Anya Cain (6:24)
We're the Murder sheet and this is the cheat sheet. Sentences and sledgehammers. So our first case will be a difficult one. This is a. This is a horrible, horrible case out of Indiana, out of Indianapolis specifically. And it involves the death of five year old Kinsley Welty. And my sources for this were mostly legal documents sent to us through a listener. Thank you so much. To that listener and wthr, the WTHR article provides the latest update in this case and then the documents reflect the context. So I'll just give you the update first. Um, so in, in the death of, of Kinsley Welty, which occurred In April of 2024, Smith was the boyfriend of Kinsley's mother and that was Tony McClure, a 30 year old woman. She's been charged with murder, criminal confinement resulting in serious bodily injury and battery on a person less than 14 years old. There's currently also a civil lawsuit filed by Kinsley's family. And this is against Indiana Department of. Correct. Indiana Department of Child Services and people working on this case there. What they say is that Kinsley's case was mishandled and that there were allegations of abuse of kinsley from Tony McClure in the sense like she was abusing her daughter shortly after the child's birth and that it never should have gotten this far. Kinsley died at age 5, but she weighed 21 lbs. To give you a sense of how emaciated and malnourished she was, I'm gonna read a little bit from the probable cause affidavit and just kind of get into that briefly and then we can move on. This is, this is hard to listen to when, when you think about parenting and meeting A child's needs, there's like, parenting's difficult. No one, no one, no one disputes that. But there's, there's situations where parents like strive really hard and they still can't give their kid everything they want or meet their child's needs. And then there's something where this amount of neglect is just pretty shocking. So here's the probable cause. Quote. On April 9, 2024, Detective Shane Nicholson of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Child Abuse Unit was notified to contact IMPD. Officer Ryan wr. Officer Wright advised he had responded to a death investigation in Indianapolis. Upon arrival, Officer Wright observed medical personnel performing life saving measures on the victim, Kinsley Welty, five years old. Inside the house, Officer Wright advised that kinsley's mother, Tony McClure, stated she had just picked up Kinsley after she spent the last one and a half months with her father. Bw end quote. So from there Kinsley was transported to Riley Hospital for Children and pretty quickly there were concerns about this death investigation. This Kinsley did not appear to be a healthy child. When Detective Nicholson ultimately went to the Riley Hospital, he, he looked at the body. Kinsley passed away and, and she looked severely malnourished, eyes sunken in, extremely thin, and her body was covered in fecal matter in her hair, bottoms of her feet, things like that. So lice on her. So there was, there was something obviously deeply wrong here because a child doesn't just get to that position. This is, this is concerning. Also there were like sores and bite marks on her abdomen. So the folks at Riley Hospital were understandably concerned about neglect, malnourishment, possible abuse. You know, they said that according to her charts, she weighed more when she was two and a half years old than when she was five. So they do an investigation. They interview Tony McClure. She's got this whole story about how Kinsley was with her father that falls apart pretty quickly because they interview the father, they also interview other people who know this family and they all say the same thing, that's not true. And Tony McClure is also telling different people different things. She's telling some people about, you know, this little girl falling in the bathtub and there's just different, different things that are coming out. So like she's lying to investigators, she's lying to family members, and then it, then it starts coming out more. So, so Nicholson interviews her again and quote, Tony stated Kinsley was last medically evaluated in December of 2022. Tony stated DCS employee had just been at her house earlier that day. Because her newborn had tested positive for thc. Tony stated she picked up Kinsley after DCS visited the house, end quote. Later on, it turns out that she changed her story to saying that Kinsley was hidden in a closet and the DCS employee had not checked that room. So from there, I think, you know, the investigation starts to kind of really hone in on Tony McClure as they hear more and more about these kind of things, and. And hearing about some of this, like, these discrepancies, I guess. So they go back to the house, they execute a search warrant, and they find one bedroom that belongs to McClure's two sons. They find the closet door blocked with a large dresser. They move that away and immediately smell feces, urine. And this appears to be almost a little prison where Kinsley was held, where they find small clothing items belonging to a girl, fecal matter all over the walls and carpet, very soiled, small handprints on the inside of the door. I mean, how heartbreaking is that? Just heartbreaking and disgusting and just deeply, deeply sad. So at some point, McClure is. Is confronted about some of these things, and she starts saying, you know, you know, Kinsley was living in the home with, you know, Ryan Smith, the boyfriend, and Tony McClure. So this is what Tony McClure starts saying to detectives. Quote, Tony expressed that she was always with Kinsley. Tony stated nobody would help her when she asked for help with Kinsley. Tony stated Ryan never paid attention to Kinsley, even though he lived at the house and was there every day and night. Tony stated Ryan never put Kinsley in the closet or interacted with her while she was there. Tony stated Ryan had never physically assaulted Kinsley. Tony stated that Tammy brought it up to her that Kinsley did not look well and had lost weight, end quote. So people are noting that she's not looking good. She's defending the boyfriend. Yeah. So then I thought there was something really bizarre here where it got into almost Tony's expressed thoughts about her daughter. She said, quote, Tony explained Kinsley had a lot of behavioral issues. Tony discussed the various issues with Kinsley's behavior. Tony stated Kinsley hated her. Tony stated that she did not get Kinsley help because she was scared to get into trouble. Tony explained that she did not want her other children to be taken away because of Kinsley. Tony stated Kinsley had resentment towards her because she'd been taken away by DCS earlier in life. Tony said she and Kinsley did not share connection or bond. Tony was apologetic for lying to the Detectives. Tony stated she was going to jail. Tony stated Kinsley needed help, but she did not help. Tony stated that she had up really bad. Tony explained that it was true that Kinsley had told her that her head and legs hurt right before she collapsed in the kitchen and died. Tony stated she was not going to lie. Kinsley told her she wanted to die just prior to death. Tony believed Kinsley died because of malnourishment. End quote. So she's admitting to the abuse and neglect to a certain extent, but also continuing to almost blame a 5 year old child for what happened, saying there were behavioral issues and that Kinsley hated her and all this stuff. And it's like Kinsey was a little girl who needed to trust the adults in her life to meet her basic, basic, basic needs, basic physical needs, and she could not do that. So if, if Kinsley did have resentment of her parents at such a young age, of her mother at such a young age, then I think that was fully warranted based on what happened. So this case is still ongoing and there's a lot of information out there about it. It's, it's, it's a pretty followed case in Indiana because of just the nature of how horrific this is. But unfortunately this stuff is endemic. And cases where a child is going to be imprisoned, tortured, and led to have a horrifying death, we often associate that with stranger kidnappings. But the people who are truly the, you know, more likely to be a bigger danger to the child or the people in their life, the people who are tasked with taking care of them. I don't know all the facts of this to weigh in on the civil lawsuit, but certainly if things were this bad, it does make me question what happened in the process, to the point where Kinsley was not removed from this household sooner, before it was too late. I don't know, but it's, it's horrible. That little girl went through hell and I can't imagine doing this to any child, let alone your own child.
