Justice for Baby Gunner #3: Epidemic or Accident? Comparable Cases
Justice for Baby Gunner #3: Epidemic or Accident? Comparable Cases
The murder of one's own child is a most despicable act; not merely due to the helplessness of the victim, but also that it represents the inversion of the parental duty and responsibility of care.
However, we must not allow the revulsion we feel at such heinous acts to cloud a clear-minded application of reason and logic.
In fact, criminal cases invoking a strong emotional reaction are more worthy of scrutiny, as there is more temptation for the human element in our justice system to veer in the direction of railroading and witch trials.
To refresh your recollection on the death of Baby Gunner and the subsequent prosecution of his father Noah Bliss, the subject of this series, please refer to the first article in this series summarizing the facts so far (a premature infant died of a brain hemorrhage while in his father's care) and why I believe the story merits further investigation (law enforcement has a history of using faulty "Shaken Baby Syndrome" science):
The focus of today's article is not on the facts of this story, but rather to direct your attention to several cases which bare some commonalities. Two of these cases are related to alleged fatal parental abuse in Wake County, while the third is a strikingly similar case in New York involving prematurely born twins.
However, before diving into the meat of the article, there are a few updates which are related to the story at the core of this series.
Baby Gunner case updates
Since my initial article on the death of Gunner Bliss and the subsequent prosecution of his father, there have been a few developments in the criminal case: Noah Bliss has been indicted by a grand jury on the first degree murder charge, the state has indicated that they will not pursue the death penalty, and Bliss has been assigned a new public defender, Richard A. Elmore.
Baby Gunner's mother deceased, cause unspecified
In tragic update to an already tragic case, Savannah Bliss (Baby Gunner's mother) passed away in May. Although her obituary did not specify a cause of death, public social media posts by a relative indicate that she had been hospitalized for at least two weeks prior to her death.
Savannah is survived by Baby Gunner's twin sister, as well as an older daughter.
From a legal point of view, Savannah could have potentially been a relevant witness for either side. On the one hand, she witnessed her husband hand over the blue-faced Baby Gunner to a nurse when returning to their room at WakeMed, and she apparently believed the medical professionals who told her that Baby Gunner's injuries had to have been a result of abuse by Noah. On the other hand, what she told WRAL regarding Noah's parenting up to that day was that "he loved his babies" and that she "never thought this would have happened".
Wake Co. fatal parental child abuse cluster
In a recent article by the News & Observer, the case of Baby Gunner was highlighted along with two other children who were allegedly killed by their parents in Wake County in the a three month period at the end of 2023.
As Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman commented, "To have that sort of cluster of cases is unusual...to have three cases happen in such a short time is heartbreaking."
In all three of these cases, we are still relatively early in the judicial process; the public has only been granted the barest outline of the facts the government may bring to bear.
However, even with this limited knowledge, it will perhaps be illustrative to review these cases to illustrate why I believe the prosecution of Noah Bliss for his son's death is especially worthy of journalistic skepticism in comparison to other alleged incidents of fatal child abuse.
Karter Holloway
5-year-old Karter Holloway died of a fatal head injury while spending the holiday weekend with his father, Amir Hines. Hines, who has been charged with murder, had only recently been connecting with his son after being released from prison (Hines had been sentenced to 59-83 months after pleading guilty to armed robbery in 2020).
The details of Karter's injuries are murky; although the arrest warrant for Hines only mentions the fatal brain injury from a subdural hemorrhage, Karter's maternal grandmother claimed in an interview with WRAL that "medical reports" indicated Karter "was beaten all over" and that he "had bruises from head to toe". Head-to-toe bruising would be inconsistent with what Holloway described as Hines' explanation for the injuries, that Karter had fallen in the shower.
Hines "showed no remorse" at a court hearing when the judge mentioned that Karter had died, according to WRAL.
Court records show Hines sent a letter to the judge in February asking for a new public defender who will ensure that a thorough investigation is conducted on his behalf, including interviewing witnesses and obtaining the medical records relating to Karter's treatment in the hospital prior to his death.
Vinil Tiwari
In December, Priyanka Tiwari was charged with murder after Morrisville Police found the decomposed body of her 9-year-old son Vinil, who she allegedly starved to death.
According to the News & Observer, a domestic violence complaint filed by Vinil's father Shashikant Tiwari against Priyanka earlier in the year claimed that she was seeing "imaginary people" and was depriving Vinil of food and outside contact.
In March 2023, Priyanka was involuntarily committed to a behavioral health hospital, and in April Shashikant was granted primary custody of Vinil as well as the protective order he was seeking.
However, despite this, Shashikant allegedly left Vinil in his wife's custody for the seven months leading up until his death
Shashikant has been charged with child abuse in relation to the death. According to the arrest warrant, despite having legal custody, and the knowledge that his wife was "violent" and "in a mental health decline", Shashikant Tiwari had left his son with her for seven months before he was found dead.
Compare and contrast
Before even getting to the science of Shaken Baby Syndrome, there are three elements of the fact pattern in relation to Baby Gunner's death compared to Karter or Vinil which I believe are relevant to the warranted level of skepticism to the government's theory in each case.
Firstly, Baby Gunner had been released from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit just days before he suffered his fatal injury; low birth weight, associated with both twins as well as premature birth (at 34 weeks), is a known risk factor for certain types of brain bleed/swelling, which is reportedly the direct cause of his death.
Karter and Vinil, on the other hand, had both long-outgrown the most fragile stage of development as newborns. Although Karter reportedly was nonverbal and autistic, I am not aware of that as a risk factor for brain injuries.
Secondly, Baby Gunner reportedly had "no external injuries or broken bones", which would be evidence against any sort of "natural causes" explanation.
Karter's grandmother told WRAL she had received medical documents showing he "had bruises from head to toe", which would likely be inconsistent with a fatal head injury caused by a slip-and-fall.
By the time Vinil's body was found by the police, it was already decomposing. Starving to death is quite a different method of abuse than direct physical violence; it takes a continued pattern of behavior by the parent, as opposed to a single extreme incident.
Thirdly, as past behavior is perhaps the strongest predictor of future behavior, let us consider what we know of each of these three alleged killers.
In Karter's case, his father had recently been released after spending the first years of his son's life in prison after a conviction for armed robbery. Vinil's mother had already been accused of neglecting him by her husband, and had also had been temporarily institutionalized for her declining "mental health".
Baby Gunner's mother, despite believing the accusations of abuse against her husband made by medical staff and police, described his previous relationship with his children as positive: "I never thought this would have happened...I trusted him, that was his daddy...he loved his babies."
However, Noah Bliss apparently does have a criminal record. I've found two arrests from 2019, when he would have been 17-18 years old. Both cases were resolved by Bliss pleading guilt with a "time served" sentence of incarceration:
I am currently attempting to obtain the associated police reports from these incidents.
Shaken Baby Syndome: reliable science, reliably applied?
In investigating Shaken Baby Syndrome, I have had the opportunity to speak with Susan Goldsmith, an investigative reporter, writer, and producer of The Syndrome, a documentary which takes a skeptical look at the theory.
In her review of numerous Shaken Baby Syndrome cases, Goldsmith has "encountered many cases involving twins" as well as "lots of preemies"; she pointed me in particular to a 2014 case in which the government accused a New York couple of fatally "shaking" their prematurely born twin infant, despite the fact that even the most tortured interpretation of the facts could not have possibly lined up with the government's theory.
Ryan Dipede and Virginia Jamieson
Like Baby Gunner and his sister, the twins born to Ryan Dipede and Virginia Jamieson on August 3, 2014 arrived prematurely. The stronger twin was released after 40 days in the hospital; the weaker, Hudson, after 71 days. However, only four days later, tragedy struck.
On October 17, Dipede and Jamieson went out for dinner, leaving the twins in the care of one of the professional nurses the couple had hired to provide around-the-clock care for the infants. While they were out, the nurse on duty discovered that Hudson was not breathing, and called 911. Attempts to revive Hudson were unsuccessful, and the child was pronounced dead at a Brooklyn hospital.
Although the doctors at the hospital did not report abuse or neglect, or find any trauma, the rookie pathologist who performed the autopsy discovered a subdural hemorrhage contacted the New York State Central Register of Child Abuse to allege that the parents had fatally abused the infant. Based on the pathologist's autopsy, New York City's Administration for Childrens' Services (ACS) began an investigation into the couple.
The New York City Police Department was also informed, and began a criminal investigation which resulted in no charges being filed against the couple.
However, the ACS removed the surviving infant from the parents' custody, and filed a petition in Family Court to approve the removal. On the same day that the petition was eventually denied, the ACS filed formal child abuse charges the couple as well as the nurses they had hired, maintaining that they had fatally abused the infant.
While the charges were pending, the ACS renewed their attempts to remove the surviving infant from his parents' custody. However, at the Family Court trial, the pathologist's testimony threw a wrench into the theory that the parents' had "shaken" the infant, resulting in his death.
The pathologist testified that, based on his theory of Shaken Baby Syndrome, the injuries had been inflicted while the couple were out at dinner with a solid alibi. What this means is that even to the most ardent believer in Shaken Baby Syndrome, it was impossible that the parents inflicted fatal injuries on their son.
The Family Court judge dismissed the abuse charges against both the parents and the nurses.
After the trial, the parents filed a federal suit against the City of New York and various agents of the city, including ACS employees and the pathologist. The suit alleged, among other claims, that:
The pathologist had never before performed an infant autopsy, and damaged the corpse so badly that a second independent autopsy was not possible
The ACS employees failed to make the Family Court aware that the infant was at risk of subdural hemorrhage due to medical conditions from his premature birth
The ACS employees failed to make the Family Court aware of the medical professionals who examined the infant, and found no evidence of trauma
The ACS employees failed to make the Family Court aware that based on the autopsy, the parents' could not have been responsible for inflicting fatal "shaking" injuries on the infant
The lawsuit was resolved with a settlement of $425,000 paid by the City of New York. Neither the City nor its agents admitted any fault as part of the settlement.
In addition to being another example of premature infants being at increased risk of developing fatal medical conditions, this case illustrates the possibility for state agents to be "overzealous" (at best) in their investigation and prosecution when the possibility of child abuse is involved.
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