The Misery Machine - The Tragic Case of Emma Grace Cole

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

This week, Drewby and Yergy head to Smyrna, Delaware, to discuss the case of 3-year-old Emma Grace Cole, who became the victim of a tragic and highly publicized case of fatal child abuse and torture. On September 13, 2019, Emma's charred skeletal remains were found in the bushes near the Smyrna-Clayton Little Lass Softball fields. Because her body was severely burned and left without identification, investigators spent more than a year working to identify her. She was referred to by law enforcement as "Baby Elle" until a credible tip led to her identification in October 2020. Court documents later revealed that Emma endured an agonizing final year of life. Her mother, Kristie Haas, and stepfather, Brandon Haas, subjected Emma and her half-siblings to starvation, extreme physical discipline, and forced exercise. Emma was heavily singled out for the abuse. After Emma became unresponsive following a severe beating, her mother attempted to revive her with a cold shower rather than calling 911. After Emma died, Kristie burned her body and dumped her remains. The couple then lied to family members, claiming Emma was away at a mental health facility, and fled Delaware for Indiana and Pennsylvania, where they were eventually arrested.Support Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachineJoin Our Facebook Group: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachineOfficial Merch Store: https://miserymachine-shop.fourthwall.com/Instagram: miserymachinepodcastTwitter: misery_podcast#documentary #themiserymachine #truecrime 🚨 EDUCATIONAL, DOCUMENTARY, SCIENTIFIC, OR ARTISTIC CONTENT DISCLAIMER 🚨CONTENT WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS ABOUT A SENSITIVE TOPIC INVOLVING LOSS OF LIFE. WE'VE REMOVED ANY GRAPHIC CONTENT TO COMPLY WITH YOUTUBE'S GUIDELINES. WE AIM TO PROVIDE INFORMATIVE, FACTUAL JOURNALISM ON A TRAGIC EVENT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST THAT DOES NOT DISMISS ITS SERIOUSNESS. ALL CLIPS ARE USED UNDER THE DOCTRINE OF FAIR USE FOR NEWS REPORTING AND ANALYSIS.Fair Use Disclaimer: "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for 'fair use' for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."THE CONTENT IN THIS VIDEO IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, BASED ON BELIEVED RELIABLE SOURCES. THEY MAY NOT BE CURRENT OR FULLY ACCURATE. VIEWERS SHOULD DO THEIR OWN RESEARCH AND NOT SOLELY RELY ON THIS INFORMATION. WE'RE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INACCURACIES OR OMISSIONS. WE DO NOT CONDONE, ENDORSE, OR ENCOURAGE ANY OF THE BEHAVIORS OR ACTIVITIES SHOWN. WE URGE EVERYONE TO ALWAYS ACT RESPONSIBLY AND WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE LAW.

Emma Grace Cole was born on January 10th, 2016 at Indiana University Health Bloomington Hospital in Bloomington, Indiana. Her mother, Christy Cole, was 23 years old. Her father, Joshua Duthit, was not there. He was incarcerated at the time and there were questions about whether the baby was even his. When Christy was discharged, Emma did not go home with her. She went home with Tanya Axum, a great aunt on her father's side. And for the next few months, the two women shared the duties of raising her. her. By April of 2016, Emma was living with Tanya full time in a house in Bloomington with Tanya's husband and their four children. Emma had a small button nose and plump cheeks. Those features run in the Cole family, especially on her grandfather's side. The women in that family keep the

small button noses their whole lives. In the late winter or early spring of 2017, Tanya took Emma over to her aunt's house. Emma sat in the living room with a black kitten held up against her chest with both arms around it. Tanya had never liked cats and had always believed the black ones were bad luck, not that they are. But Emma had adored this one since before she could walk, so Tanya put up with it. When her aunt asked whether she wanted to take the kitten home with her, Tanya said no. Emma said yes. According to Tanya, she told her, Emma, no, Mama said we're not taking no cat home. Within the hour, the kitten was in the car, buckled next to Emma's car. car seat and on its way home with Emma, and Emma had named her Kit Kat.

There was a dog in the house, too, a family dog named Tank. When Tank was asleep, Emma guarded him. If anyone came too close, she would put her finger to her lips, whisper sh at them, and that adds something else in toddlers speak that no one could make out. She loved chicken nuggets and french fries. She loved being outside at the park and in the swimming pool. Her favorite show was Paw Patrol, and her favorites on it were SkyEye. rubble. She liked trolls and she loved Jojo Siwa. Emma was the youngest of Christy's four children

with two older sisters and an older brother. She also had what the family called bonus siblings, which were Tanya's four kids, and they considered her their baby sister. Every night, Tanya sang her to sleep with You Are My Sunshine. According to Tanya, that smile, everything about her was perfect. Christy Cole grew up in Bloomington. Her parents, James Cole, and Belinda Johnson Hurtado divorced when Christy and her older sister Kelsey were young, and the two girls spent a lot of their childhood caught in the middle of it. James had said he had a rocky relationship with his younger daughter for much of her life. She had been struggling with addiction since her mid-team.

By the time Emma was born, Christy already had three children with a man named Christopher Eppards. Belinda was a well-known lawyer in Bloomington, and her firm had represented Christy in every paternity and guardianship matter Christy had been involved in. July of 2016, James Cole convinced his daughter to enter a drug rehabilitation program in Florida. She was resistant at first, but she eventually agreed, she gave custody of her three older children to Christopher Eppards. At the same month, Tanya filed a petition in Monroe County to establish legal guardianship over Emma. On August 2, 2016, a judge temporarily appointed her guardianship. Within a few weeks, Christy left the program without completing it.

On September 29th, 2016, after a second hearing, the same judge granted Emma's aunt Tanya full guardianship. Christy, who had returned to Bloomington, did not object. According to Tanya, Christy had not seen Emma since coming back from Florida. In October, Christy agreed to try treatment again. She spent a week in a detox center in Florida and then started an intensive outpatient program somewhere else. And that second center recommended that she stay in a sober living environment for the next six to 12 months. January 6, 2017, she was admitted into another recovery program in Florida and moved into a sober community for men and women in recovery. Somewhere in that stretch, she met a man from Delaware named Brandon Haas, who was also early in his recovery.

Brandon was from Middletown, Delaware. He worked as a journeyman with iron workers' local 451. Delaware court records show he had a string of run-ins with the law going back two decades. He was arrested in the year 2000 on charges of aggravated menacing and resistance. arrest. That case was dismissed before trial because the victim did not show up. He was convicted of receiving stolen property and resisting arrest in 2012, drug possession in 2013, and drug possession in shoplifting in 2017. Christy had no record at all in the Delaware court system. On February 10th of 2017, within days of being discharged, Christy moved to Delaware with Brandon. She had no connection to

the state other than him. Her father thought the move was premature and that she needed more time in a sober community, and a therapist at one of her Florida treatment centers had recommended the exact same thing. Later that month, the couple made a trip to Bloomington and stopped by Tanya's house to see Emma. Or into Tanya, it was the first time Christy had physically seen her daughter since at least July of 2016. On May 10, 2017, after a few months of dating, Christy and Brandon married. They were living together in Pike Creek, Delaware, with Brandon's mother, brother, and sister-in-law living nearby. Shortly after the wedding, Christy contacted Emma's aunt Tanya and told her that she wanted Emma back. Tanya was shocked by this and cut off communication,

which ended the regular FaceTime calls that have been going on between Christy and Emma. About a month after this, an attorney from Belinda's firm about the petition in Monroe County to terminate Tanya's guardianship. On August 8, 2017, Judge Stephen Galvin, the same judge who had presided over the original guardianship hearings, called a hearing to discuss the petition. Tanya and her attorney pushed back. They told the court that Christy had not seen Emma since the February visit and that in the six months since she had been back in Indiana, three to five times though even trying to see her. They also told the court that in July, when Belinda took the three older children to Delaware for a nearly two-week visit, Emma was not included. Belinda testified

at a hearing that she was not asked to take Emma along. She later told the court-appointed child advocate that she would have loved to have invited Emma to join them, but that there was not enough room in the car. Judge Galvin made no ruling that day. He extended the guardianship and directed the child advocate to file a report before the next hearing, which was set for late September. Afterward, Christy had a short visit with Emma at a nearby McDonald's. According to Tanya, she had to chase Christy out of the courthouse to ask whether she wanted to see her daughter at all. The Advocate's report came in September. It said Christy's therapist had flagged some marital issues that needed addressing between her and Brandon. But the more pressing problem, the advocate wrote, was Emma's attachment to Tanya's family and the lack of bonding between Emma and her mother. Emma had already started showing behaviors consistent with separation issues. Christy did not know her daughter's schedule or her needs. In an ideal world, the advocate wrote, the two of them would visit every day for two. two to three months before the guardianship ended. Because of the considerable distance and the expense and stress of traveling from Delaware

to Indiana, she recommended one or two more parenting sessions instead, including an overnight. On September 26, 2017, after a brief discussion, Judge Galvin terminated the guardianship. Court transcripts show he was conflicted about it. Before he ruled, he told the courtroom, I don't like what I'm about to do. He said it was difficult for the court to find that it's necessary in the child's best interest. And he said, but I am doing so in the sense that it is always in the child's best interest to be in the care. At least the Indiana law presumed so if the parent is able to fulfill their duties as a parent.

And it is clear that Ms. Haas is able to fulfill those duties at this time. Emma was handed over that day in the September heat. She screamed as she was pulled out of Tanya's arms. And in a day or two, she was in Delaware. December 12th, 2017, a Monroe County judge gave Christy custody of her other three children immediately and on a permanent non-temporary basis. The ruling came after one of her attorneys filed an emergency motion, prompted by a domestic incident involving Christopher Eppards and a family member.

Three older children moved into the Delaware home where Christy, Brandon, and Emma were living. The summer of 2018, the family had moved again. It's time into a rental in Newark, Delaware. In June of 2018, a neighbor called Delaware Child Protective Services. Caller said three of the four children had been outside unattended, one of them naked and another wearing only underwear. There was a strong odor of marijuana coming from the house and loud music blasting out of it.

The caller thought the children looked small for their ages and described a time when one of them was dropped off from school with no parent to meet them. The caller knew the family's landlord and said the couple were six months behind on rent, and that an inspection of the house had turned up holes in the walls, six animals, and smelled like urine. According to the caller, all four children were sleeping in one bedroom of a three-bedroom house. By the time a Delaware division of family services worker tried to make a home visit a month later, the family had been evicted and moved to Smyrna. The caseworker could not find them in almost four months. In October of 2018, that caseworker obtained medical records for

all four children and wrote that there were no concerns, apart from a single, missed doctor's appointment for Emma on August 13th, 2018. But it should be noted that Emma never saw a doctor again after May of 2018. Emma's two older sisters went to school that fall and had a lot of attendance problems. Late October, one of them came to school without a winter coat, and her teacher went looking through the lost and found a get her one. In December, a home visit was conducted because of the truancy. By January of 2019, Chrissy had been granted permission to pull out the two girls to homeschool them.

Brandon's mother had been closely involved with the children up until late 2018 or early 2019. She and her partner had even offered to take Emma off Christy and Brandon's hands and raise the girl for themselves. The Haasas turned that down. After what she described as a perceived disagreement with her son and daughter-in-law, she told investigators Emma and the other children were isolated away from her. Emma turned three on January 10th, 2019. Brin told investigators that it was right around then that the punishment started. in, he described what followed as two or three months of, in his words, just fucking hell.

All four children were given chores that were not appropriate for their ages. The second youngest, who was not even five, was told to clean the toilets, sweep the bathroom floor, and then vacuum the house. If the chores were not done to Christy or Brandon's satisfaction, or if the children misbehaved, Christy would, according to Brandon, whoop all their asses. Christy admitted to investigators that she would slap the children with a hockey puck or hit them with a spatula, though she claimed that after being discharged from a rehabilitation program in early 2017, she no longer hit the children with a belt.

Good for you. One of Emma's sisters told the doctor something different. She said if Emma was being bad, which included crying or screaming, soiling herself or stealing food, we're talking about stealing food again, Christy would punish her including spanking her with the belt. The other children were spanked with the belt as well in a way that sometimes left a mark, and one of them named both Brandon and Christy as the ones doing it. They were made to do extra chores and waltzits.

Brandon put hot sauce or pepper or something else spicy under their tongues when they misbehaved. According to Dr. Stephanie Deutsch, one of the girls described being whooped with wood by Brandon. thick pieces of scrapwood he kept for his projects and had made into paddle so that he could hit her on the back. The same child said that once when she was crying after getting vaccinations at the doctor's office, she got whooped for it. But all three of the surviving children had said the same thing about their sister. Emma had it worse, and they didn't know why. When siblings said she did not ever remember Emma being called to dinner, Christy would starve her. Investigators learned that at various times, Emma was given nothing but rice and oatmeal.

Brandon told police he understood the rice and oatmeal to be based on medical advice Christy had gotten because Emma was supposedly making herself throw up other food. Again, medical records show Chrissy had not sought any medical attention for Emma since May of 2018, all while she was taking the other three children to sick visits and wellness visits. Brandon denied that they withheld food from her. One of Emma's sisters said she would hide food and take it to Emma. She said she also looked after her at night because in her words, sometimes Emma was not breathing.

She would need to keep Emma by her side to keep her warm. The same sister described what happened at night. Emma, who was three years old, was made to run while holding weights. Or to pull a weighted sled down the basement staircase. According to that sister, she would be smacked but was too young to run and couldn't really do it. If she stopped running, she would be hit with something, including a spatula, change purse, belt buckle, and flip-flops. Think this is a three-year-old girl. Can you even imagine a three-year-old? Any three-year-old we've ever met pulling a weighted sled down basement stairs? The same child told a forensic interviewer that Emma had bruises on her face, her stomach, and her legs, saying that bruises were everywhere.

Brandon described some of the same punishments to police. He said the children were made to hold weighted buckets of chains for about 30 seconds at a time, with more weight added each time they moved, sometimes adding up to a total of a half hour. The list he gave included 30-second wall sit standing in the corner in writing sentences. He specifically mentioned forcing Emma to run in the basement. He also said Christy was harder on Emma than the others. When the other children misbehaved, she would turn a blind eye, but when Emma acted out,

It was the end of the world. Emma's great-aunt Tanya was still calling. She had been video chatting with Chrissy and Emma periodically ever since the girl was moved to Delaware, but after Emma's birthday in 2019, the calls got more sporadic. Tanya could see that Emma was losing weight and that her face was getting more and more emaciated. And on one FaceTime call, she spotted a bruise on the girl's face and scabs on her forehead. She took screenshots. She and a friend called Delaware CPS, but the family had been moving around so much

Tanya did not have a good address for them. She was told there was not much the agency could do without an address. The last video call Christy allowed her was on May 29th, 2019, and somewhere in June or July, Christy stopped speaking to her father and his grandfather completely. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025.

Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility and optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Christie sat with FBI agents for four hours before she told them anything truthful. She told them that Emma was in a facility in Virginia getting care for mental problems.

She described Emma's progress there and the visits she had made. see her. When agents confronted her about the lie, she told them that on Saturday or Sunday morning before July 4th of 2019, she woke up and just simply found Emma dead in the bedroom she shared with her brother. She said she ran into the bathroom with her, turned on the shower and held her there. Forina Christy, Emma was so beautiful and the happiest I've ever seen her, and she looked like she was just out of her misery. Brandon put the date about four weeks later. Brennan has maintained came throughout that Emma died on July 27th, 2019. Said that around 5.30 or 6 in the morning on a Saturday or Sunday in July,

Christy came to him and told him that something bad had happened to Emma. She had been thinking about how to tell him this. According to Brandon, that's when she said Emma's not breathing, and I fucking lost it. I was like, we have to call. Call 911. Call somebody. He said he started screaming and ran into the house where he found Emma on the bed. He leaned in towards her nose and her mouth, he felt. that she was cold.

On what came next, the two accounts line up. Brandon said he kept screaming to call 911 and that his wife told him it was too late and insisted there was nothing first responders would be able to do. Christy told detectives her husband was freaking out and said, let's call the police and that she told him to chill out and that he sat down on the couch with his hands over his head.

Brandon said he went looking for his phone and gathered up the other three children and took them to his mother's house on a drive around State Route 9. Christy said she carried Emma out to the van, put her in the car seat, and hoped that she would wake up during the drive. Then, in her words, she took her somewhere beautiful, somewhere she could be free.

Brandon said she never told him where. When she came back later that day, he said, she would only tell him that Emma was at peace and in heaven. Christy told detectives that she went back to visit the body at the softball field every day for about a week. She said she did not bury her daughter because, in her own words, she wasn't somebody's trash. At some point, she set the body on fire,

and she described that to investigators as a symbolic measure to set Emma free. Christy told her family that Emma had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia while she told other people that Emma was at a facility for children with mental illnesses. Obviously, we know now that Christy is lying. should be noted, in case anyone tries to sell you on this, that onset for schizophrenia before the age of 13 is extremely rare,

representing only 1 to 2% of cases and affecting less than 0.04% of all children. The three kids still in the house were instructed never to mention their sister to anybody. Bring to Dr. Deutsch, when one of them would try to ask about Emma, Chrissy would shake and tell them not to talk about her. On Friday, September 13th, 2019, run 4.30 in the afternoon, a person walking a dog along the edge of Duck Creek Pond saw a charred tree and something that looked like human remains. It had been an unusually hot week in Smyrna with temperatures climbing into the 90s. We shut the road down into the complex behind crime scene tape. Three agencies ruled special operations vehicles into a parking lot near one of the fields, the police, state fire marshal's office and the Delaware Medical Examiner's Office.

Within a day, investigators knew the remains belonged to a child under the age of 10. Because the body had been burned so badly, and because of the heat that week, they knew very little else. Detective William Davis of the Smyrna Police Department started looking for leads. Beyond the middle school surveillance footage, he had almost nothing. His best hope was a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution who had agreed to examine the remains. The anthropologist's report came back within weeks. Based on dental and skeletal development, she was somewhere between two and five years old, and the affidavit later narrowed that to between two and three quarters and four and a quarter years old.

Evidence from the scene showed that she had slightly wavy brown hair. An exam also suggested she had suffered from chronic illness. A hundred miles away in Alexandria, Virginia, forensic artist named Paloma Galzi read the same report. She worked in a four-person forensic imaging unit at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She and one other artist had both been assigned to the case. On November 18, 2019, the images were released. It went up at gas stations on telephone polls and in libraries across Delaware,

first through the police and the National Center for Missing Exploied Children and later through the FBI. Above the sketch and a red banner, the flyer reads, Unidentified Human Remains. Hundreds of people walk past it every day, and nobody recognized her. The detectives nicknamed her Baby Elle. On November 25th, 2019, Emma's grandmother, Belinda Johnson Hurtado, and her husband flew to Delaware to spend Thanksgiving with Christy, Brandon, and the three children. Following month, the family was evicted from their house on North News Street in Smyrna, and they subsequently moved to Pennsylvania. On June 30th, 2020, the FBI put out a national alert through its violent criminal apprehension program.

Tips came in steadily, and none of them led anywhere. The case, as far as the public could tell, was at a stand. still. On the evening of Thursday, September 10th, 2020, James Cole sat down at his computer in Western Kentucky. He did not hear from his younger daughter in more than a year. Earlier that day, Kelsey had called to tell him about a strange conversation she had, first with her mother and then with Christy about Emma. A little girl, Kelsey told him, was not living with Christy in Delaware anymore. Her mother had given her one explanation. Christy had repeated the story about the schizophrenia diagnosis in the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Neither of them believed it because the girl was not even five years old yet. So James started scrolling through the websites of the Delaware funeral homes on the chance that Emma's name or her photo would come up. It did not and he felt relief. Then he started clicking through the missing persons pages for the police departments in the three towns he was fairly sure Christy had lived in, Newcastle, Middletown, and Smyrna. On James' side of the family, as we mentioned, the small button nose never goes away, and the bottom lip always pushes out past the chin. He pulled out his phone, took a picture of the black and white image on his screen,

and texted it to his wife who was lying on the couch nearby. He watched her open the message and pull the phone closer to her face. According to James, she looked up at him and asked, Are you effing kidding me? Do you think it's Emma? He told her absolutely. He could only think of one thing which he later put it this way. That's my granddaughter and my daughter's in trouble.

At around 6 a.m. the next morning on Friday, September 11th, 2020, Smyrna Tip Line took a call from a man who identified himself as James Cole, Chrissy's father. He wanted to know whether police had identified the little girl found at the ballpark a year earlier. As James remembers it, the officer first thought he meant a different missing child. Within the hour, Detective Davis was on the phone. with him. James told him he had been looking for his granddaughter and that he thought the remains found a year earlier were hers. He explained who Christy was. You not know where she was living, but he had done some research of his own and knew the couple had been evicted from the Smirna house.

Just after eight that morning, James called Kelsey, Christy's older sister, told her she had been right to think the conversation with her mother and her sister was odd. It's glad he said that she had called the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and then several Delaware hospitals after a Christy's story about the schizophrenia diagnosis. There was a reason there were no records of Emma at any of them. He asked her to get her computer in search for Smyrna missing child. First result was a news article with the sketch. Kelsey knew that face.

In Kelsey, it looked like how Christy and I looked when we were children. I was just devastated. That afternoon, both she and her father had told police everything they knew. Thursday, Chrissy's mother... Great news. The federal EV Reefat. is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 Volt and 2026 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details.

Belinda had told Kelsey that Christie was having issues with Emma and the two were not getting along. She said Emma might be staying with a friend of Christie's or might be in a hospital for a behavior disorder. She had also told Kelsey that when she and James visited Delaware for Thanksgiving in 2019, Emma was not there. and that Chrissy had given her some explanation for it. Kelsey showed her mother the forensic sketch. Linda looked at the image and turned away. When Kelsey, I knew that was not an okay response. It just didn't sit right in my gut. On September 23, 2020, the FBI set up surveillance outside of comforted and suites on Baltimore Pike and Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, where Chrissy, Brandon, and the three children were staying.

Agents watched Chrissy leave the hotel with her son. In her way out, she dropped several items of trash into the hotel dumpster. When she was gone, law enforcement collected them. The next day agents saw Brandon leave in a red Chevrolet Malibu, the same car police believed had driven to the softball fields in early September of 2019. On September 28th, agents watched Christie leave the hotel again, this time with three children. DNA taken from a straw Christy had thrown out was compared against DNA taken from a rib of the child found at the softball fields.

Analyst declared a high likelihood that the DNA was a match for the body of Baby L. In early October of 2020, Brandon and Christie were arrested separately in Pennsylvania by Pennsylvania State Police. A judge set bond for each of them at $1 million. Pennsylvania Child Welfare Services took custody of the three surviving children. On October 6, nearly a month after James first called, Smarna Police announced a breakthrough saying only that persons of interests were in custody out of state. Two days later, on October 8th, they released the couple's names. and they released the name of the child whose face had been hanging in gas station windows across Delaware for almost 11 months.

Emma Grace Cole. On October 9th, Tanya was on the first floor of her house in Bloomington when her phone pinged. It was a text from her niece with a link to a news article about the arrest, she said. Is this Josh's daughter? The niece wrote. It took Tanya a moment to work out what she meant, and she meant Emma. Then a second message came through. Please tell me it's not her Aunt Tanya. She stared at the black and white image at the eyes and the nose and the cheeks and the lips and she knew.

She ran upstairs to her husband screaming. Then she had to go tell her four children that the girl they thought of as their baby sister was dead. Brandon was extradited to Delaware within days. Christy was held in a Pennsylvania prison awaiting an extradition hearing set for November 4th. When Brandon sat down with investigators, he waved his. Miranda rates and started talking. Less than two minutes in, he told them, her name was Emma. Delaware's chief medical examiner, Dr. Gary Collins, ruled Emma's death a homicide. The body had been burned and he could not determine what had killed her. On April 5th, 2021, a grand jury indicted

both of them, Brandon, then 39, and Christy, then 28, were each charged with CA in the first degree in endangering the welfare of a child. Christy was additionally charged with assault in the second degree, using a corpse and reckless burning. Brandon faced up to 45 years if convicted on everything. Christy faced up to 55. A month later, on May 4th, 2021, she was re-indicted. Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced that the two counts of murder by abyss or neglect in the first degree had been added.

The indictment ran to 13 counts in total. The two murder counts named Christy alone, the first alleged that between June 1st and September 13th of 2019, she recklessly caused Emma's death. A second count alleged she recklessly caused Emma's death, having engaged in a previous pattern of abuse or neglect. Both carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum of life in prison. Eight more counts were named for Brandon and Christy, reaching back to January 1st of 2018. CA in the first degree for failing to provide the food necessary for Emma's health and safety.

Endangering the welfare of a child, a felony, alleging that they engage in the torture or maltreatment of the child and that her death occurred while her welfare was endangered. Two more endangering counts, one covering food and one covering medical care. Three misdemeanor counts covering her surviving brother and sisters, as well as one charge for hindering prosecution. Brandon was released on $8,000 secured bail, who was placed on pretrial supervision and a progress report from February of 2021 by a Delaware probation and parole officer, said that if he continued to test positive for drugs or alcohol, a breach of release

should be submitted. She was held at the Dolores J. Baylorer Women's Correctional Institution in Newcastle on $100,000 cash bail, represented at that point by public defender Anthony J. Capone. In June of 2021, the court entered a partial gag order restricting what attorneys could say about the case. That same month, Belinda was granted custody of the three surviving children and move them to Bloomington, Indiana. In February of 2023, Brandon signed paperwork agreeing to plead guilty to four counts of

endangering the welfare of a child, one a felony, and the other three misdemeanors. In exchange, he would get open sentencing, meaning prosecutors would offer no recommendation and leave it entirely to the judge's discretion. He would cooperate fully and testify against his wife. His attorneys raised a problem, however. At some point before the paperwork was signed, Christie had sent her husband a letter asking him to take out a life insurance policy on her. The gist of it being one of Brandon's attorneys explained to the Kent County Superior Court

Judge Noel Primos was that she was contemplating not staying alive. If she found out about the cooperation deal through the news, the attorney said, the consequences might be dire. Deputy Attorney General Kevin Smith agreed and told Judge Primos that public disclosure of the cooperation agreement could affect a potential trial. March 9th, 2023, Brandon entered his plea in a closed courtroom and the documents were sealed. On Friday, May 25, 2023, negotiations in Christy's case resumed early. By the time the Kent County Courthouse opened,

her attorneys and Deputy A.G. Smith had agreed the state would recommend 50 years, of which she would serve 30. With almost none of Emma's family present, Christie pled guilty to murder by abuser neglect in the first degree, to losing a corpse into three counts of endangering the welfare of a child. Attorney Patrick Collins told the judge, she was already being treated for bipolar disorder and depression and was current on her medications. Primos deferred sentencing.

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Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siyaya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll.

So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. Reaching your audience on Spotify with display ads is easy. Use your existing creative and launch your first campaign in minutes with Spotify Ads Manager. Family found out from the news. Her Aunt Tanya was waiting for a work meeting to start when her phone started blowing up. When Tanya, I thought I was about to have a stroke. I am so pissed off.

I am so mad that they didn't even bother to say a damn thing to any of us. She also said, I feel like I'm being hit by a bus all over again. You should have had the right to know in case we wanted to be there. Emma's grandfather, James Cole, was at work when a reporter called him. Orina James, I didn't even know there was a plea deal on the table. Deputy A.G. Smith had been apologetic to the family, saying the key reason for the plea was to avoid forcing Chrissy's other children, the oldest of whom was 12 years old, to testify.

Forina Kelsey, there was a part of me that was hoping that it was Brandon, or there was some sort of extenuating circumstance that led to Emma's death. But I'm also angry because it just didn't have to happen. The Department of Justice said the case had been under a gag order that was still active. It limited what the state could discuss with anyone who was not next of kin under the victim's Bill of Rights, and that included the existence of a possible plea. Emma's next of kin is her father, Joshua Duthit. He said Deputy A.G. Smith had asked his position on the plea deal, that he was not notified

of the negotiations and learned about the plea through the news as well. Word of Brandon's plea came out on May 31st after a national news outlet published a story about it while the documents were still under seal. His family learned about that one from the media as well. Brenna Kelsey, I think it's atrocious. Maybe he didn't kill her, but he was with Christy for a whole year after and didn't say anything. How do you do something so heinous and be a part of that for so long and then just get a slap on the wrist? And to think of the courts, we understand the gag orders, we understand the plea deals,

but to not notify the family to be there while she pleads guilty is just simply unthinkable. To find out about this through the media and not a phone call from the same. the AG, I can't even imagine how that must feel. In August, prosecutors filed a 22-page sentencing memorandum with 122 pages of exhibits. Much of what Emma's extended family knew about her final year came from that document. Dr. Stephanie Deutsch, the medical director of the Children at Risk Evaluation Program at Nemours Children's Children's Hospital, had assessed the case for prosecutors. She wrote that in the vernacular, the word torture usually makes people think of crimes that are politically or militarily motivated, committed by interrogators or

jailers or other state agents. In the case of child torture, she wrote, there are very specific criteria to have been met. Torture is a distinct form of CA characterized by a range of abysive caretaker behavior that is too extreme to be simply classified as abuse. Then she wrote, Emma Cole was a victim of child torture. She asked, that Emma was a targeted child compared to her siblings. Dr. Deutsch could not give a cause of death either. What she could say was that malnourishment was highly likely to have been a contributing factor based on the torture and starvation she had described and on photographs of Emma taken in late

2018 and early 2019. The drawn out starvation may have caused Emma's organs to slowly fail. She also raised the possibility that Emma died of going into cardiac arrest, which Dr. Deutsch said would likely also have been caused by starvation related to malnutrition. In a separate opinion cited by prosecutors, Dr. Deutsch said intentional suffocation could not be ruled out. Dr. Deutsch also wrote that MS3 siblings were themselves victims of CA neglect and that they had repeatedly watched their sister be singled out. They continued to suffer deep psychological trauma, which may have long-term effects on their mental and behavioral health.

that will require aggressive in ongoing mental health intervention to support their emotional recoveries. Christy told investigators that Emma's conception was a revenge pregnancy. At some point after her youngest son was born, the father of her three older children became involved with the mother of Joshua Doothith's children. The two of them stayed together for years. Angry and using drugs at the time, Christy was intimate with Joshua. She told police she was trying to make in her words.

words, a point that I could get anybody. Brandon told investigators this was why his wife targeted Emma more than any of the other children, saying she was harder on Emma because of the situation how it came about. Brandon also referred to Emma crudely when he spoke about her to police, saying she knew what to do to turn on the charm and could get what she wanted by being a little bitch. There was also a phone call where Brandon told his brother that he should attribute Emma's death to This is in his words, getting her ass beat. The three surviving children were notified in January of 2021 that their sister was dead.

Going to forensic interviewers and doctors who spoke with them, all three nearly immediately concluded that their mother was responsible. One of them said, Mommy is the one who did it. By the time they were all taken into custody at the hotel in Pennsylvania, all three were thin and suffering from malnutrition with significant dental decay documented. prosecutors also wrote that one of the children remembered Christy taking Emma to the softball field the night before she disappeared, and that one of them had heard Christy say, that's it for Emma, Emma's not coming back. On September 14, 2023, Christy appeared in court in a red jumpsuit and black rimmed glasses, dark brown hair hanging straight down her back. Joshua Duthit spoke first from a podium in the middle of the courtroom with his wife and their baby beside him. He had traveled from Indiana. talked about how little of his daughter's life he had been a part of,

about carrying her small pink casket to be lowered into the ground, and said he felt complicit. Grina Joshua, I was a terrible father, lost, selfish, but I was rebuilding my life and working hard. The realization of that hurts to this very second. He was angry, too, and said Chrissy had led him on and made him believe he could adopt Emma when the girl was already dead. Last time we spoke, I could have never imagined she passed away already, he said.

You spoke like she would have had an amazing life. I will never understand your actions. Deputy A.G. Smith read Tanya's victim impact statement aloud while she sat a few rows behind him. She had written, A Piece of Me died that day. She had also written, no amount of time in prison will ever be enough for Christy. And I hate Christy. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad?

I get it. I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned, and today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.

I hope whatever time she gets is miserable for her. I hope she burns in hell where she belongs. Belinda spoke as well. She never referred to Chrissy as her daughter only as a surviving children's mother. She urged the judge to reject the prosecution's request that Christy have no contact with the children while she was in prison. Deputy A.G. Smith told the court she had never reported that Emma was no longer with Christy. According to Deputy A.G. Smith, Delaware and Indiana both require anyone who suspects a child has been neglected or abused to make a report. defendant's mother knew for over a year that Emma wasn't around anymore as she didn't hear her voice on phone calls.

She accepted, apparently unquestionably, the absurd story that Emma was at some facility for mentally ill toddlers. That inaction has caused the state serious pause about her willingness to protect the children from her daughter. Christy told the judge she was sorry for all the hurt she inflicted and the pain she caused. She said, I knew everything was wrong and I was so messed up, because of everything I did. I thought I could get away with it, to be honest. She said she would do anything in the world to turn back time and correct her actions. She said her mother had no knowledge of her acts or her lies and that she had lied to everybody. In the same statement, she said she lost a child because of her and Brandon's actions, that she decided to go

along with Brandon and decided not to get help. She did not once say Emma's name. Her apology was, I'm sorry that my actions caused so much pain to my children and my mom. A turn to Attorney Patrick Collins said that while it was easy to paint his client as a monster, her own life had been a nonstop disaster since childhood. Said she had been harmed and abandoned as a child, subjected to extreme poverty beaten by intimate partners and had suffered from mental illness, and that she and Brandon were both addicted to methamphetamine. He said the true monster was drug addiction.

Or near attorney Collins, Christy wanted to be a mother, but she wasn't honest with herself that she was very ill-equipped to be a mother. Judge Primos told the courtroom, I cannot presume to comprehend the grief and the anguish that Emma's family members here today have been put through because of Ms. Haas's actions. He agreed with the prosecutors that she deserved

more than the mandatory minimum because of the excessive cruelty of the crime imposed a sentence both sides had recommended, 50 years suspended after 30. She was also sentenced to probation on the counts involving her other three children to run concurrently. On the question of contact, he ordered

that she have none with the surviving children while they are still minors, unless in Indiana court with jurisdiction over their custody authorizes it. He said all three will be adults in less than 10 years. For any deputy A.G. Smith, the defendant left her daughter without a grave or a name. Brandon was sentenced that afternoon. For the sentence came down, Joshua asked the court, Do you believe justice in a world where Mr. Haas serves zero days in prison? He is just as responsible.

Emma's aunt Tanya had written he is just as guilty as Christy. How do you hurt a child and put them through so much torture? Deputy A.G. Smith told the court that Brandon was not merely a silent collaborator and that he joined his wife in the cover-up. Brandon apologized for not calling 911 after Emma died, calling it a decision that he regrets to this day and will forever. You do not say much, though, about what his children went through and he largely blamed his wife for the harm that took place. when he was arrested, there was drugs and paraphernalia in the hotel room. And before taking a polygraph, he told investigators he had used meth in the 24 hours prior. He had recently told pre-sentence investigators he had little to no knowledge of his wife's harm of her children,

which was very different from what he told police immediately after his arrest. We're going to Judge Primos, what concerns and troubles the court, however, is that what Mr. Haas has told the pre-sentence investigator and what he has told this court, both through counsel and his own statements is very different from a full acceptance of responsibility. He sentenced Brandon to four years and one month in prison. We couldn't find any record of what prison Brandon is serving his sentence at, or if he is even still behind bars as of the date of this recording. In October of 2020, the Smyrna Clayton Little Last Softball Organization set up a temporary memorial at the fields.

On November 21st, 2020, they renamed the minor league field to the Emma Grace Memorial Field. Several members of Emma's family traveled from Indiana to be there for the ceremony. A private Facebook group called Justice for Emma Grace launched in the middle of October right after she was identified. Within days, it had about 1,300 members. By February of 2021, it had more than 1,800 with people joining from at least 20 states and from all over the world. Paloma Galzzi, the forensic artist, has been with a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for about four years and can count on one hand the number of images she has produced that has led to a name. She said that identifying a child brings closure and justice and it also brings heartbreak, which it definitely does. Kelsey has not heard from her mother since the day she showed her the forensic sketch and other relatives on that side have cut off contact with her too.

Her three children lost their grandparents. Her oldest, who was old enough to know his little cousin is dead and his aunt is in trouble, could not understand why he has not heard from them. Kelsey has told him that maybe when they're not angry anymore, they will come back, and if they ever do, that's okay. Tanya's marriage did not survive it either. On September 28, 2021, she watched on a video call as a Monroe County judge signed papers dissolving it, her ex-husband did not show up.

Four years earlier, the two of them had handed Emma back to Christy. They had thought that would break them if it had not. They grieved differently after her death, and in Tanya's words completely shut down instead of trying to talk to each other. James and Christy FaceTime briefly when she was extradited in October of 2020, and by early 2022 they had not spoken since.

He does not know what he would even say now. Without his phone call, the girl on that flyer might still be nameless. He knows that and he still carries the rest of it. According to James, in my heart, I knew she definitely had something to do with it and it was the right thing, but she's still my daughter. Emma's remains were released to her father in March of 2021, 18 months after she was found. Tanya, with his help, planned the funeral. When the family saw the casket at Chandler Funeral Home in Elletsville, it was tiny. According to Kelsey, when we saw the casket, it was a shoe box. We just couldn't believe that all of Emma was in that little box.

On March 31st, 2021, they held a short private service, and Emma was buried at Clear Creek Cemetery outside Bloomington. Her headstone has a photograph of her set into the marble, a few inches tall and a couple inches wide. In it, she is mid-squint, nose-crinkled up, her thin upper lip almost gone behind the smile and her baby teeth still not all the way in. The death date on the headstone reads only 2019. Tanya wears a silver heart-shaped locket with Emma's picture in it.

Her grandson was born after Emma died and will never meet her. One afternoon, he was sitting on her lap face in her chest and he got a hold of the locket and pulled. Emma, he mumbled. According to Tanya, she told him, you're going to break it baby she took his hand and swapped the necklace for the for rubble the paw patrol toys sitting on the couch beside them and he went for the toy instead photos that emma are on the walls all over the house and the toys tanya had still not given away to family and friends are still there tanya's grandchildren may never be told how emma died what they know about her is that their

grandmother's saying you are my sunshine to her every night before she put her to bed tanya sings it at the grave now instead of at the bedside. When her grandson goes with her, he sings it too. According to Tanya, it breaks my heart, but I hope he never stops.