He Was Just 16 Months Old When He Died. 55 Years Later, His Mother's Disturbing Letters Came Back to Haunt Her

The mother of a 16-month-old baby who died in 1970 has been charged with her son’s murder 55 years later.

Police in Sulphur, La., say they began investigating the January 1970 death of Earl Bunch III in 2022 after a request from his family.

Earl died after suffering injuries that were originally reported as the result of falling out of a crib, police said. At the time, authorities closed the investigation because of a lack of evidence.

After the investigation reopened, the child’s remains were exhumed and sent to the FBI for a forensic autopsy. His death was subsequently ruled a homicide, according to Sulphur police.

Following the ruling, on March 27, Earl’s mother, Alice Marie Rollinson Bunch Idlett, 75, now living in Norwood, La., was charged with second-degree murder in connection with the boy’s death.

At the time of the toddler’s death, his father was serving in the Vietnam War.

The child’s father, Earl Bunch Jr., filed for divorce from Idlett in 1983. A child custody ruling from 1985, obtained by PEOPLE, states that Idlett wrote Earl Jr. letters while he was stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War in 1969. In the letters, she wrote about problems she was having with her infant son months before his death.

“I just got through whipping that little basdard [sic],” Idlett wrote on Nov. 4, 1969, according to the court filing. “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.”

In another letter dated two weeks later, Idlett allegedly wrote that she didn’t “want to be a mother.”

“I should love my own son but I really don’t think I do and if I did I would know it,” she allegedly wrote in another letter. “I feel as if he would die tomorrow I wouldn’t care.”

The court ruling also details Earl III’s injuries when he was taken to the hospital in January 1970.

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“Earl Dwayne was limp and gasping for breath,” the filing stated. “He was immediately transferred to Lake Charles Memorial Hospital where he was x-rayed. The x-rays revealed multiple fractures of the skull and right shoulder.”

After Earl Jr. filed for divorce, Idlett asked where the letters she had written during the war were, at which point he re-read them, the ruling says. He then contacted the doctor who examined his son in 1970, who said the baby had been brought to the hospital in a “comatose condition” and had bite marks on his body and burn marks on his buttocks.

Idlett is currently being held in jail on $950,000. It is not immediately clear if she has entered a plea or retained an attorney.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.