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The Raven Knocks
True Crime/Missing Persons/Cold Cases- I decided to begin a podcast regarding true crime because I feel like some of the victim's story never gets told due to it being to graphic or not admissible in court. I also think that Justice is lost in some of these cases and it's not right. I hope I can be a voice for the ones who lost theirs and perhaps make this world a slightly better place, and have you thinking more cautiously.
The Raven Knocks
The Scalded Child
What happens when the very people meant to protect a child become their greatest source of terror? This haunting exploration of little Gabriella's tragic story will leave you grappling with the disturbing realities of child abuse and systemic failures. We unravel the grim details of Gabriella's life under the care of her mother, Candace, and Candace's boyfriend, Brad. Their history of violence, disregard for the law, and denial of accountability set the stage for an environment rife with neglect and suffering. From the medical examiner's shocking findings to the baffling delays in emergency response, we lay bare the horrific sequences that culminated in the loss of an innocent life.
Our horrifying journey through this case also serves as a stark reminder of the vulnerability of children and the urgent need for community vigilance. We draw on testimonies from those who knew Gabriella before her life was overshadowed by abuse, contrasting her radiant past with the darkness she faced. This episode is not just a recount of events; it is a call to action for each of us to stay informed, speak up, and protect the most defenseless among us. As we reflect on Gabriella's story, we underscore our commitment to raising awareness and urge our beloved 'ravens' to join us in the fight against child abuse. Stay aware, stay safe, and remember, every voice counts.
A child was severely burned in a house fire when she was four years old. Yet she grew up to severely burn and torture her own daughter at the age of four. Join me as I tell the sad story of little Gabriella. Please note that the content of this recording may contain graphic material, including torture, and explicit language may be used. The opinions are of my own and may be offensive to some listeners. They are my opinions, everyone has them, and if you do not agree, then ignore them like an adult and move on. Listener, discretion is strongly advised. Hey Ravens, welcome to the Ravens Knock. I'm your host, amy. Listener, discretion is not free and you get ad-free content, bonus episodes that no one else gets. And with that said, let's go ahead and get started.
Speaker 1:The medical examiner received another child. He notes fatal burn pattern, thermal and asphyxia injuries, suffocation by hand over mouth and nose, matted hair lost infestation, several contusions on her scalp, missing hair, great toe melted malnourishment, severe tooth decay, body covered with abrasions and bruising. Second degree burns, symmetrical, meaning she was held in place. These burns were on her elbows, forearms, knees, shins and tips of her toes, and also on her bottom. The ones to her bottom were a separate occurrence, bruising and scrapes in a pattern injury all different colors, different stages of healing. She had been struck by something. Right side of the buttock and along her thigh was a bruise consistent with the slap of a hand. Dried lacerations on the top of her scalp had dried ointment on them. Hemorrhage under the skin showed that her hair had been forcefully pulled out. It just didn't fall out. Bruising on her left and right cheek and on her left shoulder. The left cheek injury was a blunt force injury and was about three to four days old. The right side of her cheek was approximately three to five days old. Right side of the mouth there were abrasions. Her teeth were necrotic, 14 out of 20. Indentations of her teeth were in the lower and upper lip, indicating that a hand or another object had been forced upon her mouth.
Speaker 1:Petechia in her eyes, which are caused by suffocation or strangulation, basically a lack of oxygen. The petechia is when the small blood vessels in the eyes or skin rupture, causing a pinpoint-type appearance. Vomit in her lungs that she had inhaled. She had died from septic shock, battered child syndrome. It was indeed a homicide.
Speaker 1:Firefighters and police had rolled up to this house to find three adults. The mother was standing in the hallway. The father was in the back bedroom behind the mother securing the dog, and the grandmother was in the bathroom with a four-year-old girl lying on the floor, unresponsive. No one was doing CPR. The firefighters had grabbed her and brought her to the living room and began CPR.
Speaker 1:Once EMS arrived, they carried her to the ambulance and she was put on a cardiac monitor. She was in V-fib. That means the heart's in distress and the patient needs to be shocked. They continued performing CPR and gave her a shock as they were also inserting an iv to give her epinephrine, also known as epi. This is known to help restart the heart. They gave her eight rounds of it. They shocked her two times but they never got her back. They shocked her two times but they never got her back. They began transport after 20 minutes.
Speaker 1:Now some of you may wonder why they took so long at the scene, and I'll try to explain. The ambulance is equipped with equipment and medications that are needed to save a life Everything a hospital has. In that sense, if they took her to the hospital, the hospital wouldn't be doing anything any different than what they were doing on scene, and it was more important to have all hands on deck than it was to have one person working on her and one driving to the hospital. I hope that kind of makes sense Now. If they had gotten her back or had gotten a sustainable rhythm, they would have transported her. Then, sadly, once at the hospital they pronounced her dead.
Speaker 1:An EMS partner testified that when she saw Gabby her skin was grayish already and she was unresponsive. She had bruising all over her body and burns that were very recent, so recent that the skin was hanging off of them. She stated after about 8-10 minutes in the ambulance she flatlined I can't pronounce the correct word and I would be saying flatlined anyway. She was also cyanotic, which means the skin showed a lack of perfusion, basically a lack of oxygen. She asked her mother when the last time she had saw Gabby. She said it had been two hours.
Speaker 1:She stated that Gabby liked her baths and sometimes she would try to run her own bath, but when she was in the bath she would play in there for a couple of hours. She was in the bath that morning and she had been in there a while when she was making pancakes. After she was in there about two hours she went to check on her and she was face up in the tub. She pulled her out and she began to vomit and they called 911. The EMS worker noticed that her fingers were not pruned. You know, when you get in the water for so long your fingers kind of wrinkle. That's called pruning. Also, who goes two hours without checking on their child that's in the tub? I'm just wondering.
Speaker 1:Police stated when they showed up they had saw them in the hallway and no one was providing CPR showed up. They had saw them in the hallway and no one was providing CPR. Candace, the mother, was crying. In the background of this video cam that they showed, brad was heard saying that she had been down a half hour. He noticed the burns that she had and one of the officers asked how she got all bloody. But he doesn't answer them. After Candace and her adopted mother, cynthia, leave with Gabby to go to the hospital which Candace had called Cynthia before calling 911 and didn't call 911 until Cynthia had gotten there and told her to do so. Cynthia lives 30 minutes away and left as soon as she had gotten the call, so she was unresponsive for over 30 minutes before they even called 911.
Speaker 1:The police stay at the trailer with Brad. Brad makes a phone call to his aunt stating he doesn't know what happened, that Gabby had been up all night and he didn't know what she had gotten into Maybe the Doritos. But she passed out and was unresponsive. He was calm and talking in a normal tone. I have never heard of a child passing out from eating Doritos, have you? You know? But ritter things have happened. When he talks to his uncle on speakerphone because he was asked by law enforcement to do so, he tells him the whole situation is confusing that she drowned in the tub and he freaked out and you can tell that she had water in her lungs. But he needed to be at the hospital. He said Candace came in and told him that Gabby was in the tub face up and when she pulled her out she wasn't breathing but she had thrown up. He didn't know CPR but he did what he could. He stated stuff was spraying out of her nose. The officer then takes his phone to secure it for evidence. They also go to the hospital to secure Candace's phone.
Speaker 1:Csi came to process the house after they had obtained proper warrants. They found vomit on a towel, blood on the walls of Gabby's room, gauze with blood, also gloves, hair and some skin that had been taken from the bathtub drain. All of these would come back positive for Gabby's DNA. The outside of the gloves came back to Brad and Candace.
Speaker 1:Her preschool testified that Gabby was a delight. She was very lovable and she wanted to hug everyone. She saw if she knew them or not. She was potty trained and never had any accidents while in school. She got along well with her peers peers and she came to school clean, although in December they noticed that her hair was not being brushed. They also noticed that one time she had a bruise around her eye. They checked her body and didn't find anything else, so they didn't report it. They did see her scratching her head at one point, but they had difficulty seeing anything due to the mats that were in her hair.
Speaker 1:Her grandmother testified and said that Gabby lived with her for the first four years of her life. She had to return Gabby to her mother when she tried to enroll her into preschool. She lived 30 minutes away, but she would try to see her at least once a week. Sometimes, though, she wasn't allowed to come by because of Brad. She only saw her on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and both visits combined were two hours. She stated that Candace was born to her niece. Her mother didn't care for her at all and had left her in the care of her mother, and that mother was no good either. She had a problem with alcohol. Once the house caught fire and it left Candace severely burned. She was four years old. Both her mother and grandmother went to jail and Candace was put with Cynthia, and then she decided to adopt her. Her biological father was also incarcerated.
Speaker 1:As Candace grew up, she wasn't making the best decisions. She ended up getting pregnant and had Gabby on July 3rd 2013. Her boyfriend decided to up and move at this time, and it wasn't long before he had left Candace and Gabby alone, but they were doing fine. Candace met another guy named Brad. She ended up leaving Gabby with Candace when Gabby was about 18 months old and she moved in with Brad. They ended up having a baby girl named Zoe. When Zoe was about 10 months old, gabby came back home to live with them. They treated Zoe well, but for some reason they tortured Gabby Before Gabby had come to live with them.
Speaker 1:The law was called on Bride once because he shot the dog, shot himself in the leg and had ran after Candace trying to shoot her. He was actively shooting at her through a mobile home park. She was able to get away, and he was put in jail. When they searched the home, they found multiple guns, some with no serial numbers, some unregistered. They noted dog feces everywhere, everywhere, and the house was disgusting. A rabbit was kept hostage in an unkept cage, blood was all over the floor. They found pills and a magazine for a gun they could not locate. Brad was charged with domestic violence. Three days later, though, candace comes down to the police station and was wanting to drop the charges. She said he was schizophrenic and had been off his medication. She said the guns had been hers. So they arrest her for the guns not being registered and removing the serial number, and when they searched her they found a blank prescription pad. So she was charged for that as well, and she went to jail too. She pled guilty, but she only got two years probation. Now I don't know why they didn't charge him for actively shooting in a trailer park during the day, or why they didn't charge him for animal cruelty. At this time I'm not sure if the baby had been born or not.
Speaker 1:When Gabby moved in, she began to have accidents, which seems to be a pattern in children who are scared or being abused. They began to punish her for this by hitting her, putting her in ice baths, scratching her back to a point to where it bled, forcing her to take Adderall that was not prescribed to her, shanking her with a fork that's the word he used. Shanking they made her wear a garbage bag, took away her pants, her bed. They put it up against the wall. She had to sleep in the living room on the floor without any blankets. If she had an accident, she slept in it. They had sent Facebook messages back and forth and Brad at one time said he was going to drown her in his waste and make her eat her own poop.
Speaker 1:On January 1st 2018, they filled the bathtub with scalding hot water. They lowered Gabby inside and held her there until her skin burned off. They took her out, flipped her over and submerged her again, yep, until her skin came off. That poor baby. When Gabby dies, do they call 911? Nope, she calls her mom, cynthia, and states that she has no idea what happens, but she thinks that Gabby drowned in the tub.
Speaker 1:When Cynthia got there, there was no water in the tub. The floor was not wet, candace or Brad was not wet. Gabby was not wet. Her hair was slightly damp. The couple had been texting back and forth.
Speaker 1:After the police had gotten there, candace had texted Brad to get rid of everything in the house because she was probably going to go to jail and if Gabby woke up she would probably tell them that they were not good to her. He told her via text that they had searched him and Zoe, and he was probably going to go to jail too. Candace stated that she wanted to die. I wish it was you that died instead of little Gabby, but now Gabby's the one that had to die. The innocent one died, and she died in a horrific, painful way. You and your boyfriend Brad are parasites that shouldn't be walking among us now. They both were found guilty of homicide, felony murder, homicide, murder in the second degree, child abuse in the first degree, torture, conspiracy to commit child abuse in the first degree and conspiracy to commit child abuse in the second degree. They both got locked in prison.
Speaker 1:This story bothered me. It's funny. Well, it's not funny, but when I looked back, she was four years old when she got burned in that house and she was extremely burned, and her daughter was four years old when she burned her. Now, when Cynthia adopted her, she was very good to her. She provided a very stable, loving, nurturing environment. But Cynthia began showing traits of her mother as she grew older, which kind of makes you wonder. She was four years old when they pulled her away. That's very young Like, can you. How much can you remember when you were four years old of your parents, of how they treated you, of your parents, of how they treated you? So, with that said, it makes you wonder of the nature versus nurture aspect. On that, now, in my opinion, I believe that her boyfriend, brad, did not like Gabby, mainly because that wasn't his child, and the reason I say that is because they were both good to Zoe and Candace was very good to Gabby before she had met Brad. So that makes me think what changed when she started abusing Gabby? Two things happened she met Brad and she had another baby. So one of those two but that is this episode of the raven knocks.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you, ravens, for listening and please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. We really do appreciate it cannot do this content without you guys. This is a southern Sass production. If you know or suspect child abuse in any shape or form. Please call or text the Child Abuse Hotline. It's 1-800-442-4453. That's 1-800-422-4453. I hope to see you the next time and until then, guys, stay out of rest stops and be safe.
