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Mom Sentenced After Daughter Found Dead, Her Body "Crawling" With Maggots · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to another deep dive. Today, we are walking
• 0:03
  into a story that is going to demand a lot
• 0:05
  from us, and I really don't say that lightly. Usually
• 0:08
  we ask for your attention, or you know, your curiosity.
• 0:11
  Today I'm asking for your fortitude. We are going to
• 0:13
  look at something incredibly uncomfortable, something that I think most
• 0:17
  of us would prefer to believe just doesn't happen, not
• 0:21
  in our modern, hyper connected world.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: It's a case that forces us to confront a concept
• 0:26
  I often refer to as slow violence. We aren't talking
• 0:30
  about a sudden act of rage, a gunshot in the night,
• 0:32
  or a split second mistake. We are talking about the
• 0:34
  kind of tragedy that that accumulates silence upon silence, day
• 0:39
  after day, until the result is something that forensic science
• 0:42
  struggles to even quantify.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: It's the violence of erosion. And to get us into
• 0:46
  the headspace for this, I want to take you back
• 0:47
  to a specific date, May third, twenty twenty two. We
• 0:50
  are at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque.
• 0:53
  It's a busy day, the usual chaos of an urban er,
• 0:56
  you know, be being monitors, rushing gurneys, the smell of anisse.
• 1:00
  Then A woman walks into the emergency and take area.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: This is Duralia Espinosa. She is thirty two years old
• 1:07
  at the time, and she is carrying her sixteen year
• 1:10
  old daughter in her arms.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Now just picture that scene for a second. A mother
• 1:15
  carrying a teenager. Sixteen year old is well. They're usually
• 1:18
  walking on their own or maybe leaning on a shoulder
• 1:20
  if they have a twisted ankle, but she is carrying her.
• 1:24
  The initial report, which she tells the triage nurses, is
• 1:28
  that they were on their way to the hospital because
• 1:30
  the daughter wasn't feeling well, and that on the drive over,
• 1:33
  the girl she just stopped breathing.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: And that is the narrative presented. She stopped breathing on
• 1:38
  the way here. It invokes a frantic medical emergency, a
• 1:41
  mother rushing a sick child to help, you know, beating
• 1:44
  the traffic, praying they get there in time.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Right exactly. It's a story we can all sympathize with.
• 1:48
  But the moment the medical staff actually looked at the
• 1:51
  sixteen year old girl in her arms, that entire narrative
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  just it evaporated instantly.
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  Speaker 2: It wasn't just a discrepancy, it was a full on collision.
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  Speaker 3: With reality.
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  Speaker 1: This is the Aha moment, but in the darkest possible sense.
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  Because the doctors didn't see a teenager who had just
• 2:07
  passed away minutes ago in a car. What they saw
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  was a medical contradiction, so jarring it triggered an immediate
• 2:14
  crime scene investigation right there in the triage bee.
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  Speaker 2: The clinical observations were noted immediately. We're talking dry eyes,
• 2:22
  advanced rigor mortis, and most disturbingly significant insect activity.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: And when you say insect activity, we aren't talking about
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  a stray fly buzzing around the room.
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  Speaker 2: No, no, not at all. We are talking about colonization.
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  The medical staff realized almost instantly this child had not
• 2:38
  died in the car. This child had been dead for days.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: So this is the case of Durili Espinoza and the
• 2:43
  death of her daughter, Maria Angelica. And before we go
• 2:46
  any further, I need to set the tone here. We
• 2:49
  are going to be discussing forensic findings that are graphic.
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  We're going to talk about entomology. That's the study of
• 2:53
  insect and severe bodily decay.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: It is graphic, yes, but I want to emphasize that
• 2:59
  it is absolutely essential. We cannot understand the justice system's
• 3:02
  response to this case or the concept of homicide by
• 3:05
  omission without understanding what the body of that poor girl
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  told the investigators. The body, the body is the primary
• 3:14
  witness here.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: So our mission today is to unpack this deep dive,
• 3:18
  not just as a true crime story, but as an
• 3:20
  anatomy of a preventable tragedy. We need to look at
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  the timeline, the forensic evidence, the history of the family,
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  and the legal reckoning that just concluded in January twenty
• 3:30
  twenty six.
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  Speaker 2: And ultimately we have to ask where is the line
• 3:33
  between caregiver burnout and criminal inhumanity?
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  Speaker 3: Because that is the razor's edge this case walks.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack that timeline of discovery. We mentioned the
• 3:42
  hospital arrival Duraili Espinoza's story. Her claim is that she
• 3:46
  heard her daughter moaning in pain at home. She says
• 3:48
  she tried to revive her.
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  Speaker 2: Her specific claim was that she put the girl in
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  the shower to try and wake her up. Then she
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  tried to administer Katia light, you know, the electrolyte solution
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  to rehydrate her.
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  Speaker 1: Which on the surface sounds like a parent trying to
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  manage a sick kid. Here drink some fluids, get in
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  the shower. It's relatable. But let's pause right there. You
• 4:05
  mentioned pediolite. If the child was in the condition we're
• 4:08
  about to describe, would pediolite have even I mean, could
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  it have helped.
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  Speaker 2: That's a critical question and the answer is likely no.
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  In fact, it could have been fatal on its own.
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  When a body is that severely malnourished, reintroducing fluids or
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  nutrients too quickly can trigger something called refeeding syndrome. The
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  body's electrolyte balance is so fragile that a sudden spike
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  in sugar or fluids can cause cardiac arrest. Wow, but
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  that's almost a theoretical point, because the physical reality of
• 4:39
  Maria Angelica suggests she was far, far past the point
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  of being able to swallow anything at all.
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  Speaker 1: Let's talk about that reality. She was sixteen years old.
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  Do you know how much you weighed forty pounds forty
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  one to eight kilograms at sixteen years old.
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  Speaker 2: To put that in perspective for you, that is the
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  average weight of a healthy five year old, maybe a
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  large four year old. This was a teenager with no
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  fat tissue remaining zero, no muscle tissue. The medical term
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  is severe emaciation. She was literally skin and bone.
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  Speaker 1: How does a human body even pay? How does it
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  keep functioning that weight?
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  Speaker 2: It doesn't, really, not in any meaningful way. It enters
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  a state of metabolic hibernation.
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  Speaker 3: We call it kachexia.
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  Speaker 2: And this is important. It's not just being skinny. It
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  is a pathological wasting syndrome. When the body stops receiving fuel.
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  It has a very specific hierarchy of cannibalism. First, it
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  burns through its glycogen stores easy energy. Then it burns
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  through atipose tissue fat. Once the fat is gone, the
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  body has no choice but to consume its own structural protein.
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  Speaker 1: It eats its own muscles, Yeah, to survive exactly.
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  Speaker 2: It breaks down the biceps, the quadriceps, the heart muscle,
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  It breaks down the lining of the cut. It is
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  a slow, agonizing process of the body digesting itself just
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  to keep the brain alive for one more minute, one
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  more hour.
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  Speaker 1: And on top of this wasting, you said you had
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  widespread scrapes and rashes.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, the medical reports detail rashes and scrapes covering her body,
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  including sensitive areas like the genitals. This wasn't just a
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  thin child. This is a body that had been subjected
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  to long term physical degradation. We're talking about pressure ulcer's
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  bed sores that form when a person is immobile for
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  weeks or months at a time. The skin literally dies
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  from the pressure.
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  Speaker 1: I can only imagine the shock of the er doctors.
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  You have a mother saying I try to give repedalyte,
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  and you're looking at a body that looks like it's
• 6:24
  been through a famine, a concentration camp.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: And that shock is exactly where the legal concept of
• 6:30
  homicide biomission begins to form. The mother's story of active care,
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  the shower, the fluids was completely totally incompatible with the chronic,
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  visible neglect stamped on the victim's body. You cannot care
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  for a child and watch them hit forty pounds without
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  intervening unless you are deliberately blind to it.
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  Speaker 1: Let's pivot to the silent witnesses. This is the part
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  that I think is going to surprise a lot of people.
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  The insects. Hear about this on TV shows. But let's
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  get into the actual science of it.
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  Speaker 2: Forensic entomology. It is often the most objective clock we
• 7:01
  have in a suspicious death. It doesn't have an agenda.
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  It doesn't lie.
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  Speaker 1: So I want to circle back to this idea. I
• 7:07
  think most people have seen CSI or something like it,
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  so they have this vague idea that maggots mean death.
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  But in a courtroom you can't just say there were bugs.
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  You need a timeline. How precise is this science really,
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  because a defense lawyer is going to try and tear
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  apart a guess.
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  Speaker 2: Oh it's much more than a guess. It's remarkably precise.
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  But it requires a lot of math, a lot of biology.
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  It's based on the life cycle of the blowfly, specifically
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  the Califoridae family. These flies are biological machines. They have
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  specialized qumor receptors on their antenna that can detect the
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  volatile organic compounds released by decomposition, the smell of death
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  from up to a mile.
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  Speaker 1: Away a mile away seriously.
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  Speaker 2: Easily, and they can arrive within minutes of death, sometimes seconds.
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  They are that efficient. It's their entire purpose in the ecosystem.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so the flylands, then what happens? How does the
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  clock start?
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  Speaker 2: Then they lay eggs, usually in natural openings eye, nose, mouth,
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  or an open wounds where the tissue is exposed now
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  here is the clock.
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  Speaker 3: Those eggs hatch.
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  Speaker 2: Into what we call the first in star larvae. These
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  are tiny, barely visible. They feed, they grow, and then
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  they molt into the second in star, then the third
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  in star. Then they enter a wandering stage to pupate.
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  Each one of these stages takes a very specific amount
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  of thermal energy to complete.
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  Speaker 1: Thermal energy mean heat exactly.
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  Speaker 2: Insects are cold blooded porculothermic. Their development is driven entirely
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  by the ambient temperature. If it's hot, they grow fast,
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  if it's cold, they grow slow. So the forensic entomologist
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  has to calculate something called eighty h accumulated degree hours
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  or sometimes eighty d accumulated degree days.
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  Speaker 1: What's an equation.
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  Speaker 2: It's a strict biological equation. Energy equals growth. The entomologist
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  takes the size of the largest maggot found on the body,
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  identifies the exact species, and then pulls the weather data
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  or in this case, the thermostat settings for the location.
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  Speaker 3: They work backward.
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  Speaker 2: They say to get a third in star coliphera vessina
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  maggot of this specific size seventy two degrees fahrenheit requires
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  x number of hours.
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  Speaker 1: So in Marie Angelica's case, they measured the larvae, looked
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  at the temperature of that bedroom, and the math came
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  back with.
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  Speaker 2: What was the answer four days minimum. That means the
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  clock started ticking at least four days before she ever
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  arrived at the hospital.
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  Speaker 1: Four days. So when the mother walked into the hospital
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  on May third, saying she stopped breathing in the car,
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  she was carrying a body that had been hosting insect
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  life for nearly half a week.
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  Speaker 2: At an absolute minimum. And here's where it gets even
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  more disturbing. We have to discuss a condition called miasis.
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  Speaker 1: I was reading about this term miasis, and if I
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  understand it correctly, it's not just about decomposition after death.
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  It implies the person was alive when it started, right,
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  which makes the timeline even more horrifying.
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  Speaker 2: It implies the infestation began while the host was living.
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  Speaker 3: That is correct.
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  Speaker 2: Low flies preferred dead tissue it's easier to digest, but
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  they will absolutely lay eggs in necrotic infected wounds on
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  a living person if that person is is immobile and filthy.
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  The medical examination found larvae in the genital area and
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  in her wounds.
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  Speaker 1: So the insects were feeding on her while she was
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  still breathing.
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  Speaker 2: That is the clear implication of the evidence given the
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  girl's immobility. She was blind, nonverbal, and suffered from seizures.
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  She couldn't swap them away, she couldn't clean herself. She
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  couldn't even cry out for help. If a caregiver does
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  not clean the patient. The combination of urine, feces and
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  open sores creates an environment that attracts the flies. The
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  eggs hatch, and the larva begin to feed on the
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  dying and infected tissue.
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  Speaker 1: That is, it's beyond negligence. It completely rewrites the story
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  from a mother who was overwhelmed and missed the signs
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  to something much much darker.
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  Speaker 2: It moves it into the realm of torture by neglect.
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  And then you add the cochexia we discussed earlier. The
• 10:48
  autopsy concluded that the cause of death wasn't one single thing.
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  Speaker 1: It was.
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  Speaker 2: It was everything, complications of malnutrition, dehydration, sepsis from the
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  infected wounds, and neglect.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't one thing failing as the whole system collapsed
• 11:00
  at once.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly.
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  Speaker 2: It was a systemic collapse caused by the absence of
• 11:03
  the basic necessities of life, food, water, and cleanliness.
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  Speaker 1: And while all this is happening at the hospital, the
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  doctors realizing the horror, the entomologists collecting their samples, the
• 11:15
  Bernoleo County Sheriff's Office sends detectives to the house the
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  crime scene.
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  Speaker 2: And the sensory details from that search warrant affidavit are
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  just they're overwhelming. You have to put yourself in the
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  boots of those deputies walking in.
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  Speaker 1: They walk into the bedroom where this sixteen year old
• 11:29
  girl lived. What did they find?
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  Speaker 2: The report describes a room that was essentially a biological
• 11:33
  hazard zone. It was filled with feces, human anmal waste
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  smeared on surfaces, blood and flies, so many flies. The
• 11:42
  air was thick with the smell of ammonia from urine
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  and decay.
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  Speaker 1: This wasn't just a messy teenager's room. This is something
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  else entirely.
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  Speaker 2: No, this was uninhabitable, and the contrast here is critical.
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  Durraili Espinoza admitted to investigators that she was home. She
• 11:58
  wasn't away on a business trip, she wasn't hospital herself.
• 12:01
  She was in the house every single day.
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  Speaker 1: They lived in the same house and just didn't.
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  Speaker 2: Open the door effectively, despite knowing her daughter was blind,
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  despite knowing she was nonverbal and prone to seizures, she
• 12:13
  left her in that room in those conditions alone.
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  Speaker 1: This brings us to the core of what you call
• 12:19
  slow violence. Yes, because usually when we cover true crime,
• 12:22
  we talk about an event, a gunshot, a blow, a
• 12:26
  moment of impact. Yeah, but this, this is different. This
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  is the absence of an event.
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  Speaker 2: Neglect is an erasure. It differs from active abuse because
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  it is defined by what doesn't happen. Food isn't given,
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  wounds aren't cleaned, diapers aren't changed. It is a gradual,
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  invisible erosion of a human being.
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  Speaker 1: It's quieter, it is silent, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Until it isn't.
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  Speaker 2: Active abuse leaves bruises you can see immediately. A teacher
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  sees a black eye and calls child Protective Services.
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  Speaker 3: Neglect kills through starvation and infection.
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  Speaker 2: It takes time, and that duration is what makes it
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  so cool. You have to ignore the suffering day after
• 13:00
  day after day. You have to wake up every morning
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  and decide not to help.
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  Speaker 1: And the tragedy here, the part that's just infuriating is
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  that the system knew about this family. This wasn't a
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  complete surprise where a family suddenly falls off the map.
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  Speaker 3: No, it wasn't.
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  Speaker 2: And this is the part that is going to frustrate
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  and frankly enrage a lot of listeners. There were warning
• 13:18
  signs as far back as twenty nineteen.
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  Speaker 1: That's three years before Maria Angelica died. Let's dig into that.
• 13:23
  What happened in twenty nineteen.
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  Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen, there was a welfare check. Officers were
• 13:28
  called to the home. The check was regarding the same child,
• 13:31
  Maria Angelica, who was twentieth time.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: And what did they find them?
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  Speaker 2: They found a preview of the horror to come. Officers
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  reported cockroaches swarming the home. They found no edible food
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  in the pantry or the fridge, and they found four
• 13:45
  younger siblings ranging from nine months old to twelve years old,
• 13:49
  living in what they described as deplorable conditions.
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  Speaker 1: So the authority saw this, They saw the cockroaches, the
• 13:55
  lack of food that stayed the home. Did they charge her?
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: They did.
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  Speaker 2: Espinoza was charged with cruelty to children and deprivation of necessities.
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  This is a serious felony charge. The system officially said,
• 14:05
  this is not okay.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: What happened? Why was she still in charge of these
• 14:09
  kids three years later. Did she get probation, did she
• 14:12
  go to counseling? Did this system step in?
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: She simply failed to appear in court.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: She just didn't show up.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: She ghosted the legal system and as a result, a
• 14:20
  bench warrant was issued for her arrest. But and this
• 14:23
  is the massive systemic failure, that warrant sat unserved for
• 14:28
  three years.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Wait, explain that to me. A warrant isn't just a
• 14:31
  piece of paper, It's an order from a judge to
• 14:34
  arrest someone. How does it sit unserved for three years
• 14:37
  when she's living in the same county, not in hiding.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: It's a question of prioritization and bureaucracy. In many jurisdictions,
• 14:44
  including Bernolila County, at times there's a massive backlog of
• 14:47
  warrants police departments have to triage. They prioritize violent felonies, murderers,
• 14:53
  armed robbers. A failure to appear on a child neglect charge,
• 14:57
  as serious as it is, often gets pushed to the
• 14:59
  bottom the pile. It just sits in a database unless
• 15:02
  she gets pulled over for speeding or has another run
• 15:04
  in with the law. No one is actively hunting her down.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: That is just maddening. You have a known case of
• 15:09
  child cruelty, a missed court date, and the system just
• 15:12
  just waits for her to make another mistake.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: It raises huge questions about the Child Protective Services or
• 15:18
  CYFD as it's known in New Mexico, and the law
• 15:21
  enforcement prioritization of these warrants. Even in twenty twenty two,
• 15:25
  after the death, there was criticism because social workers hesitated
• 15:29
  to remove the siblings from the scene immediately.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: They lift the other kids in that house, even after
• 15:33
  finding their sister's body briefly.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, there is a bureaucracy to these interventions, a set
• 15:38
  of procedures that often seems sluggish and disconnected from the
• 15:41
  immediate danger the children are in. The twenty nineteen incident
• 15:45
  was a clear red flag, a neon sign flashing. This
• 15:48
  household is collapsing, and the system blinked, it looked away.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: It's so easy to paint Durreeli Espinoza as a monster
• 15:55
  here and looking at the photos of the crime scene,
• 15:57
  looking at the autopsy report, it's the natural reaction. But
• 16:00
  we promised a deep die, which means we have to
• 16:02
  look at the whole picture. We have to at least
• 16:04
  try to understand the defense's perspective.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: We do, and it is uncomfortable, but it's necessary to
• 16:10
  understand the why. We have to look at who Dourelia
• 16:13
  was beyond just the perpetrator of this crime. Because monsters,
• 16:18
  true monsters, usually don't walk into hospitals asking for help.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: They hide the body.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. She did bring her in eventually.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: She was a mother of six children, five surviving. She
• 16:28
  was unemployed, and by all accounts she was struggling with
• 16:31
  significant mental health issues, though they were largely undiagnosed and untreated.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: And there was a letter right from one of the
• 16:39
  surviving daughters that was read in course.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, and this letter paints a very confusing picture for outsiders.
• 16:45
  The daughter described her mother, Aspinosa, as kind, devoted and
• 16:49
  hard working, devoted.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: How do you reconcile that we're devoted with a child
• 16:54
  riding away in a bedroom? Is that? Is that some
• 16:57
  kind of Stockholm syndrome or is it something else?
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: That is the complex question at the heart of this Yeah.
• 17:03
  In the courtroom, Espinosa herself spoke. She said, quote, I'm
• 17:07
  not a bad person. I love my children with my
• 17:09
  whole heart. She claimed she was just a hard working
• 17:11
  mother trying to do everything for them.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Do you think she believed that?
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: I think she might have.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: We are likely looking at a case of profound, catastrophic
• 17:20
  caregiver burnout, compounded by poverty and mental illness. When you
• 17:25
  were that overwhelmed, sometimes the brain engages in a kind
• 17:28
  of denial that is almost psychotic.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: I have to stop you there. Caregiver burnout. I hear
• 17:34
  that term and I think of a parent who is exhausted.
• 17:37
  You know, maybe they snap at their kids, maybe they
• 17:39
  leave the TV on too long because they just need
• 17:41
  a break. But we are talking about a room full
• 17:44
  of feces. We are talking about starvation. Is burnout really
• 17:49
  the right word or is it a sanitizing word for
• 17:52
  something far more malicious? I mean, are we letting her
• 17:54
  off the hook?
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: That's the friction point, isn't it. It is incredibly hard
• 17:58
  to scare the two. But you have to look at
• 18:01
  the psychology of avoidance. It probably started small. You miss
• 18:04
  one cleaning, the room smells a little, You feel guilty,
• 18:07
  so you don't go In the next day, the smell
• 18:09
  is worse, the guilt is worse, so the avoidance becomes stronger.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: So it's a feedback loop. The worse it gets, the
• 18:14
  harder it is to open that door.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: It's what some psychologists call the Ostrich effect. Daurrealia Espinoza
• 18:21
  wasn't necessarily enjoying the suffering. She was likely dissociating from it.
• 18:24
  She convinced herself that if she didn't see it, it
• 18:27
  wasn't really happening. She shut the door literally and figuratively
• 18:31
  because she could not cope with the reality of her
• 18:33
  own failure behind.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: It, which is a psychological explanation, sure, but legally that's
• 18:38
  not a defense. You can't associate your way out of
• 18:41
  a homicide.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Charge precisely, and that is where the law draws the line.
• 18:45
  Caregiver burnout is a reason. It might be a mitigating factor,
• 18:48
  but it is not an excuse for allowing a human
• 18:50
  being to decompose while still alive. The stigma of asking
• 18:54
  for help, the fear that if I call for help,
• 18:56
  they will take my kids away, often.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: Leads to this deep isolation. But the result is criminal.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: So let's fast forward to the legal reckoning. The incident
• 19:03
  happened in May twenty twenty two, but the sentencing didn't
• 19:06
  happen until January of twenty twenty six. That's almost four years.
• 19:09
  Why the long delay.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Well, these cases are incredibly complex procedurally. First, there were
• 19:15
  questions about her competency. Was she mentally fit to even
• 19:19
  stand trial? That alone can take a year or more
• 19:22
  of evaluations. Then there were pre trial detention hearings, motions
• 19:27
  filed by the defense, and frankly, the sheer volume of
• 19:30
  forensic evidence, the entomology reports, the medical records, the digital footprint.
• 19:35
  It all takes a massive amount of time to process, analyze,
• 19:39
  and prepare for trial.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: And eventually she took a plea deal.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: She pleaded no contest to reckless abuse of a child
• 19:45
  resulting in death.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Just a quick sidebar for our listeners. No contest basically
• 19:50
  means I'm not admitting I'm guilty, but I admit you
• 19:53
  have enough evidence to convict me if we went to trial.
• 19:55
  It's a way to end the case without saying the
• 19:57
  words I did it.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Legally, it has the same effect as a guilty plea
• 20:00
  for the purposes of sentencing. It was a second degree
• 20:03
  felony charge.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: The prosecution, led by Deputy DA Savanna Brendan Burcock and
• 20:07
  DA Sam Bregman. They were not buying the overwhelmed mom narrative,
• 20:11
  were they not? At all?
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Their argument was that this was prolonged abuse. They use
• 20:17
  the photos of the victim, those horrifying images of a
• 20:20
  forty pound teenager, to prove to the judge that this
• 20:22
  wasn't a momentary lapse of judgment. You don't lose that
• 20:26
  much weight in a week. They argue that every single
• 20:28
  day she didn't call nine one one was a separate,
• 20:30
  conscious decision to let her daughter die.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: That brings us to the sentencing Judge Bruce Fox. He
• 20:36
  had a maximum of eighteen years he could give her.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: And he sentenced her to fifteen years in prison.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Fifteen years plus he barred her from any contact with
• 20:44
  her surviving children.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Correct for the duration of her sentence in parole.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: What was the judge's logic here? Why fifteen and not
• 20:50
  the full eighteen? Why not less? Given the talk of
• 20:53
  mental health.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: It seems Judge Fox tried to thread a very difficult needle.
• 20:57
  He acknowledged the hardship in her life, he acknowledged the
• 21:00
  mental health struggles, but he came back again and again
• 21:03
  to the duration of the harm. He's quoted as saying
• 21:06
  it didn't happen in a moment or a reckless quick decision.
• 21:09
  This happened at a minimum of five or six days.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: He focused on those last days, the days where the
• 21:15
  insects were active, the days of active dying.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: The days where the child was actively dying and the
• 21:20
  mother was in the next room and did nothing. That
• 21:23
  is where the ultimate culpability lies.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I have to ask, and I know our listeners are
• 21:27
  probably screaming this right now. Does fifteen years feel like
• 21:30
  justice for a death involving maggots? For a death involving starvation?
• 21:36
  I mean, if you starved the dog to death, the
• 21:38
  public outrage would be deafening.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: It's the question that always hangs over these cases, and
• 21:43
  there's no easy answer. If you look at it purely
• 21:46
  from the perspective of the suffering. Marie Angelica endored No,
• 21:48
  fifteen years feels incredibly light. A life sentence wouldn't feel
• 21:52
  like enough to.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: Compensate for that pain. But the legal system has to
• 21:56
  act as a balance.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: It has to weigh the intent she didn't take it
• 21:59
  up in an actively killer child against the gross criminal negligence.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: The difference between malice and apathy or.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Malice in a complete catastrophic incapacity. But the sentence sends
• 22:09
  a message, even if you are broken, even if you
• 22:11
  are struggling, you have a fundamental duty to the defenseless,
• 22:15
  and if you breach that duty to the point of death,
• 22:17
  you will lose your freedom.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: You mentioned homicide biomission earlier, but you also brought some
• 22:22
  notes on other cases. This isn't some bizarre, isolated incident.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: Is it, Tragically No, this case fits a very specific,
• 22:30
  very disturbing profile that criminologists are tracking, extreme neglect involving
• 22:35
  disabled dependence. It is a pattern we are seeing repeat
• 22:39
  itself with haunting similarity in the US and the UK.
• 22:42
  It's almost like a social contagion of isolation.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Let's run through that grim syllabus, because I think we
• 22:48
  need to understand the Barria Angelica wasn't just one unlucky case.
• 22:52
  There was a psychology here we need to map out.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, Let's look at the case of Lacy Fletcher in Louisiana.
• 22:58
  This came to light around the same time in twenty two.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I remember the headlines for this one.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: It was second Lacey was thirty six years old. She
• 23:05
  had a condition called locked in syndrome. And was on
• 23:08
  the autism spectrum. She lived with her parents, Sheila and
• 23:11
  Clay Fletcher. Now get this, her parents were respected members
• 23:14
  of the community. One was a town alderman. They were
• 23:17
  pillars of their church.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: So a totally different world from Drelia Espinoza. These weren't
• 23:21
  people struggling with unemployment and poverty, the.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Exact opposite socioeconomic status. Yet the outcome was chillingly identical.
• 23:30
  Lacey was found fused and that is the literal term
• 23:33
  used by the coroner, fused by her own bodily flukes
• 23:36
  and waste to a leather couch. She weighed just ninety
• 23:40
  six pounds.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Fused to the couch. What does that even mean? Her
• 23:43
  skin grew into the leather.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: It means the pressure ulcers on her body had opened
• 23:47
  up so severely the fluids had soaked into the couch,
• 23:50
  The foam of the couch had rotted away, and her
• 23:53
  body had healed around the upholstery and the filth. The
• 23:56
  forensic evidence showed she had not moved from that couch
• 23:59
  in years. She had maggot infestations while she was alive.
• 24:02
  She had ulcers that exposed her bone, She had COVID.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And the parents. What was their excuse? They were upstanding citizens,
• 24:09
  they had resources.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: They claimed they loved her. They claimed she didn't want
• 24:13
  to leave the couch. They said she had social anxiety.
• 24:16
  But really it seems they prioritized their own reputation. They
• 24:19
  didn't want the town to know their daughter was deteriorating,
• 24:21
  so they hit her away. They eventually pleaded to manslaughter
• 24:24
  and got twenty years each.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: It sounds identical, the claim of love the reality of torture.
• 24:28
  It's just it's the Ostrich effect again, but with the
• 24:31
  country club membership.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Then you have the case of Killia Tifford in the UK,
• 24:35
  also in twenty twenty two.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: What happened there?
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Killea was a teenager with spinapifida. But unlike Maria Angelica
• 24:42
  who wasted away, Khalia was morbidly obese. She weighed over
• 24:46
  three hundred and twenty one.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Pounds, so the opposite physical problem.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: But the exact same root cause immobility and neglect. She
• 24:54
  was found in a soiled bed, surrounded by filth, then
• 24:57
  again with maggots and fly larvae present. Her parents were
• 25:00
  convicted of gross negligence manslaughter. They just fed her takeout
• 25:04
  food constantly to keep her quiet that never cleaned her,
• 25:07
  never moved her, never took care of her basic hygiene.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: And you mentioned one more Heather Baynard in South Carolina
• 25:12
  same year, a.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Home full of roaches, phil feces, A disabled keen dies
• 25:17
  in the middle of it all.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: The pattern is undeniable.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: What connects all these cases? Why are we seeing this
• 25:22
  specific nightmare scenario repeating itself over and over.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Three things connect them. First, isolation. In every single case,
• 25:32
  these families had systematically withdrawn from the world. They stopped
• 25:35
  answering the door, they stopped going to doctor's appointments, they
• 25:38
  cut off contact. Second, the insect evidence. In almost every case,
• 25:43
  the mugs proved the duration of the neglect when the
• 25:45
  parents lied. The bugs are the only honest witnesses. And Third,
• 25:49
  and maybe most importantly, the invisibility of the victims because
• 25:54
  they were disabled, because they were nonverbal or immobile, they
• 25:57
  couldn't walk out the front door and ask a neighbor
• 25:59
  for her help. They were completely and totally dependent on
• 26:03
  the very people who were erasing them.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: There are captives in their own owns.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: They were, and that brings us to the legal concept
• 26:09
  of the duty of care. Legally and morally your obligation
• 26:13
  to a person increases as their ability to care for
• 26:15
  themselves decreases. If you have a healthy, sixteen year old athlete,
• 26:19
  your duty is supervision. If you have a sixteen year old, blind,
• 26:23
  nonverbal child with seizures, your duty is total life support.
• 26:27
  You are their hands, their eyes, their lifeline.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And when you fail that duty on this level, it's
• 26:32
  not an accident. It's a crime.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: It's the definition of a crime.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: So let's pivot. We've looked at the whore, We've looked
• 26:39
  at the law, and now we have to look at us. Yeah, society,
• 26:41
  the so what of the deep dive? How does this stop?
• 26:45
  How do we prevent the next Marie Angelica or Lacey
• 26:49
  Fletcher from dying in a room full of flies? Because honestly,
• 26:53
  listening to this makes me feel completely helpless.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: It starts with the community.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: It has to we have to shatter this idea that
• 27:00
  what happens behind closed doors is none of our business.
• 27:03
  We have to overcome the bystander effect.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: But that's hard. I get it. People don't want to
• 27:07
  be nosy. They don't want to call CPS on their
• 27:09
  neighbors and be wrong and then have to live next
• 27:11
  to them. It feels aggressive.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: I understand that instinct, I do, But look at the
• 27:16
  red flags here, unexplained weight loss in a child you
• 27:19
  used to see social isolation when you stop seeing the
• 27:22
  child who used to be in the wheelchair outside on
• 27:24
  the porch.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: The smell, the smell coming from.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: A home decay has a very specific, sickly sweet odor
• 27:30
  that is distinct from just dirty trash.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: The neighbors usually know something is wrong, even if they
• 27:35
  can't put their finger on it.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Often, yes, in the Lacey Fletcher case, neighbors hadn't seen
• 27:41
  her in fifteen years. Fifteen years and no one thought
• 27:44
  to ask, hey, where is Lacey. Vigilance from schools, from
• 27:47
  medical providers, and from neighbors is the only safety net
• 27:50
  these kids have. If the parent is the source of
• 27:53
  the danger, the neighbor is the only potential savior.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: And what about the system we've talked about that warrant
• 27:59
  from twenty nineteen that feels like such a low hanging
• 28:02
  fruit for reform that.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Is a concrete, achievable reform. We need better warrant enforcement
• 28:07
  for child welfare cases. If a parent is charged with cruelty,
• 28:11
  you cannot let that warrant sit in a database for
• 28:13
  three years. We need to triage warrants differently. A warrant
• 28:17
  for child neglect should carry the same urgency as a
• 28:19
  warrant for assault, because that's what it is. That is
• 28:21
  a systemic failure that cost a life.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: And what about support because we admitted the mother was overwhelmed.
• 28:28
  We can hate what she did, but we can also
• 28:30
  acknowledge she was drowning.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Respite care It's a term we don't hear enough about
• 28:34
  outside of the disability community. Parents of severely disabled children
• 28:39
  need breaks. They need professional support to come in and
• 28:42
  take over for a weekend or even just for an
• 28:44
  afternoon so they can breathe, so they.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Don't hit that catastrophic burnout wall.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: If we can treat caregiver burnout before it turns into
• 28:52
  criminal neglect, we save lives. We need to make it
• 28:55
  okay for a parent to say I can't do this
• 28:58
  today and have a number to call that isn't the police,
• 29:01
  but a support service.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: It's about intervening before the door closes for good.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: It is. That's exactly what it is.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: We've covered a massive amount of ground today from the
• 29:10
  horrifying discovery at the University of New Mexico hospital, through
• 29:13
  the grim science of entomology all the way to a courtroom.
• 29:17
  In twenty twenty six.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: We saw a mother claiming love while holding a daughter
• 29:21
  she let waste away to forty pounds. We saw the
• 29:24
  science of entomology reveal the truth that words tried to hide.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: And we saw a legal system try to find a number,
• 29:30
  a number of years that equates to a life lost
• 29:33
  to filth and silence.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: Fifteen years. It's the number they settled on.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with the final thought. We
• 29:38
  started with the silent room.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: The empty room, the silent room. It's a concept that
• 29:44
  terrifies me more than street violence. We worry about muggers,
• 29:48
  we worry about par shackings. We watched the news for
• 29:51
  active shooters. But the most dangerous place for the most
• 29:54
  vulnerable members of our society, the disabled, the elderly, the nonverbal,
• 29:59
  is often in a quiet bedroom with a closed door,
• 30:02
  where no one is checking.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: It's the silence that kills.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: The silence is the weapon, and the door is the accomplice.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: So here's my question for you, the listener. We live
• 30:12
  in this age of information overload. We are scrolling, we
• 30:15
  are posting, we are more connected than we have ever been,
• 30:19
  and yet cases of extreme isolation like this are on
• 30:22
  the rise.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: We are connected digitally, but we're disconnected physically. We know
• 30:26
  what a celebrity had for breakfast, but we don't know
• 30:28
  if our neighbor is alive exactly.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: So look at your periphery. Who haven't you seen in
• 30:32
  a while, Who is that neighbor that seems overwhelmed? Who
• 30:35
  might be disappearing into slow violence right now down the
• 30:38
  street from you?
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: And would you recognize the signs before the forensic evidence
• 30:43
  has to tell the story for them.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: That's something to carry with you. This has been the
• 30:47
  deep dive. We'll see you next time.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: Stay safe and stay vigilant.