FLORIDA — Detectives with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office have charged Kristen Bury and Joseph Walsh with 1st Degree Felony Murder of their son, nine-week-old Chance Walsh.
The child was found in a shallow grave, police say.
Bury has entered a plea of not guilty.
The father told detectives Chance died in the morning hours of September 16 at their home on Orduna Drive.
According to News Press, the couple got into an argument: “Joseph said to Kristen that he was going to bash (Chance’s) head into the ground at one point during the argument.”
The affidavit goes on to say the two told detectives they left to Florida to “start a new life somewhere else.”
Bury told detectives they would find Chance’s body, at a gravesite located near Elliot Court in North Port. The area off Wylam Drive and English Circle is heavily wooded and abandoned approximately 13 miles from Chance’s home.
At Elliot Court, detectives found a fragment of a blue surgical type glove, as well as the body of an infant covered only with a diaper.
The mother did not intervene as the child’s father repeatedly struck him before his death, according to police. Although, it’s still unclear how the child was killed.
On October 4, the maternal grandmother of nine-week-old Chance Walsh contacted the sheriff’s office concerned that she had not seen him since September 9.
The family contacted law enforcement after the pair told them they were in a vehicle crash in South Carolina, but told relatives several different stories including that the child was unharmed, that he died in the crash and that they gave him to a woman at a hotel in Georgia.
Detectives confirmed with South Carolina law enforcement that there was no baby in the vehicle at the time of the crash and no room for a car seat. They also confirmed with Georgia law enforcement that the couple stayed at an Augusta hotel but there was no baby with them.
A woman staying at the hotel reported that Kristen tried to sell baby clothes to her and that Kristen told her the baby had died three weeks earlier.
