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The Room With No Bulb: 68 Injuries · Scary Paranormal Stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The paramedics pushed through the door and stopped. The bedroom
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: had no light bulb. They stood in complete darkness, reaching
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: for their own torches, sweeping the beam until it found
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the floor. A three year old girl lay on the carpet.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: There was vomit on the carpet around her. Some of
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: it was fresh, some of it had been there for days.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Her name was Kylie Price. She was three years old,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and in August of twenty twenty, her mother had called
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: nine nine nine and told the operator her daughter was sick.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: That word sick is the path that stays with me
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: about this case, because what the forensic examination found afterward
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: was sixty eight injuries, broken ribs, a fractured lower leg,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a broken sternum, injuries the pathologist described as equivalent to
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: falling from a third floor window or being struck by
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: a car at forty miles per hour. And some of
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: those fractures were old. They had healed on their own,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: quietly inside a child who never saw a doctor. Kylie
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: had been carrying broken bones in her small body for
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: months before anyone came through that door. This is not
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a story about a single night of violence. The evidence
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: said it had been building for a long time in
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: a locked flat in Birmingham, England, with neighbors above and below.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: There is something in this case that I could not
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: put down after reading it. Not the violence, though that
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: is devastating. It's the detail of the paramedics needing their
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: own light, that a child lived and died in a
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: room with no bulb. That is the image this case
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: begins with, and it does not get easier from there,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and it does not get easier from there. On the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: ninth of August twenty twenty, Birmingham was in the middle
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: of the first pandemic summer lockdown restrictions had eased slightly,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: but people were still mostly inside. For Kylie Price, three
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: years old, inside was all there was, the flat where
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: she lived with her mother, Mikole Price, twenty three was
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: a rented apartment in Birmingham, a building with other residents
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: on the floors above and below. The kind of building
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: where sounds carry, the kind of building where neighbors notice
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: things or sometimes decide not to. Nicole had grown up
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: in Birmingham. By twenty twenty, she was a young mother
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: navigating what she publicly presented as a difficult but manageable life.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: During the pandemic. She had been active on social media,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: posting videos of herself dancing, doing make up looks, filling
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: the particular silence of lockdown with content. Her account had
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: followed us. She had a second child, a new newborn
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: born earlier that year. She did not post videos of
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: him after the birth. Kylie was Nichole's first child. Her
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: father was a different man, not part of the household.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: The man who was present in that flat in August
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of twenty twenty was Callum twenty two, Nichole's boyfriend, who
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: had come into their lives shortly after the second baby
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: was born. The father of that second child had been
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: asked to leave before the birth. So the configuration of
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: that flat in that lockdown summer was Nicole, Callum, a newborn,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and Kylie, Kylie's grandmother. Nicholl's own mother had been watching
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: her granddaughter closely. What she saw concerned her enough to
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: do something almost unbearable. She reported her own daughter to
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: social services. She believed Kylie was in danger. Inside that flat,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Social service visited, Mikol told them she was redecorating. They
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: looked around, saw nothing, they classified as an emergency and left.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: The grandmother had also been doing something else, something quiet
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: and practical. She had been laying out Kylie's school uniform.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Kylie was going to start nursery school that autumn. The
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: uniform was pressed, folded, waiting. There is footage from a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: security camera outside the apartment building captured on the day
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Kylie died. It shows Nikoll walking toward the entrance with
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Kylie behind her, not beside her, behind her almost a
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: full meter back. Kylie's gait is slow. Her posture is
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: not the posture of a child who is being taken
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: somewhere safe. She walks like someone who has learned to
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: stay out of reach. Mikol does not turn around, not
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: once she walks through the entrance, and Kylie follows, disappearing
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: after her into the building. That footage was the last
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: time Kylie was seen alive on camera. Hours later, Nikoll
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: called nine nine. The paramedics arrived, pushed through the door,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and reached for their torches in the dark. What happened
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: in that flat between the moment Kylie walked through that
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: entrance and the moment the call was made. That is
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the question the court spent weeks trying to answer. The
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: exact chronology of that night was never established, not by
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: the investigation, not by the trial, not by either of
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the two people who were there. The text messages entered
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: as evidence at trial were not intercepted or decoded. They
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: were read aloud in open court, word for word, as
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Nikoll and Callum had written them. Nicholl sent the first
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: one during an ordinary afternoon. She told Callum that Kylie
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: was not listening. Callum's reply was immediate. He told Nikoll
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to hit her. Nikoll confound that she had, not with reluctance,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: not with shame. The messages read, according to prosecutors, as
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: though she was reporting something routine, something that had gone well.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: That exchange was not isolated. Investigators recovered a pattern across weeks.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Callum sent variations of the same instruction repeatedly, sometimes adding
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: a specific phrase, hit her for me. He was not
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: always in the apartment when he sent those messages. He
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: was directing what happened to a three year old from
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: a distance, and Nikoll carried out those instructions and reported back.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: One message documented something that forensic pathologists would later connect
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to the injury record. Nicoll wrote that she hit Kylie
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: harder when Kylie soiled her mappy. The child's inability to
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: control her own body became the trigger for increased force.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: A three year old's normal developmental limitation became the justification
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: for escalation. The rational explanation for what the messages described
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: was abuse, But abuse in its common understanding still implies
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: something reactive, something rooted in anger that exceeds the threshold.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: What the messages showed was coordination planning a structure built
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: around a toddler who could not defend herself, could not report,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and could not leave. There is something that does not
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: resolve cleanly when you examined the timeline, and it matters.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Social services had visited that apartment. They went because Kylie's grandmother,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Nicole's own mother had reported her daughter. That is not
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: a small thing. A grandmother reported her own child because
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: she believed that child's daughter was in danger. The system
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: received their information, dispatched an inspector, and sent that inspector
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: into the flat where Kylie lived. Micole told the inspector
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: she was redecorating. The inspector left. There is no documented
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: explanation for why that was sufficient. There is no record
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of a follow up visit In the weeks before August ninth,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the last line of defense between Kylie and what happened
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: to her, passed through that apartment, accepted an answer that
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: explained nothing, and walked back out. The forensic record established
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: that some of Kylie's fractures had healed on their own
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: before she died. That is the clinical language for what
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: it means bones broke, and no one took her to
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a hospital, no one filed a report. The fractures knitted
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: back together without medical intervention, which means the injuries were
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: absorbed into the invisible life she lived inside that flat,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: unremarked and unrecorded sixty eight injuries at the time of death.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Some were fresh, some were weeks old. The forensic pathologist
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: who examined her body described the total force involved as
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: equivalent to falling from the height of a third floor
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: window or being struck by a car traveling at sixty
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: five kilometers per hour, not once across time. This is
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: where the rational explanation stops working. The system had been
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: told the grandmother had done what is supposed to be done.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: An official had entered the building, climbed to the floor,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: knocked on the door, and stood inside the space were
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Kylie slept, and still none of what was happening inside
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: that apartment became visible. What happened on August ninth, twenty
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: twenty still has no confirmed chronology. Nikole and Callum gave
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: separate accounts that contradicted each other and contradicted themselves. Nicole
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: initially said she did not know what had happened, then
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: she said Callum was responsible, then she withdrew that statement.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Her final account delivered a trial was that she had
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: heard three sounds from Kylie's room that night, sounds like
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: a child falling from her bed, and had not gone
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: to check. Paramedics arrived to find Kylie on the floor
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: of a room with no light source, no bulb in
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: the socket, vomit on the carpet, some of it dried,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: some of it fresh. The dryness of the order stains
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: indicated it had been there for more than a day.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Kylie's body showed injuries consistent with a forensic comparison, and
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: the prosecution's position a trial was that she had been
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: dead for several hours before Nikoll made the call. Nicoll
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: told emergency services that Kylie was sick. That was the
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: word she used, sick. There is a moment in the
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: security footage from outside the building the forensic analysts and
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: jurors oath examined. It lasts only a few seconds, but
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: it carries the full weight of what this case is.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: The call walks toward the entrance of the building. Kylie
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: walks behind her. The distance between them is nearly a
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: four meter. Kylie's gait is documented in the footage. She
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: is moving, she is upright, she is alive, She is alive,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and she is alone in the way that a child
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: can be alone while standing a single meter from her mother.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Nicoll does not look back, not once. She does not
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: reach for Kylie's hand, She does not slow her pace.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: She walks through the entrance, and Kylie follows because there
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: is nowhere else for her to go. That was the
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: last recording of Kylie Price alive, a child walking at
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: a distance behind a mother who did not turn around.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: The prosecution argued that Callum was already inside the flat
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: when they arrived, that what followed involved both of them,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: that by the time Nikole dialed nine nine nine hours
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: had passed and the child on the floor of the
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: dark room had already been beyond reach. Nikoll and Callum
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: were both convicted of manslaughter in twenty twenty one, Nikoll
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: received an additional conviction for child cruelty. Callum was sentenced
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: to fourteen years, Nikoll to fifteen. Under United Kingdom sentencing guidelines,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: both must serve two thirds of their sentences before becoming
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: eligible for parole. Neither confessed. The exact events of that
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: final night remain legally and factually unresolved. What the grandmother
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: knew before any of this happened was enough she reported it.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: She prepared Kylie's nursery school uniform for a September that
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: never came. Small clothes laid out flat, waiting for a
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: morning that would not arrive. Kylie Price was three years old.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: She never started school. The verdicts came in twenty twenty one.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Callum was sentenced to fourteen years, Nicole received fifteen plus
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: a separate conviction for child cruelty. Both must serve two
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: thirds of those sentences before they can apply for parole.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Neither of them confessed, not once. Across the entire investigation,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: the arrest, the trial, the sentencing, The chronology of the
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: night of August ninth was never officially established. What the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: prosecution argued, what the forensic evidence implied, what Nicoll's three
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: contradictory accounts suggested none of it ever locked into a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: single confirmed sequence. A child died in that flat, and
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: the two people who were there chose silence over true.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: The convictions carried a specific legal weight and a specific
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: legal limit, manslaughter not murder. The difference mattered in court
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: because of what couldn't be proven beyond doubt. Which blow
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: was final, whose hands delivered it, whether both acted simultaneously
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: or in sequence. The prosecution argued both were present and
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: both participated. The forensic evidence supported that the abuse was ongoing, coordinated,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and deliberate, but without a confession, without a witness, without
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: a camera inside that room, the highest charge didn't hold.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: That gap between what the evidence shows and what the
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: law can prove is where Kylie's case now lives permanently.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: There is something that doesn't sit still when you look
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: at the numbers. Sixty eight injuries, Some of them mold
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: enough to have healed without medical treat which means Kylie
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: endured fractures to her ribs, her leg, her sternum and
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: never saw a doctor. The bones knitted themselves back together
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: inside a three year old body, while no one called anyone.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: The forensic team described the overall injury pattern as consistent
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: with falling from a third floor window or being struck
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: by a car traveling at sixty five kilometers per hour
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: per hour. That is the force her small body absorbed,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: not once over months. A social services visit happened before
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: any of that was known. Formerly Kylie's grandmother, Nicoll's own mother,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: had made the call. She had seen something she couldn't ignore,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and she reported her own daughter. A social worker came
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: to the flat. Micol said she was red decorating. The
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: inspector noted the explanation, looked at the space, and left.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: There is no documented follow up visit on record, visit
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: on record, what the inspector saw or didn't see, What
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: questions were asked or not asked, what threshold wasn't met?
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: None of that has been publicly clarified. The grandmother had
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: done the one thing the system asked of her. The
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: system did not hoe. There is something in that detail
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: that resists resolution. This wasn't a case when no one noticed.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: The closest person to Nicole, her own mother, saw enough
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: to break that bond and make the call. The report existed,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the visit happened, and Kylie was still in that flat.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: On August ninth, Nicoll posted a video thirty nine days
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: after Kylie guied. The song playing in the background had
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: lyrics asking for forgiveness. She didn't cry. She posted a
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: photo of Kylie with angel emojis. She wrote, your mummy
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: will always love you and miss you. In the weeks
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that followed, she posted make up tutorials and dance videos.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: When this was raised, she said she didn't want to
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: discourage her followers. That phrase discourage her followers was used
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: during a period when her three year old daughter's body
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: had just been examined by a forensic pathologist who counted
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: sixty eight separate injuries. It was the same period when
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: investigators were reading text messages in which Nicoll had confirmed
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: in her own words that she hit Kylie harder when
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Kylie soiled her nappy. A security camera footage from the
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: building entrance was entered into evidence. It showed Nicole and
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Kylie arriving together on the day Kylie died. Kylie walked
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: almost a full meter behind her mother. Her gaze was
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: angled downward and slightly to the side. Mikole moved at
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: a steady pace toward the door. She never slowed she
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: never turned, she didn't reach back. That image Kylie, three
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: years old, walking alone, a meter behind the woman who
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: should have been holding her hand, is the last confirmed
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: visual record of her alive. Somewhere in Birmingham. Before that
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: September came, Kylie's grandmother had washed and pressed a small
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: school uniform. Kylie was supposed to start nursery school that autumn.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: The uniform was ready, the child it was made for
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: never wore it. The grandmother reported her own daughter. She
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: prepared her granddaughter's school clothes. She did both things and
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: they were not enough, and she has to live inside
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: that knowledge. Callum will be eligible for parole consideration after
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: serving approximately nine years and four months of his fourteen
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: year sentence. Nikole will be eligible after ten years of
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: her fifteen The exact date Kylie died August ninth, twenty
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: twenty belongs to both of them. Now, in a way
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: nothing will undo. There is no version of this story
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: where everything makes sense. There is only a room with
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: no light bulb, a child who was afraid of the dark,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and a door that was closed on her. This show
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: is made by Ober Media