Mom arrested after baby Kahleb Rowan Collins was beaten and hung by a rope before his death
Kahleb Collins is presumed dead, authorities announced weeks after his father Steven Collins and 2-year-old sister RyLeigh died in a car crash
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An Alabama woman has been arrested and faces charges in the death of her toddler son, who is now believed to be dead months after he vanished.
Wendy Pamela Jean Bailey, 22, was charged Tuesday with aggravated child abuse, criminally negligent homicide, corpse abuse and domestic violence, according to the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office.
Her one-year-old son Kahleb Collins was last seen on September 4 in Winfield, Alabama, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) said on December 17. However, he was not reported missing to the authorities, who were later alerted only to concerns about his wellbeing after a car crash on December 8.
The car crash killed the child’s father, Steven Collins, 40, who was driving at least 92 miles-per-hour when he went off the road and crashed into a tree, and his two-year-old sister RyLeigh Collins, the Fayette County Sheriff’s office said. His mother was hospitalized in critical condition.
The sheriff’s office said law enforcement was alerted by an unnamed family member a day later that the man and woman in the crash “had another child” who was unaccounted for, according to a news release.
Bailey was released on December 30 and immediately transported to the Fayette County Jail and charged in connection with the deaths of both of her children.
She is accused of causing her daughter’s death, who was not wearing a seatbelt or in a car seat at the time of the crash, failing to report abuse of her son, and showing “extreme indifference” to the value of her son’s life.
Kahleb’s body has not been found, but investigators believe that Kahleb “had been deceased for some time” before the crash brought his disappearance to the attention of law enforcement. A search is ongoing for his remains.
On December 11, Kahleb’s grandfather John Elton Bailey, was also taken into custody for failing to report a missing child.
Investigators alleged in a complaint against John Bailey that the child likely “suffered serious bodily harm or death” and was believed to have been “removed from the home and taken to an unknown location.”
A recently filed corpse abuse complaint revealed disturbing details about the torture Kahleb endured in the days and weeks leading up to his presumed death.
Bailey admitted to “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 sent her text messages saying he was going to kill Kahleb and then sent her pictures of him “hanging aloft with a rope with blood present on his body and a photo of Kahleb Collins lying supine on the floor with extreme bruising present on his body," the complaint said.
Collins sent more texts to Bailey saying, “he want move” and “Im so sorry,” then wrote “he moving.”
Bailey replied: “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 more charges are possible according to the sheriff’s office.