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Alice Rollinson Idlett (Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center).
A 75-year-old woman in Louisiana has been arrested for allegedly killing her 16-month-old son over fifty years ago. The arrest follows the emergence of macabre letters she wrote to her husband during their later divorce proceedings, revealing her lack of affection for the boy and frequent physical abuse.
Alice Rollinson Idlett was detained on Thursday and faces a charge of second-degree murder related to the 1970 killing of young Earl D. Bunch III, according to records reviewed by Law&Crime. Court documents from Idlett’s 1985 custody case over her and her former husband’s surviving daughter indicate that Idlett was 18 when she gave birth to Earl in September 1968. Shortly after the birth, Idlett’s husband, Earl Bunch Jr., was deployed with the U.S. Army to Thailand.
During Bunch’s deployment in Thailand, Idlett sent him several troubling letters, which the judge described as conveying “her despair and loneliness” and as having a “threatening nature” towards the victim.
“I just got through whipping that little basdard (sic),” she allegedly wrote in November 1969. “I hate him. That’s the honest truth. I can’t stand this life. God had to punish me by letting me have that little brat. I wish I would have died when he was born. I hate myself,” she wrote. “Now I know how those people feel that get rid of their kids. I believe I could do it. I’m serious.”
That same month, Idlett also apparently wrote a letter stating that she never wanted to be a mother.
“I honestly wish he had never been born,” she wrote, referring to the victim. “He knows he won’t get his way around me. I’ll kill him before he becomes spoilt. I honestly mean that.”
Two days later, in another letter, Idlett threatened to “whip” the victim “until his darn seat is red.”
“I can’t put up with this mess … I hate your son. I wish he was dead,” the letter stated.
In December 1969, Idlett is alleged to have penned a letter in which she said that her son “doesn’t even mean anything to me anymore.”
“I feel like if he would die tomorrow I wouldn’t care. He is the one who ruint my life,” she wrote in that letter, referring to the victim. ”
Later that month, Idlett wrote to her husband saying, “I got to the point where I hate him. I can’t help it. I wish I had never had him.”
Idlett’s husband further testified that he received similar “alarming letters” from Idlett in March and April of 1969. He attempted to take emergency leave from service to return home but the request was denied.
Idlett on Jan. 19, 1970, brought Earl to the emergency room of West Calcasieu-Cameron Hospital in Sulphur, Louisiana. The document states the child was “limp and gasping for breath.” X-rays revealed that Earl had suffered “multiple fractures of the skull and right shoulder.” The baby succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead the following morning.
When Idlett’s husband returned from Thailand for the funeral and asked his wife what happened, she denied having any involvement and said their son “probably fractured his skull when he fell out of bed at his grandmother’s house in New Orleans a few weeks prior to his death.” Authorities gave him “no reason” to believe the death was “anything but accidental.”
“Shortly thereafter, [Idlett] began questioning [her husband] as to the whereabouts of the letters she had written to him while he was overseas,” the document states. “These questions aroused [his] suspicions. He found the letters and reread them for the first time in thirteen years. [His] concern for the welfare of his daughter prompted him to further investigate the incidents surrounding his son’s death.”
Speaking to the doctor who examined his son, Idlett’s husband learned that his son had bruises all over his body along with bite marks on his body and “a burn mark on his buttocks.”
“These were not the type of injuries I would have expected to see from a fall from a crib, for example, or a porch, or something like that where you get a fairly severe injury,” the doctor said in sworn testimony. “It looked more like a child that had been beaten; that perhaps somebody had taken it by the feet, and swung it against a piece of furniture or the wall.”
The doctor also said that Idlett was “stoic” rather then hysterical when she brought the boy to the hospital.
Idlett’s husband then amended his petition for separation to seek sole custody of his daughter, but multiple mental health professionals deemed Idlett and her daughter to be in good physical and mental health. Idlett also testified under oath that she did not remember writing any of the letters to her husband.
Joint custody was awarded to Idlett and her husband and no arrests were made in connection with Earl’s death for decades.
Detectives with the Sulphur, Louisiana Police Department in 2022 reopened the investigation into Idlett at the request of Earl’s family members and eventually ended up exhuming the child’s body for additional forensic examination, according to a report from Lake Charles, Louisiana NBC and CW affiliate KPLC.
Earls remains were sent to an FBI lab where a forensic autopsy determined that his manner of death was a homicide.
Idlett is currently being held at the Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center on a $950,000 bond.
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