When raising kids, babysitting is an inevitable part of your children’s lives whether it be with a friend or family member.
Finding someone you trust is key and these four haunting stories are a grave reminder to be careful who you choose to watch your kids!
The horrendous crime scene
The monster of Worcester
Clive and Elsie Ralph were pleased when Clive’s friend David McGreavy came to live with them.
He was a good friend who often babysat their three kids Paul, four, Dawn Maria, two, and Samantha-Jane, seven months.
He loved to play with the kids and became like a second father to them.
One night Clive went to pick up Elsie from the pub where she worked, leaving David to look after the kids.
Clive stopped for a pint before the couple headed home. When they arrived, they found police outside.
In the hour that they were away, David had become infuriated when baby Samantha-Jane wouldn’t stop crying.
In a rage, he attacked her, fracturing her skull and killing her.
He then slit Dawn’s throat and strangled Paul.
Police swarmed the area.
After killing the children, he retrieved a pickaxe from the basement and mutilated their bodies before hanging them up on the spikes of their neighbour’s wrought iron fence.
David was soon arrested in the local area.
He denied responsibility before eventually confessing to the triple homicide.
“It was me, but it wasn’t me,” he told the police, claiming to have only done it because the baby wouldn’t stop crying.
David pleaded guilty in court to three counts of murder and refused to come up with a defence plea or a motive.
The hearing only lasted eight minutes and David was given multiple life sentences.
When the media reported on the crime, they named him The Monster of Worcester.
After spending 40 years behind bars, David was released to an open prison and allowed to stay in a bail hostel in 2006.
His parole board reported that he has changed considerably and is no longer a threat to society.
David McGreavy.
Birthday killing
When Ann-Marie McDonald, 31, stepped out to run a few errands, she asked Karl McCluney to look after her two-year-old toddler Demi-Leigh.
It was Karl’s 15th birthday, and Ann-Marie had even picked him up a birthday card to thank him for his help.
But Karl had become angry when Demi-Leigh started to cry.
He flew into a rage, biting, kicking and punching the little girl so hard that she was left with brain damage along with 68 injuries all over her body.
He even sheared off her hair before sitting down to watch children’s television while Demi-Leigh lay unconscious in the next room.
When Ann-Marie returned, she was shocked by the scene.
“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?” she screamed.
“I haven’t done nothing,” Karl replied.
He claimed that the toddler hit her head on an ashtray and fell over in the park.
Demi-Leigh died in hospital two days later from her injuries.
Karl was taken to court convicted of her murder, and while he denied murdering Demi-Leigh, he claimed manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
A pathologist told the court that it was neither reasonable nor credible that the vast majority of the injuries were sustained accidentally and Karl was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
Demi-Leigh’s father Gary, 41, said, “I am happy with the sentence. He deserved what he got. But it’s a shame that hanging was not an option.”
Cover up
Marquita Burch, 26, was babysitting her one-year-old nephew William.
He was playing outside her apartment block in Kentucky, USA, when she ducked inside for a moment.
When she came back moments later, William was gone.
She called the police and then William’s mum Kiara Carter.
Over 100 emergency staff searched for William, but after five hours with no trace, the police determined that William was never in the area at all.
Police took Marquita in for questioning and she told them William was dead.
He’d fallen down the stairs in her flat.
Marquita gave him ibuprofen and put him in bed.
Next morning, she found his lifeless body after he died from a brain injury.
William’s body was found stuffed in a garbage bag and hidden in her cousin’s closet.
A grand jury indicted Marquita for a single count of murder and involuntary manslaughter, two counts of endangering children, tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse.
She was sentenced to at least 19 years behind bars.
I heard her screams
When Katy Redondo received a call from her daughter’s day care in Connecticut, USA, she was instantly worried.
The owner, Nydia Carillo-Maldonado, 36, said there’d been an accident a few hours earlier, and in the background Katy could hear her two-month-old baby Bella screaming.
She asked Nydia whether she’d called an ambulance, but she hadn’t.
Around 3pm, Nydia called for emergency services when she noticed Bella had difficulty breathing.
Upon arrival at the hospital, doctors told Katy that Bella had evidence of head trauma in addition to the breathing issues.
Several hours later, Bella died in hospital from two skull fractures.
Despite the evidence of neglect while Bella was in Nydia’s care, Nydia refused to tell police what happened to Bella that day.
She was allowed to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to just three and a half years.
Nydia pleaded guilty under the Alford Doctrine which means that she disagreed with the judge’s ruling that Bella’s injuries happened under her care but acknowledges that there is sufficient evidence to convict her.
Despite this, Nydia still refused to disclose what happened to Bella that day.
Although Katy and her husband, Fernando, have found it in their hearts to forgive Nydia, she has never once apologised and insists that she’s done nothing wrong.
In court, Katy made a chilling statement saying, “I will never hear her call me mummy, but I heard her cry in pain while you sat there for hours without doing anything to help her.”
