An Alabama woman has been arrested and charged with the death of her toddler son, who is now believed to have died months after his disappearance.
Wendy Pamela Jean Bailey, 22, was charged on Tuesday with aggravated child abuse, criminally negligent homicide, corpse abuse, and domestic violence, according to the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office.
On December 17, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) reported that her one-year-old son Kahleb Collins was last seen on September 4 in Winfield, Alabama. However, he was not reported missing to authorities, who were later alerted only to concerns about his well-being following a car accident on December 8.
The child’s father, Steven Collins, 40, who was driving at least 92 mph when he went off the road and hit a tree, and his two-year-old sister RyLeigh Collins were killed in the car accident, according to the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office. His mother was admitted to the hospital in critical condition.
According to a news release from the sheriff’s office, an unnamed family member informed law enforcement a day later that the man and woman involved in the crash “had another child” who was missing.
Bailey was released on December 30 and immediately transported to the Fayette County Jail, where she was charged in connection with both of her children’s deaths.
She is charged with causing the death of her daughter, who was not wearing a seatbelt or in a car seat at the time of the accident, failing to report abuse of her son, and demonstrating “extreme indifference” to the value of her son’s life.
Kahleb’s body has not been discovered, but investigators believe he “had been deceased for some time” before the crash, which brought his disappearance to the attention of law enforcement. The search for his remains is ongoing.
On December 11, Kahleb’s grandfather, John Elton Bailey, was also arrested for failing to report a missing child.
In a complaint against John Bailey, investigators claimed that the child “suffered serious bodily harm or death” and had been “removed from the home and taken to an unknown location.”
A recent corpse abuse complaint revealed disturbing details about Kahleb’s torture in the days and weeks before his presumed death.
Bailey acknowledged after “failing to intervene on more than two occasions that Khaleb Rowan Collins was physically abused by torturous means such as being bound with rope, physically assaulted, and being bound by a rope from a loft with blood and bruising present.”
She claimed Collins texted her that he was going to kill Kahleb and then sent her pictures of him “hanging aloft with a rope with blood on his body and a photo of Kahleb Collins lying supine on the floor with extreme bruising present on his body,” according to the complaint.
Collins texted Bailey more times, saying “he wants to move” and “I’m so sorry,” before writing “he’s moving.”
Bailey gave the following response: “he just looks wore out and tired and hurt hopefully that’s all.”
According to the complaint, Bailey told investigators that “upon the death of Kahleb Rowan Collins his body was placed into a bag and stored in an outside storage building for a brief period prior to disposal at an unknown location.”
Bailey is in the Fayette County Jail, and additional charges are possible, according to the sheriff’s office.