something like that. And it needs attention. And this is really important. Because if you can't get some help with this, it's not going to help sorting out the business with Nathaniel. Do you think we can sort it out? Dr. Mann, a veteran of hundreds of serious coroner cases with families searching for answers, tells Kent and Roseanne he's impressed with what they are doing.

You are a great advocate. Continue advocating. Thank you. Both of you are great advocates for Nathaniel. The biggest question in Nathaniel's case is this. How quickly after the impact that fractured his skull would the 15-month-old show signs? When you're faced with an impact injury, the next question arises,

well, what's the interval between the time the force was applied and when the child had obviously been unwell? I think it's very clear that even in lesser injuries, the child is usually fractious. What does that mean? It's fractious. It means they're grumbling and whining. Okay, yeah. And they have a boo-boo in their head and then a little bit of cuddling and so on, they settle down. It's fractures. It means they're grumbling and whiny. And they have a boo-boo on their head and then a little bit of cuddling and so on. They settle down.

And some of those kids, you can find, you take them to the hospital, usually you won't find any. But Nathaniel's injury, a nine-centimetre skull fracture with extreme swelling of the brain, was much worse. Dr. Ramsey tells the parents a key detail about the timing of their son's injury. If the impact led to the sort of acceleration that produces this type of brain injury, then he would have been unconscious, as far as we understand, from very soon after or at the time of the injury. Generally speaking, the weight of opinion is they're either unconscious from the time of the event, or they deteriorate very rapidly after that.

One of the analogies that Dr. Shrum uses, he's one of the forensic psychologists here, it's like a paraphernalia. The lights flicker on and off, they flicker on and off, and then they flicker off, and that's your unconsciousness. Roseanne had another question. This one about the theory police had that the door bump, that was Monday night before dinner,

when Roseanne opened a door and Nathaniel was on the other side, had somehow caused what she had heard doctors refer to as malignant cerebral edema. That's when a blow to the head causes a very slow bleed of the brain over a period of hours. Dr. Ramsey had looked at that. He said it was extremely rare. He had seen only one case in 27 years, and it is known to happen only in children older than Nathaniel. As he was speaking, Kent and Roseanne thought back and recalled how normal Nathaniel was that evening, acting silly when his older brothers were getting picture day haircuts,

and how happily he munched on Cheerios at breakfast and ate his oatmeal and most of Kent's, how he had been normal at daycare drop-off. Kids are not okay after the impact. They're fully conscious. They're upset. And then there's a relentless progression of brain swelling after that. It took years for Kent and Roseanne to get clarity on what happened to their son. Yet all of this medical and scientific information was given to police in the form of official reports within six weeks of Nathaniel dying. Still, police kept their focus on Roseanne and Kent. Next time, on Death in a Small Town. You told me that other people can't access the file. You said other police officers don't know what's going on in your case.

Other police officers wouldn't know what I or Kent will do in our interview. How does this guy know? Now I am scared. Okay. Because I can't fight for my son and fight against people that should be fighting for me. Death in a Small Town was researched, written, and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan, and produced by Raju Mudder, J.P. Fozo, and Sean Pattenden. Additional production was done by Andrea MacDonald, Kelsey Wilson, and Brian Bradley. Photography by Lucas Olenek.

Music and sound design for the series created by Sean Pattenden. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is Death in a Small Town.