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Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Red Carter. Thursday August
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twenty eighth, twenty twenty five. Today on Celebrity Trials, a
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Georgia state trooper doing ninety and a sixty five kills
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a teenager and wants you to believe it was just
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an accident, because apparently wearing a badge means the laws
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of physics don't apply to you. Then a Wisconsin man
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fakes his own death kayaking, flees to Eastern Europe for
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another woman, and now wants mercy from the court. His
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wife and three kids thought he was dead. He was
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actually living his best life in Uzbekistan. And the story
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that will break your heart and enrage you. Ten year
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old Rebecca Baptiste found dead on an Arizona highway. Her
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father claims she ran away. Surveillance video shows him dumping
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her body like trash. All that and more on today's
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Celebrity Trials. Let's start in Georgia, where state trooper aj
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Scott is on trial for killing seventeen year old Sabriel Powell.
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And folks, this isn't about a high speed chase or
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a dangerous pursuit. This is about a cop who thought
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speed limits were for civilians. October twenty eighth, twenty twenty two.
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Trooper Scott is responding to a call. Not an active shooter,
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not a hostage situation, not even a violent crime in progress,
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just a regular call that required no emergency response. But
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Scott decided to go ninety miles per hour anyway in
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a sixty five zone, without emergency lights, without a siren,
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just flying down US Highway twenty seven in Carroll County
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because he could. Sabriel Powell, seventeen years old, was a
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passenger in a Nissan CenTra that was making a left turn.
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She never saw Scott coming. How could she No lights,
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no siren, just a state patrol car doing ninety miles
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an hour for no reason. The impact killed her instantly.
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Now Scott's on trial for homicide by vehicle and violating
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his oath of office. His defense, he was responding to
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a call. That's it. That's the whole defense. He had
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somewhere to be, so the teenager had to die. Prosecutor
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John Fowler isn't buying it. There was no emergency, no pursuit,
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no reason to be traveling at that rate of speed.
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This was reckless disregard for human life. The Georgia State
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Patrol's own policy says, you can't speed without lights and
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siren unless there's an immediate threat to life. What was
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the immediate threat here? That Scott might be five minutes
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late to a non emergency. Here's what really happened. Aj
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Scott thought his badge made him invincible, thought the rules
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didn't apply, thought his time was more valuable than everyone
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else's safety. Defense attorney William White tried to argue that
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Scott was doing his duty, his duty to what kill teenagers,
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because that's what he did. His duty was to protect
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and serve, not to turn his patrol car into a missile.
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The prosecution presented Scott's driving record from that day multiple
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instances of excessive speed. This wasn't an isolated incident, This
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was a pattern Scott regularly drove like the highway was
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his personal NASCAR track. They also showed that after the crash,
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Scott immediately started trying to justify his speed, not checking
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on victims, not calling for help, covering his ass I
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was responding to a call. He kept saying, like that's
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a magic phrase that brings back the dead. Sabriel Powell
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was seventeen, a senior in high school, had her whole
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life ahead of her college applications, probably sitting on her desk,
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prom dressed, shopping with friends, planning her future. Instead, she's
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dead because AJ Scott couldn't be bothered to follow the
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same laws he was sworn to enforce. You know what's
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really sick. If any of us did ninety and a
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sixty five and killed someone, we'd already be in prison.
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But Scott wore a badge, so he gets a trial
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where his lawyer argues he was doing his duty. The
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jury has to decide if wearing a uniform gives you
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the right to kill through negligence, if having a badge
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means the laws of physics don't apply, if being a
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cop means never having to say you're sorry for destroying
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a family. Sabriel Powell's parents have to sit in that
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courtroom watching the man who killed their daughter argue it
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was justified because he had somewhere to be. This is
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why people don't trust cops, not because they're all bad,
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but because when one of them kills a teenager through
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pure recklessness, the system bends over backwards to excuse it.
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AJ Scott is guilty of homicide. He drove ninety miles
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an hour without emergency indicators and killed a child. That's
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not duty, that's murder with a badge. Now let's talk
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about Ryan Borgwart, who pulled off one of the most
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selfish acts I've ever covered on this show. August eleventh,
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twenty twenty four, goes kayaking on Green Lake in Wisconsin.
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His family expects him home for dinner. He never shows up.
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They find his kayak overturned, his car at the boat launch,
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his fishing rod floating in the water for fifty four days.
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Fifty four days, his wife, Emily, and their three children
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thought he was dead, drowned in that lake, gone forever.
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Search teams spent thirty five thousand dollars of taxpayer money
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looking for his body, divers, sonar equipment, boats, helicopters, the works.
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The community rallied around his widow and orphans. But Ryan
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Borgwart wasn't dead. He was in Eastern Europe living with
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another woman, a woman he'd met online and decided was
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worth abandoning his entire family for. Here's how this sociopath
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did it. He got a new passport, transferred money to
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foreign accounts, bought a one way ticket, then staged his
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own death and fled. Then, while his family planned his funeral,
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Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podol explained how they cracked it.
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We found he'd been communicating with a woman in Uzbekistan.
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He'd cleaned out accounts, he'd researched how to fake your
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own death. This man literally googled how to fake your
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own death, just like Christopher Wolfenbarger googled how to kill someone. Apparently,
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criminals think search history disappears when you clear your browser.
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November eleventh, after fifty four days of his family's agony,
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Borgwart finally contacted authorities from Eastern Europe safe and sound
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and shacked up with his new girlfriend. His explanation he
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was going through a hard time a hard time, so
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instead of therapy or divorce, he chose to traumatize his
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children by making them think daddy drowned. Those kids went
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to bed every night for two months thinking their father
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was dead, probably had nightmares about him drowning, Probably blamed
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themselves wondering if they could have saved him. Meanwhile, daddy
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was having sex with some woman he met online in Uzbekistan.
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Now he's back in custody do for plea and sentencing.
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This week, he's charged with obstruction for the fake death scheme.
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His lawyer, Josiah Reeves, says Borgwart is remorseful. Remorseful. He
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had fifty four days to feel remorse while his family
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mourned him. He felt nothing. He only came back because
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authorities figured out he was alive. The prosecutors asking for
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jail time and full restitution of the thirty five thousand
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dollars search cost. That's not enough. This man tortured his family,
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made his wife a widow, made his children orphans, made
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an entire community mourn all for what some online romance
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a midlife crisis, the thrill of starting over. Emily Borgwart
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has filed for divorce, obviously, but those kids can't divorce
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their father. They have to live with the knowledge that
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daddy loved some stranger in Eastern Europe more than them,
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that he was willing to let them think he was
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dead rather than be their father. The judge should throw
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the book at him, not just for the fraud and
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the wasted resources, but for the psychological torture of three
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innocent children who will need therapy for the rest of
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their lives. Ryan Borgwart wanted to disappear. Fine, make him
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disappear into prison. Let him explain to his cellmates how
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he faked his death to abandon his kids for some
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European side piece. This isn't a crime of passion. This
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is calculated cruelty. He planned this for months. Every day
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he looked at his children, knowing he was going to
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fake his death and leave them forever. That's not a father,
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that's a monster with a kayak. We'll be right back
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with the most horrific story of the day. A father
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who killed his ten year old daughter and dumped her
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body on a highway like garbage. This last case is
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going to haunt you. I'm warning you now, if you
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have kids, if you have a heart, if you have
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any faith in humanity, this will destroy it. Ten year
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old Rebecca Baptiste is dead. Her father, Richard Baptiste, is
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charged with her murder, and the way her body was
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discovered will make you question everything about parental love. December ninth,
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twenty twenty four, a driver on Interstate ten near Tanapah, Arizona,
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sees what looks like a body on the side of
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the highway. They call nine to one one, deputies arrive
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to find a little girl dead, dumped like trash on
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the side of the road. The bodycam footage, which Court
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TV obtained shows deputies approaching what they initially think might
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be a mannequin, because who dumps a child on a highway.
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Then the horrible realization it's a little girl. It's real,
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she's dead. One deputy can be heard saying, oh my god,
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it's a kid. It's a real kid. For days, she
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was Jane Doe. No identification, no missing person report matching
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her description, just a dead child on the side of
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a highway in the middle of nowhere. Then investigators got
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a break. Surveillance footage from the area showed a vehicle
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stopping near where the body was found. License plate leads
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to Richard Baptiste Phoenix address. They go to question him.
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Baptiste's story his ten year old daughter, Rebecca ran away
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a few days earlier, ran away a ten year old,
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and he didn't report it to police because well, he
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doesn't have a good reason. Police show him a photo
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of the dead child found on the highway. It's Rebecca,
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his daughter, the one who supposedly ran away. His reaction,
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according to detectives, almost no emotion, like they were showing
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him a picture of a stranger, not his murdered child.
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The medical examiner determined Rebecca died from blunt force trauma.
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She was beaten to death. Then her father, the man
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who was supposed to protect her, drove her body out
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to the desert and dumped her on the side of
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the road. Rebecca's grandmother, Annie Willie, is devastated. Something needs
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to be done. This was a baby, a ten year
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old baby. How do you do that to your own child? How? Indeed,
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how do you beat your ten year old daughter to death?
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How do you load her body into your car? How
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do you drive for miles with your dead child? How
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do you pull over, drag her out and leave her
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on the highway like roadkill? Then how do you go
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home and tell people she ran away? Richard Baptiste has
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been charged with first degree murder and child abuse. He's
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being held on one million dollar bail. His public defender
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hasn't commented what could they possibly say? But here's what
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really gets me the timeline. Rebecca was killed days before
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her body was found owned days where Richard Baptiste walked
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around free, telling anyone who asked that his daughter ran away,
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days where he slept in his bed while his daughter's
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body lay in the desert. Did he think about her?
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Did he have moments of regret? Or was he just
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relieved she was gone? This wasn't a moment of rage
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that went too far. This was sustained abuse that ended
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in murder. The medical examiner found evidence of prior injuries, healing, bruises,
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old fractures. This child had been suffering for who knows
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how long, and nobody saved her. Not family, not teachers,
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not neighbors. Nobody noticed, or nobody cared enough to act.
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Now Rebecca's grandmother is asking the question, we're all asking,
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how does this happen? How does a father kill his baby?
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I'll tell you how, because Richard Baptiste never saw Rebecca
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as his daughter. He saw her as property, as a burden,
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as something he could beat when he was angry, and
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dispose of when he went too far. The surveillance video
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that caught him dumping her body, he didn't even try
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to hide broad Daylight, Main Highway, like he was throwing
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out trash, because to him, that's all she was. Rebecca
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Baptiste was ten years old. She probably still believed in magic,
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still played with dolls, still thought her daddy would protect
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her from monsters. She never realized the monster was the
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one tucking her in at night. Richard Baptiste will face
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trial for murder. His lawyers will make excuses, maybe claim
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mental illness, maybe claim accident, maybe claim she provoked him,
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as if anything a ten year old could do would
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justify beating her to death and dumping her body on
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a highway. But here's the truth. Some people are just evil.
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Some people have children and feel nothing for them. Some
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people can look at their own flesh and blood and
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feel only rage. Richard Baptiste is one of those people,
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and Rebecca Baptiste paid the price for being born to
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a monster. She deserved birthday parties and sleepovers and first
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days of school. She deserved to grow up, fall in love,
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have her own children someday. She deserved a father who
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loved her. Instead, she got Richard Baptiste, and now she's dead.
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Rest in peace, Rebecca. The system failed you in life.
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Let's hope it doesn't fail you in death. That's celebrity
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trials for Thursday, August twenty eighth. Three cases today. Three
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men who violated the ultimate trusts, a cop who killed
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through recklessness, a father who abandoned his children through fraud,
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and a father who murdered his daughter through evil. I'm
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read Carter. Sometimes I wonder why I do this show.
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Then I remember, someone has to say their names. Sabriel Powell,
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the Borgward Children, Rebecca Baptiste. Someone has to remember. See
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you tomorrow,