Michael Vaughan Murder Case Moves Counties, Mom on Trial in Kinsleigh Welty's Death, a UTampa Newborn Case

0:03 Callaroga Shark Media. Good morning, you're listening to Daily Crime Injustice. I'm Garrett Fisher and it's Tuesday, June sixteenth, twenty twenty six. Here's where things stand this morning. Jury selection begins this week in Indianapolis for Tony McClure, charged with murder in the starvation death of her five year old daughter, Kinsley Welty, who died in April of twenty twenty four. In Idaho, the trial of Stacey Wandra, charged with murder and kidnapping in the twenty twenty one disappearance of five year old Michael Vaughan, has been moved from Payette County to Canyon County and is set to begin September fourteenth. And in Tampa, Florida, Brianna Moore, charged in the death of her newborn, is asking to be released on bond ahead of a November trial.

0:51 All three have pleaded not guilty. Here's the rest of it. I want to tell you about three children today, and I'm going to be honest with you up front. This is a hard one. There's no celebrity here, no podcast deal, no Netflix angle, just three kids who needed an adult to do the bare minimum and didn't get one. Two of them were five years old. One of them never got a name in the public record because she didn't live long enough for the world to learn it. And in all three cases, the danger wasn't a stranger in a van, It was the house. It was the people who were supposed to be the safe ones. So let's walk through it carefully and with the presumption of innocence intact, because every person I'm about to name has pleaded not guilty and is entitled to their day in court. But somebody has to say these children's names, so we will.

1:42 We start in Indianapolis, where this week a jury will be seated for the trial of Tony McClure, thirty one years old. She is pleaded not guilty to murder, to criminal confinement resulting in bodily injury, and to battery on a person less than fourteen years old. The person less than fourteen was her own daughter, Kinsley Wealthy, five years old. On April ninth, twenty twenty four, police were called to McClure's home. They found Kinsley unconscious and severely malnourished. Let me give you the detail that the jury is going to have to sit with because it tells you everything. At five years old, Kinsley was thirty eight and a half inches tall, a normal height for her age, and she weighed twenty one pounds less than she weighed when she was two and a half. A child does not lose weight from age two to age five, not unless something is being done to her. Officers described a little girl who was extremely thin, with sunken eyes, a bruise on her face, and fecal matter matted into the bottoms of her feet and into her hair. There were lice on her face, There were bites and sores on her abdomen.

2:49 That is the condition she was found in. That is not neglect that's snuck up on anybody. That is a long, slow, documented decline that the adults in that home watched happen. And here's how we know they watched it. When officers searched the house, they found a closet inside what looked like a bedroom for McClure's sons. The closet was blocked by a dresser. They moved the dresser opened the door and found human waste on the carpet and on the walls, three empty protein shake bottles and a peanut butter sandwich on the floor. According to investigators, McClure's other children, her mother, and her boyfriend all said the same thing. Kinsley was made to spend most of her life in that locked closet, let out for only short stretches each day. McClure's first story to police was that Kinsley had spent the day with her father, came home with a headache, and collapsed.

3:40 Her own mother contradicted that within hours, telling officers the child hadn't seen her father in over a year. In a second interview, prosecutor say McClure admitted she'd neglected her daughter and admitted why she kept the little girl in the closet her words, according to the affidavit, because she did not have to deal with her while she was there. She also told police she never asked for help because she was scared of getting in trouble and didn't want her other kids taken away. That's the part I keep coming back to. She wasn't scared for Kinsley, she was scared for herself. And there's one more thing. Prosecutors say McClure told them that just before she died, Kinsley said she wanted to die a five year old said that out loud, and the response allegedly was a dresser pushed against a closet door. Now, prosecutors say the messages tell the rest. In Facebook conversations between McClure and her mother, investigators say the two of them referred to this child, this five year old, as evil, as demon, as dummy, as chunkers, as hypher. They allegedly discussed locking the refrigerator with holding food, and in one exchange Prosecutor's highlight, when McClure wanted help with the kids, she allegedly wrote, do your duct tape. In another, when the child apparently broke a lock trying to get out, the reply was to tie her up. That's the alleged paper trail. That's not a temper that flared once. That's a system, that's a

5:12 routine look. Calling a starving child chunkers isn't a slip. It's contempt, written down timestamp. That's not a mistake. That's a choice made over and over by the people whose entire job was to keep her alive. Two of those people have already taken deals. Kinsley's grandmother, Tammy Halsey, and McClure's boyfriend Ryan Smith. Each pleaded guilty to a single count of neglect of a dependent resulting in death. If they testify truthfully at McClure's trial, each is set to be sentenced to twenty years. So when jury selection raps this week, the people who were in that house may be the ones walking the jury through what happened in it.

5:53 And there's a bigger failure sitting underneath all of this. Kinsley's grandfather and biological father have filed suit against the Indiana Department of Child Services, alleging the agency had warnings that this was a child the state already knew about, already had a file on, and left in that home. Anyway, we're going to keep watching that lawsuit because if those allegations hold up, then the closet had a lock on it, but so did every door at the agency that was supposed to open for her. Someone should have said something, someone apparently did, and it didn't matter. When we come back a five year old boy who vanished from his own front yard almost five years ago, a body that has never been found, and the man on trial who says he heard the whole thing happened from the next room.

6:50 Welcome back. We move now to Idaho and to a case that has gone unanswered for almost five years. On July twenty seventh, twenty twenty one, a five year old boy named Michael Vaughan disappeared from near his home in Fruitland, Idaho. The town searched, the state searched, and Michael was never found. To this day, his body has never been recovered. For two years, that's where it sat, a missing child, a community that never stopped looking, and no arrest. Then in late twenty twenty two, investigators developed a theory. They believe Michael had been killed and buried at a home, and that his remains were later moved somewhere else. Cadaver dogs tract ascent from one house to another roughly half a mile away. The man who lived in that second house is Stacy Wandra. He is now thirty three years old, and he is charged with first degree murder and kidnapping in Michael Vaughan's death. He is pleaded not guilty. And here's where I have to be careful with you, because what we know about the inside of this case comes largely from Wandra himself. In a police interview from November two, twenty twenty two that was played at his preliminary hearing this past March. So this is his account, his version offered by a man charged with murder who has every reason to point the finger somewhere else. Keep that in your head the whole time. In that interview, Wandra told detectives he had nothing to do with taking Michael. He

8:20 said it was his wife, Sarah Wandra, who took the boy after seeing him outside. He said when she asked him what to do, he suggested they call the authorities, and then, by his own admission, he did not call the authorities. He says he walked into the bedroom and left his wife and two roommates alone with the child, and then he described what he says he heard through the wall. He told detectives he heard the tape being unrolled and he heard Michael, five years old, screaming for his mother. I want my mom, I want my mommy. Wandra says he did not watch them wrap the boy up, but he heard it. By his own account, he heard a child beg for his mother while it happened, and he stayed in the other room. He told police that when he asked his wife why she'd taken the child, She blamed him, said he wasn't earning money, and said one of the roommates planned to find someone who would buy a kid. The last time Wandra says he saw Michael, the boy had been placed inside a duffel bag packed between layers of clothing. At one point during that interview, Wandra began to vomit. He said it was the stress of telling the story. Now. I want to be fair about this, because fairness is the whole point of a trial.

9:33 If Stacy Wandra is telling the truth, he is a man who froze, who did something unforgivably cowardly, but did not commit the killing. If he is not telling the truth, then this is a man narrating someone else's guilt to cover his own. That is exactly the question a jury exists to answer, and that jury will now sit in a different place than originally planned. This week, Judge Brent Whiting formally ordered the trial moved out of Payatt County. It will now be held about forty five minutes away in Canyon County. The kind of venue change you see when a case is so well known in its home county that finding an impartial jury becomes the hard part. Wandra himself will stay held at the Payette County Jail as the case proceeds. His trial is scheduled to begin September fourteenth. I'll be honest with you, the detail that stays with me isn't the legal maneuvering. It's a duffel bag and a little boy calling for his mom. Michael Vaughan was five, he'd be ten now. He should be finishing fourth grade, losing teeth, arguing about bedtime. Nobody was able to protect him that day. The least we can do is refuse to let him become a cold file with no name attached. Still ahead, a newborn found in a college dorm, trash can, a set of text messages, a judge is already thrown out, and the hard, careful line between what a prosecutor believes and what a jury is allowed to hear. Our last story takes us to Tampa,

11:08 and it's one where I'm going to ask you to slow down with me, because this is a case where the loudest detail and the legal reality are not the same thing, and the difference matters. Brianna Moore is twenty one years old in October of twenty twenty four, she was a student at the University of Tampa. Her roommates told police they heard a baby crying and saw blood in the bathroom. When officers asked more about it, she denied being pregnant and said the blood was from her period. Inside the trash can in her dorm room, they found her newborn daughter. An autopsy found the infant had fractured ribs and hemorrhaging in her lungs, and ruled the cause of death asphyxia compression of the torso. More is pleaded not guilty to aggravated manslaughter of a child, child neglect, unlawfully moving a dead body, and failure to report a death.

11:58 Now here's the part you may have seen in a headline. Prosecutors found text messages on Moore's phone from September of twenty twenty three, a full year before the birth, a back and forth with a friend about what to do in the event of an unwanted pregnancy. The messages riff darkly on plan A, Plan B, plan C, with Plan C described as killing the child, and more replying that plan C was her favorite. Prosecutors argued those texts showed a willingness to kill a baby and I understand why that line travels. It's chilling on its face. But here's what you need to know, and here's why I'm not going to just hand you that quote and let it do the work. A judge has already ruled those texts cannot be used at trial. Judge Thomas Palermo found there was no indication More even knew she was pregnant when she sent them, and that the messages contained no specific plan, no intent to act. A grim teenage conversation a year before the fact, the defense argued, is not a murder plan, and the court greed it doesn't come in. So if you build your verdict on Plan C is my favorite, you're building it on evidence the actual jury will never be allowed to hear. That's not a technicality. That's the system doing exactly what it's supposed to do, keeping prejudice out of a proceeding that's meant to weigh facts. The defense's position is that this was a cryptic pregnancy, also called pregnancy denial, where a person genuinely doesn't know they're carrying a child until very late or until labor itself.

13:31 It's rare, but it's real. The National Institutes of health estimates around sixteen hundred cases a year in this country. Whether that applies to Brianna Moore is a question for a jury with experts on both sides. It is not a question for me, and it's not a question for a headline. What's actually in front of the court right now is narrower. More has been held at the Hillsborough County Jail since October thirtieth, twenty twenty four, more than a year and a half, on a cash bond of two one hundred and sixty two thousand, five hundred dollars. Her attorney has filed a motion asking Judge Palermo to change the conditions of her release so she can leave jail and live with her grandmother in Mississippi. The argument is practical, she has family ties, there no ties to the Tampa area now that she's no longer a student, and she can't afford to live in Florida the way her current bond requires. Her lawyer notes she's shown up to every hearing and conducted herself appropriately throughout. That motion is set to be argued at a hearing on July sixteenth.

14:32 Her trial is scheduled to begin November two and run about two weeks. I'll level with you about why I'm being so deliberate here. A newborn is dead. That is the fact that the center of this and nothing softens it. But Brianna Moore has not been convicted of anything. The most inflammatory evidence against her has been thrown out by a judge, and there is a real recognized medical phenomenon at the heart of her defense. The honest thing, the only fair thing, is to tell you what the prosecution alleges, what the court is actually allowed, and let the trial do its job. We don't convict people on this show. We just refuse to look away. That's the show for Tuesday, June sixteenth. Three cases, three states, and the same thread running through all of them, a child who needed protection and didn't get it in time. In Indianapolis, jury selection begins this week for Tony McClure, who is pleaded not guilty in the starvation death of her daughter Kinsley. Wealty was five years old and weighed twenty one pounds and was called evil by the people who should have called her loved. Nobody was paying attention to her when it would have mattered, so we'll pay attention now. In Idaho, Stacy Wandra heads to trial in September. His venue moved to Canyon County. His plea not guilty. Vaughan was five years old and called for his mother and has never

16:03 been found. He should be ten. Someone has to say his name, Michael Vaughan. And in Tampa, Brianna Moore waits in a jail cell for a bond ruling next month and a trial in November. Presumed innocent, her case stripped of its loudest evidence by a judge doing his job. At the center of it is a newborn girl who never got the chance to be named in the world. We can at least refuse to forget that she was here. If this episode meant something to you, and I know today's was a heavy one, share it. Tell one person. These are exactly the cases that disappear when nobody passes them along. And the whole point of this show is that these kids don't disappear quietly. And if you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment and tell me which of these you want us to follow. When the trials begin, we read them and we follow up. I'm Garrett Fisher.

16:54 This has been Daily Crime and Justice from Calaruga. Shark Media We're back tomorrow, Do Better. The following is a summary of the legal disclaimers for this episode. Every person charged in the cases discussed today has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. Tony McClure has pleaded not guilty to murder, criminal confinement, and battery in the death of Kinsley Wealthy. Statements attributed to her, including the text messages described, are allegations contained in charging documents and have not been proven at trial. Tammy Halsey and Ryan Smith have pleaded guilty to neglect resulting in death. Their anticipated twenty year sentences are conditioned on truthful testimony. Allegations against the Indiana Department of Child Services are contained in a civil lawsuit and are unproven. Stacy Wandra has pleaded not guilty to murder and kidnapping in the death of Michael Vaughan. The account of events described in this episode comes from Wandra's own statements to police played at a preliminary hearing. It represents his version of events and has not been tested at trial. Michael Vaughan's remains have never been recovered. References to the involvement of other individuals reflect Wandro's claims and are not findings of fact. Brianna Moore has pleaded not guilty to all charges in the death of her newborn.

18:17 The text messages referenced in this episode have been ruled inadmissible by the trial court and will not be presented to the jury. They are described here only to explain the court's ruling and the party's positions, and should not be treated as evidence of guilt. Her bond motion and trial date are subject to change. The defense's assertion of a cryptic pregnancy is a contested matter to be determined at trial. Details are drawn from Court TV reporting and related court filings as of June fourteenth, twenty twenty six, and may be updated as proceedings continue. This program is for informational and commentary purposes and is not legal advice.

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