A Louisiana mother has been charged with murdering her baby nearly 55 years after claiming he fell out of his crib — as authorities uncovered old hateful letters detailing how she wished he was dead.
Alice Rollinson Bunch Idlett, now 75, was arrested Thursday and charged with second-degree murder in the 1970 death of her 16-month-old baby, Earl Dwayne Bunch III, KPLC-TV reported.
At the time, the then-20-year-old mom claimed that her son fractured his skull falling from his crib — but a cold-case investigation launched in 2022 ruled it a homicide.
Baby Earl was covered in bruises as well as bite and burn marks — and his mom wrote disturbing letters to her then-husband, Earl Bunch Jr, about “hating” and “wanting to kill” their son, according to court documents shared by the outlet.
“I just got through whipping that little basdard (sic). I hate him. That’s the honest truth,” she allegedly wrote her husband, who was stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War at the time.
“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, according to documents first shared in 1985 as part of a divorce and custody battle over their daughter.
“I’ll kill him before he becomes spoilt,” she allegedly threatened in one letter. “I honestly mean that…”
Idlett frequently wrote of her hatred for the baby, according to the court filing, which quoted her as telling her husband in one letter, “If he starts crying when I put him down to play, I’m going to whip him until his darn seat is red. … I hate your son. I wish he was dead…”
In another letter, she asked what was “wrong” with her because she “should love my own son.”
“I feel as if he would die tomorrow I wouldn’t care. I can’t help it,” she allegedly wrote.
When Idlett took her son to the hospital, he was “limp and gasping for breath,” and the doctor found “bite marks” and a “burn mark on his buttocks” as well as bruising all over his body, according to the court documents.
The doctor noted the injuries were not consistent with a fall from a crib, but Idlett denied doing anything to her son, later telling her husband he “probably fractured his skull when he fell out of bed at his grandmother’s house.”
The boy’s father did not alert authorities to the alarming letters at the time, according to KFDM.
“He testified that he accepted his son’s death as accidental because he could not believe that the woman he loved could have harmed her own son,” according to the court filing.
The case was ultimately closed due to a lack of evidence and remained untouched for years until the 2022 investigation, which resulted in the Calcasieu Parish District Attorney’s Office convening a Grand Jury and charging Idlett with second-degree murder.
She was booked into the Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center on a $950,000 bond, where she remains behind bars.
