This Babysitter Ended His Life Because He Had A 99.8 Fever | Barbara Kendrick

Did the baby fall today at all or anything happened? Would there be any kind of injury?

“No.”

“No. What hurt a baby?”

This is the babysitter, Barbara Kendrick, lying to the officers, thinking she can get away with it, but they already knew the truth. And this is exactly how she demonstrated the moment she tried to make a baby stop crying. She insisted Cooper had simply become unresponsive because he was sick. But very soon, Barbara’s true identity will come as the most evil babysitter you will ever know. And no one could have imagined the shocking lies hidden behind this babysitter’s calm demeanor. Hi, my name is Christine and welcome to Innocence Files. What makes this case so horrifying is that Cooper was not in the hands of a stranger, but someone in the family. If parents can’t trust someone they know, who can they truly trust with their child?

In Jacksonville, Florida, Teal Garvin and her partner just had their first child and were still learning how to balance the brutal realities of working life with the fragile beauty of raising their child. They weren’t wealthy, but they were determined. And almost everything in their world now revolved around a baby boy named Kooper Dubik. Cooper was born in late 2016, a winter baby who Teal described as such a happy child who was always smiling and giggling. For two young parents trying to keep up with bills, work schedules, and the exhaustion of new parenthood, Cooper was both their greatest joy and the reason they pushed themselves harder every day.

At just 5 months old, Kooper was already beginning to recognize his own name. Whenever Teal called out to him, he’d turn toward her with wide, curious eyes, often responding with happy little coups, as if he were trying to join the conversation. He was fascinated by the world around him, finding joy in the simplest moments. He loved bouncing along to Baby Shark, and at the end of each day, he would settle down to the comforting sound of bedtime stories. Like many working families, Teal and Cooper’s dad eventually reached the point where they needed help. They trusted Barbara Kendrick because she was a distant relative, a 65-year-old woman who was connected to them.

Cooper’s father’s brother had been married to Barbara’s daughter, and that thin thread of kinship was enough for any parent to feel safe. To Kooper’s parents, Barbara appeared to be an experienced babysitter and a trusted family friend. They had no reason to believe that the woman caring for their son had a criminal history stretching back years. Court records show Barbara had previously pleaded guilty to passing worthless checks in 2004 and later in 2009 to trafficking opiates, offenses that resulted in probation and home detention.

Barbara’s own life wasn’t without hardship. At the time, her adult son was serving a sentence in a Florida correctional facility. It was another burden she quietly carried while going about her daily routine. As Cooper’s parents were not aware of these facts, none of that appeared to factor into the family’s decision. To them, Barbara was simply someone they believed they could trust with their child. Barbara lived in a modest home on Jacksonville’s north side.

She had limited formal education, never finishing even her 10th grade, and having a complicated past that included financial and drug-related trouble. She lived with her husband, who was unemployed and was at home most of the time due to disability. But to Cooper’s parents, she was someone they trusted, someone who had raised children and had grandchildren of her own.

The babysitting arrangement was simple. On work days, Cooper’s dad would drive over with the baby in the morning, usually sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m., and he might pick him up as early as 3:00 p.m. or as late as 5:00 p.m., depending on his work shifts. On some days, the baby was with her for 8 to 10 hours. Despite the long days, there were no obvious signs that anything was wrong, as he was usually picked up smiling, appeared well cared for, and well-fed.

Barbara started babysitting Cooper when he was 3 months old and had been doing it for around a month by the time of the incident. Some reports suggest a little more than a month. Barbara herself told investigators it had been about 2 months. Either way, the routine had already begun to feel familiar. Cooper’s dad would hand over Cooper along with his bottles, formula, small containers of food, and the teething tablets his parents used when his gums hurt. For this service, Barbara charged a flat fee of $75 a week from them.

Inside Barbara’s house, the setup was ordinary. A living room with a couch, recliner chairs, a coffee table, and a television. A playpen where Cooper would be placed when he wasn’t being held or carried, and a few toys that Barbara brought for him. In the week before everything went wrong, Cooper had been sick. His parents told Barbara he was congested and not feeling well. She noticed his sneezing, runny nose, fussiness, and lots of crying. His temperature had risen enough that his parents kept him home for a couple of days to watch him closely.

When they brought him back to Barbara, he was still not fully recovered. Barbara described him as pretty sick and said his temperature ran at about 99.8°F. She could hear congestion in his nose and chest. There was rattling when he breathed. The baby cried a lot during that time, and Barbara attributed it to his teething and illness. Even with the teething tablets his parents supplied, Cooper remained difficult to soothe. He would push the bottle out with his mouth, cry through rocking, and reject everything.

The morning of the incident began like any other. Nothing seemed out of place, and there was no hint of the nightmare that was about to unfold. But within hours, everything changed. Cooper suddenly became unresponsive, sending Barbara into a panic. Desperate for help, she grabbed the phone and dialed 911, unaware that the events of that morning would soon become the center of a heartbreaking investigation.

Before paramedics could even reach the house, Barbara didn’t wait alone. She had already run next door, pulling her neighbor into the emergency unfolding inside her living room. The neighbor rushed in and dropped to the floor beside Cooper, following dispatch instructions to begin CPR, pressing down on Cooper’s chest again and again, trying for a response. Barbara stood by, portraying herself being in shock as her neighbor fought to bring Cooper back.

Mid-CPR, the moment turned even more frightening. When the neighbor rolled Cooper onto his side, a heavy rush of mucus and vomit poured from his mouth onto the carpet, pooling near the coffee table and chair. It was a visceral, terrifying sign that something was seriously wrong. Within minutes, Jacksonville Rescue arrived. Without any delay, Cooper was loaded into the ambulance and rushed toward UF Health Jacksonville.

At the hospital, doctors quickly realized this was far more serious than a baby who had simply stopped breathing. Cooper had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and a fracture. He was transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit at Wolfson Children’s Hospital where doctors worked desperately to save his life. Meanwhile, Cooper’s mother got the call at work and rushed to the hospital where she was confronted with every parent’s worst nightmare: her baby lying in critical condition, surrounded by machines with little hope and overwhelming uncertainty.

Looking at Cooper’s critical condition, detectives knew something was terribly wrong. So, they took Barbara into investigation immediately. They charged her with aggravated child abuse and started questioning her about what went wrong. Barbara explained that Cooper was dropped off around 7:30 a.m. and that she noticed Cooper was not well at all. He seemed fussy, sick, and quite irritated.

“Did he seem sick last week or—”

“He was sick when they brought him to me. He said he was congested, uh, sneezing, falling on his ears. And he’s teething, so he does a lot of crying.”

“Okay. Pretty crying baby.”

“He cries a lot cuz his gums hurting.”

“Yeah. Yesterday he said he was sick yesterday, too. How—how sick was he?”

“Pretty sick.”

“Did you check his temperature yesterday?”

“Yeah, his temperature was 99.8 all day long.”

“Okay.”

But she said she believed it was just teething and fever as he was not well prior week. So, she did not address the situation as an emergency. As the hours passed, Barbara fed him, put him down for naps, and tried to calm him in different ways when he cried.

“Did he eat at all today?”

“He, uh, yeah, he ate a little bit today.”

“What time did you give him his first? Did he feed B or he cereal?”

“He has a bottle with cereal in it.”

“Okay.”

“Then I feed him, uh, his other meals.”

“What kind of other meals does he eat?”

“He’s pudding, yogurt, you know, stuff like that. Soft.”

“Okay. What—what time did he have the first bottle with you today?”

“I got birthday so we really didn’t look.”

“You about?”

“Oh, did I say nine?”

She described him as congested and crying continuously. She gave him the teething tablets his parents had provided, placed him in a musical rocker, then a walker, but nothing seemed to settle him for long.

“He wakes up at 10 and it wasn’t long at 10 crying, crying. I put him in a little—I got him a little one of them little music rockers and it rocks back and forth play music had little buttons, buttons. Okay.”

“He laid there for a while talking and—”

“You know, normal baby.”

“Yeah.”

“And he didn’t like that. So I tried the walker—”

“And he—he played there for a few minutes—”

“And he didn’t want being there. So I took him out, try to feed him, give him another bottle.”

The day became a cycle of bottles, naps, and crying. Barbara tried to carry on with her household routine, even stepping outside to hang clothes on the line while Cooper cried inside. Later, she told detectives that when she went back in, she thought the crying had stopped and assumed at first that he had finally fallen asleep. But when she looked closer, she found out that Cooper was unresponsive.

Meanwhile, everyone who loved Cooper was praying for a miracle. His mother did not sleep that night, staying on edge and waiting for any sign that her baby might pull through. Instead of comfort, she was forced to watch him go through intensive monitoring, medication, and treatment as doctors fought to keep him alive.

But Cooper’s condition only got worse. He struggled to breathe, and he remained in the NICU the entire time, surrounded by machines and medical staff. Every hour that passed felt like a lifetime, and every doctor who walked into that waiting room carried the weight of news no parent wants to hear. In the end, none of the prayers and treatments could save him. And it tore his mother apart. To not be able to hold him and to not be able to see his smile, it’s so hard. It’s so incredibly hard. And Cooper’s mother expressed her sadness for how the nanny treated the situation.

“16 minutes while you watch him gasp for air, trying to stay alive. You chose to kill him. And I just—I can’t forgive that. I—I just can’t even begin to explain how hard it is.”

Cooper’s grandmother also expressed her immense grief over the demise of her grandchild. It was just such a long period of not knowing, you know, just being hopeful and praying that a miracle would happen. And unfortunately, there was no miracle. She lived on the property where her husband worked, so he was there to be able to pop in if it was needed.

Doctors pronounced Cooper dead, and the case immediately escalated. Barbara Kendrick’s charges were upgraded from aggravated child abuse to murder, and officers began a full investigation into what really happened inside that house. Because now there was no room left for uncertainty. A baby was gone and someone owed answers.

“A Jacksonville woman charged in the death of a 5-month-old baby boy went before a judge this morning.”

“This 5-month-old baby boy dies from his injuries. And this woman, his babysitter, is now facing a murder charge. A family friend says the child’s parents are just devastated.”

“Right now, they just ask for time to grieve, um, and for prayers.”

“He suffered a skull fracture before he died. Friends and family are stepping in to help his parents deal with this tragedy.”

“Yeah, he was a cute guy. Just smiled a lot.”

Happy 5-month baby Cooper’s life was just beginning when it was cut short. A family friend, Jonathan Dhy, says Cooper’s parents are devastated by the loss of their only child.

“She hasn’t slept and right now they’re just—uh, they’re having husband and wife time just, you know, grieving together.”

Detectives now want to know everything that happened in that home. After hearing the baby’s entire routine, they wanted to know more about the time before Cooper went unresponsive. Barbara said that she was having particularly a lot of difficulty in making Cooper sleep. But once she did, his eyes started becoming half closed in a weird way. Her way of describing the baby’s condition can be odd at times. And at some point, she even admitted to shaking the baby.

“So then what happens next?”

“I think he was going to go to sleep. So Rocky—”

“Tried all over again.”

“He was going to do it. He act like he was tired. He’s going like this to fear—”

“His eyes—”

“And crying.”

“I said I’ll lay him down.”

“How babies doing when they cry hard like that? That’s what he was doing. And I—I started cooking.”

“Mhm.”

“And I hear now, so okay he’s asleep. So I waited a few minutes back over like this. I said, ‘Cooper,’ and no, no response. So I took it and I thought I struck him again. I said I heard him again. Yeah. I said, ‘Cooper,’ nothing. You know how their eyes are half halfway open.”

“He sleeps like that sometimes. He’s just sleeping.”

Then she started describing how her neighbor did everything to help Cooper.

“It just glamorked him up wrong. I picked him holding him like I always did for my chest. Kept talking to holler and holler and harder. Shaking his leg, his arms, you know, and he’ll respond. So it scared me. So I laid him down. I got my next door neighbor.”

“You laying down now on the chair.”

“Okay.”

“Like—like a baby. Just let him down.”

“What kind of chair?”

“Like a recliner.”

“The recliner.”

“Okay.”

“And I hollered at him again. He didn’t respond. I said, ‘Oh my god, something’s wrong. What’d I do? What’d I do?’ So I ran over to my next door neighbor, she comes flying over there. It was in CPR.”

She then kept on explaining how worried she got for Cooper and how she was screaming and crying for him. She also explained the moment to the detectives when a bunch of mucus started coming out of Cooper’s mouth when the neighbor tried to give him CPR.

“I was screaming crying.”

“Yeah.”

“I—what the hell happened here? What’s going on? He was just fine 2, 3 hours ago.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s laughing, eating, playing, cooling, you know.”

“I was like, you know, what the hell happened here?”

“So did he—uh, the rescue—”

“Then the rescue comes and takes—okay.”

“They—uh, she had him laid down.”

“When she turned to the side, a whole bunch of mucus came rolling out of his mouth, a bunch.”

“Yeah.”

“My floor was wet.”

“I throw up.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Where on the floor is that?”

“The carpet there in the living room.”

“I—”

“Between—I got a coffee table here. I got another recliner there. Then I got a TV there, a couch over here.”

“What furniture is it nearest?”

“Here’s near the coffee table.”

“Near the coffee table and what would it be? Between the coffee table and the—”

“The—uh, um, his little—uh, chair, his little walker, walker. Okay.”

“So, it’s going to be between the coffee table.”

“Coffee table and the locker. And like I said, there was another chair there reclining.”

Listening to her recount those moments, it was almost as if she wanted the detectives to see her as a bystander in her own home. Someone who watched the crisis unfold rather than someone who may have caused it. The detectives have now moved on to asking more about who else was in the house so they can rule out the possibility that no one else was involved in it.

“Was your husband home today?”

“No.”

“What time did he—”

“Part-time job on the side.”

“Okay. What time did he leave?”

“He left about 6:30.”

“So he left before the baby.”

“He left long before the baby.”

“What does he work?”

“Eagles there on Lane Avenue. Eagles Glass, Lane Avenue.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a glass company.”

“Oh, glass. Eagles. Okay, I got you. I got you. I thought you said class. Okay, I got you.”

“Well, I got no words. My—hate them things. They gave me—uh, keep falling out.”

“From talking, right? So he leaves at 6:45. Was anybody else there today?”

“Just me and the baby and my little dog.”

There was no one else in the house except for her and the baby. Barbara now tells the officer that she wouldn’t hurt any baby and that Cooper got no injuries that day in her care.

“Did the baby fall today at all or anything happened? Would there be any kind of injury?”

“No.”

“No. What hurt a baby? I mean, I’m not saying you would, but sometimes accidents happen.”

“Yeah, it do happen. I got watch this one arm here. Sometime it gives out.”

“Yeah.”

“And I can’t feel nothing.”

“Yeah.”

“But I—I use this hand a lot. How is it touching him?”

“Mhm.”

“Uh, holding up. If this arm don’t work, I grab this one.”

“Okay.”

It was a plea more than a statement. The kind of denial that comes from someone either telling the truth or someone who has convinced themselves of a version of events that simply cannot survive contact with the evidence. But the detectives weren’t convinced, not by the timeline or the vague half-closed eyes or her trying to admit shaking the baby without harming him. The detectives are now changing their tone. They’re asking Barbara firmly that what really happened because they’re not convinced by any of her stories.

“I was just concerned about the chest.”

“Yeah. And that’s what we were concerned about at first, too. Um, but you went to UF Health over there on 8th Street.”

“Yeah.”

“And they did a CAT scan. So, that’s what we got to figure out how that happened. Uh—”

“I don’t—I don’t know how that happened.”

“And that’s why I’m asking you any accidents today. You know, I play with him up in the air. You know, chance you dropped him today on accident?”

“No.”

“Cuz now—I mean, cuz here’s the thing. You know, obviously you know what we do, and we’re very good at what we do. Those doctors are excellent at Shands. I know people talk about Shands, but if you’re hurt real bad, that’s the place to go.”

“Y’all, I can—I can agree with Shands. They do take good care of—”

“They’re hurt real bad. That’s where you need to go cuz it’s a trauma unit, and the doctors there are telling us that the baby has a skull fracture.”

“Okay.”

“Now, a skull fracture is something that if that would have happened over the weekend or this morning before you had him, it would have been pretty obvious because the baby would not have been cooling or laughing or—or anything. Okay. So, something happens at your—your house today. Okay. And that’s what we got to figure out what happens. Okay. And I know sometimes these things are hard to talk about and—but, you know, the truth always comes out. Okay. And I would much rather hear from you then than to hear from somebody else. So, yeah. Okay. So if something happened today, now’s the time to tell me you be 100% truthful. Okay? Because even if—even if you try and say it’s—it’s one thing, the doctors going to be able to tell how it happened. I mean, these doctors are good. Okay? They have all the best equipment. Okay, that baby’s in a bad way. In fact, it’s being transferred right now to Wolfson’s NICU, which is—”

“What’s that?”

“That is the baby—it’s the—”

At this point on, we can visibly feel Barbara getting more nervous and defensive in her statements.

“Like I said, if I told you what happened, I put him down on the—”

“How—how did the baby—how did the baby’s head get hurt?”

“I—I don’t know. That’s what’s got me. Uh—”

“And that’s why I was asking things like, ‘Was there anybody else there?’ Um, so besides just you and him there, so and you’re watching so you would have known something happened. And you said, and you even said it at 10:00 he’s—he’s awake and he’s moving.”

“Yeah. And then crying—”

“This afternoon he has a traumatic brain injury. So something happens between the time he gets there and this afternoon and that’s what we got to figure out. Okay? And I—and I can promise you that if you lie to me, it’s not going to be good for you. Okay? If something happens and you can explain it, now’s the time to explain it. Not have the doctors explain it to me and then it looks like you’re holding stuff back and you hurt this baby on purpose.”

The room grew heavier with every passing question. This is the breaking point of this interrogation. Now all the truth will start coming out that Barbara has been hiding for so long, whether she likes it or not. After hours of denials, vague explanations, and a story that kept bending to fit whatever question came next, Barbara Kendrick was running out of answers.

The detectives weren’t raising their voices. They didn’t need to. They simply kept circling back to the one thing she couldn’t explain away. A skull fracture that no chair, no fall, no accident could account for.

“Okay, I’ve sat across from many, many people, okay? And I’m not saying you’re a bad person, but I do feel that you’re holding something back because you’re scared, okay? And now’s the time to tell me what that is, okay? Because I don’t think you’re a bad person right now, but if—if it continues to go this way, I may change.”

“I understand that.”

“Okay. What happened today? And I need to know every—I need what happened.”

“I know. I might have put it down once on the—the chair to—too hard. Then I picked him up, let him down.”

“Like I said, like I said—”

“Quiet.”

“Like I said, this is the thing the doctors are going to be able to tell us what exactly happened to that baby. Okay. So, they’re going to be to tell me if putting the baby down hard on the chair did it or not. Okay.”

“All right.”

“I know the baby was being really fussy today and I know that can be frustrating because listen, I have kids of mine. I have two, okay? And I know sometimes that kids can be really frustrated when they’re crying and they’re teething and—and I understand that parents and babysitters sometimes get frustrated and things happen. Okay? You have to explain that to me and it has to be believable. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Putting the baby down hard on the chair is not going to fracture that baby’s skull. Okay? What happens—what’s that sweet—that you believe that the baby’s skull is fractured? Okay. And you need to tell me how that happens. And I understand you’re scared, but trust me, lying to me is not going to help. I want to know. Listen, I do this for a living, okay? I talk to people for a living. I know when they’re holding something back, okay? And I’m not saying you’re a bad person because you’re holding something back. I think you’re—you’re scared cuz I’d be scared if I sit in that chair and see—”

“I’m terrified.”

Finally, after putting so much pressure, Barbara enacted how she tried to calm the baby down when she got frustrated. Watching her physically demonstrate the motion is honestly the most heartbreaking visual in this entire case. It’s one thing to hear someone describe an act of violence in words. It’s another thing entirely to watch them show you with their own hands exactly how it happened. Detectives are playing all their cards to make sure they can get every detail out of her. They don’t want to miss out on anything.

“My partner already told you.”

“Last chance.”

“Last chance. You’ve got to show us exactly because you understand that that baby may not make it. Okay. He’s in critical condition in ICU. He may not make it. And what you tell us may help us to let the doctors know exactly what happened to him so they can help save his life. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to save his life?”

“Yes, I want to save his life.”

“So, show us exactly what you did to that child. Okay? I’m not going to sit here and debate with you. This is going to be my last opportunity to you to show me what happened. Okay? Show me what happened and then I’m going to walk out that door and I’m going to call these doctors and I’m going to find out whether you’re telling me the truth or not. Okay? Show me what happens.”

“And what you show him needs to be consistent with what caused that dent in the back of that baby’s head.”

“Cuz I’m going to know. I’m going to find out.”

“Cuz we’re going to know. It’s just a matter of whether you told us the truth and tried to help this baby or you sat here and lied to us and tried to protect yourself instead of helping that baby.”

“No, I want—I want the baby to make.”

“Well, let’s get out here so we can tell these doctors. Um, if there’s anything else you need to tell us, like maybe if something else happened to—”

“No, that door.”

“I will.”

At this point, the detectives paused the interrogation for a moment, not because they were done, but because they needed time to process the confession they had just extracted. What had started as a routine welfare check had just become a full-blown homicide case, and there were procedural steps that couldn’t wait. They stepped out to secure court documents for a search warrant of Barbara’s home, ensuring that whatever physical evidence remained inside that house would be preserved and cataloged before it could disappear or be explained away.

“Says, ‘I, Barbara Kendrick, you hereby authorize and give permission to K.M. Zeller 7754,’ that’s my name and my ID number, ‘who has identified himself or herself to me as a sworn law enforcement officer employed by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to take possession of and with the necessary assistance of a computer forensic examiner and our authorized law enforcement agent to make a full and complete search of my computers, computer peripheral, and related material located at.’ And this is where we’re at. We’re at 501 East Face Street. And then I’m going to skip down here and this is where we’re talking about actually we’re going to search and it’s your Alcatel cell phone.”

“Yeah.”

“With your serial number.”

“‘I’ve been advised that law enforcement officers are engaged in an investigation concerning an alleged violation of federal and or state laws utilizing computer, audio, visual, or digital technology. I do authorize and give permission to said law enforcement officers to take any computers, computer peripherals, and related media or devices which may have or might have connection value or relevance as evidence in said investigation.'”

Investigators were working in parallel. They reached out to Cooper’s mother and father trying to learn more about Barbara’s history and how she’d become part of their lives in the first place. They also spoke with her husband, piecing together a fuller, more complete picture of the woman who had just confessed to killing a baby in her care.

“Did you and your husband get in an argument last night or this morning? You’re a little stressed out about it or something. You remember?”

“I got a argument with him, uh, one night over something stupid.”

“Have you been stressed about that or has it been bothering you or—”

“That’s been—uh, let’s jo—my son’s locked up. Okay. Okay. He’s doing time.”

“Okay.”

“And that put a lot of stress on me.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m taking care of him, sending him stuff.”

“Okay. Of course, you see a lot of—”

“No, he’s in, um, Crawfordville, Florida.”

“Okay.”

“In a correction facility there.”

“Okay. Did he get arrested here or did he get arrested—”

“Got arrested in Green Springs.”

“No, he was, uh, living with me at the time.”

“Mhm.”

“And then they brought him down here and they kept him here till Clay come and got him.”

“Okay.”

“He went to court.”

And ultimately, what’s almost more unsettling than the confession itself is what came after it. Even after admitting to committing such a heinous act only a few hours earlier, there isn’t an ounce of visible shame on Barbara’s face. She oddly seems very calm. Detectives were also determined to find out if this was an isolated incident or if Barbara had harmed a child before.

“Have—have you ever been—have you ever had any issues like this before? Anything ever happened with a child where you got frustrated?”

“Never before. I walked away.”

“You walked away the other times when he was doing that. I went outside. I counted.”

“Was that some deep breaths?”

“Was that today or is that other time?”

“There’s another time.”

“How many times do you think that happened when you had to walk away?”

“Quite a few times.”

“Quite a few. See?”

“Because I build up.”

“Pretty difficult baby.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“Much—is much more difficult than the other children you’ve watched or you’ve been around.”

“Yeah, better than that when he’s—but he’s a good baby. Really is.”

“Yeah. Until he starts crying.”

“He starts crying.”

“It gets real frustrating.”

“Yeah. But that—he’s really good baby.”

“Um, and just—just to get back to where I think we’re—there’s nobody out there with y’all day today. Just you and him and adult.”

“Correct.”

“Yeah. Till later on—”

“Till when your neighbor came over.”

She admitted clearly to being frustrated by Cooper’s crying on multiple occasions, not just that day, but repeatedly over the course of the month she’d been watching him. And that raises an uncomfortable question that hangs over the entire case. If crying children frustrated her this much, why take on the job of a babysitter at all? And if the frustration on that particular day became truly unbearable, why not simply pick up the phone and call his parents instead of resorting to violence against a defenseless 5-month-old?

“Why didn’t you call the parents or someone else to come help you or to come pick him up if he was frustrating you to that point where you felt you needed to throw him? Why didn’t you call somebody prior to come?”

“That’s a good question.”

“I mean—”

“Why didn’t I?”

“Yeah. Do you know why?”

“I guess I didn’t—didn’t think about it cuz I was, uh, trying to keep being quiet and I was upset and, uh, frustrated on top of that. I’m good.”

“How tall are you?”

“5’7″. I think I shot.”

“How much you weigh?”

“Uh, last time I weighed myself, I was, um, 182.”

“You said you’re disabled, correct?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your—what’s your disability?”

“Just mind to do stuff on my own. Um, that’s what my husband’s my pay to help me do what I have to do. So, I totally understand.”

“What were you actually diagnosed with for disability? Because you would have had to have been diagnosed.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can’t think what they called it. Has something to do with the retirement of the mining.”

“Well, I freaked out when they told me that. I go, ‘Well, we need the [ __ ] of the mind. What the hell you talking about?'”

“It runs in the family, but—but I’m the one that got it.”

“Yeah.”

“Some kind of illness.”

“Okay. Do you—when’s the last time you had a job?”

“Oh, jeez. That—”