Missing 9-Week-Old Chance Walsh Was Left to Decompose in His Crib After Allegedly Being Beaten to Death by His Father: Police

Chance Walsh was last seen alive on Sept. 9

Photo: Sarasota Sherriff

Chance Walsh, the 9-week-old baby boy who went missing in September, was allegedly beaten to death by his father and left to decompose in his bedroom for more than a week before he was buried in a shallow grave near his parents’ North Port, Florida, home, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.

Chance’s parents, Kristen Bury and Joseph Walsh, have both been charged with first-degree murder in their infant son’s death. The baby boy’s body was found buried in a wooded area last week after he was missing for a month.

According to the court documents, Chance allegedly died in the early hours of Sept. 16 after being “struck repeatedly by” Walsh.

Bury purportedly told Walsh to stop, saying, “You are going to break his f—ing neck.” Walsh allegedly responded by saying he was “going to bash [Chance’s] head into the ground,” the documents state.

After Chance died, Bury did not call police to report the incident because “she did not want to lose both people she loves in the same day,” Walsh allegedly told police, according to the documents.

Following his death, the baby boy was allegedly “placed into his crib, where he was left to decompose.” Bury eventually told Walsh that the “smell was overwhelming and that he had to do something with the body,” the documents state. At that point, he allegedly wrapped Chance in a blanket and placed his remains in the bedroom’s closet. The boy’s corpse allegedly lay there until Sept. 24, when his parents finally took him to Elliot Court in North Port, where they purportedly buried him in a shallow grave.

Police were first alerted that Chance was missing after his grandmother, Sally Susino, called authorities to report that she hadn’t seen him in a nearly a month. She also said that the boy’s parents had allegedly told relatives contradictory stories to explain his absence, “including that the child was unharmed, that he died in [a car] crash and that they gave him to a woman at a hotel in Georgia,” police said.

The parents were then taken into custody in South Carolina earlier this month and charged with child neglect while police searched for their missing infant son back in Florida. They allegedly showed no interest in the whereabouts of their boy, police said at the time.

But a search of the couple’s home turned up bloodstains and evidence of blood splatter on the walls, cops said. Cadaver dogs also indicated the presence of possible human remains, according to an arrest report. Eventually, Bury and Walsh allegedly told police where to find their son – and what had happened to him.

This is not the first time a child of Bury and Walsh’s has died. The parents lost another son, Duane, in 2014. Duane was just 2 weeks old when he allegedly died of a kidney infection that resulted from a botched circumcision, a family friend told PEOPLE earlier this month. Authorities have not said whether they plan to reopen the investigation into that child’s death.

Bury allegedly told her stepmother that she “despised” Chance whenever she would look at him because he was not Duane and said it was “better that he was not around because she would have hurt him,” according to court documents.

The parents have not yet entered a plea to the charges against them.

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