Alice Rollinson Idlett (Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center).
A 75-year-old mother in Louisiana has been arrested for allegedly beating her 16-month-old son to death more than half a century ago after a series of macabre letters she penned to her husband at the time came to light during their subsequent divorce revealed that she did not love the boy and regularly beat him.
Alice Rollinson Idlett was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with one count of second-degree murder in the brutal 1970 slaying of young Earl D. Bunch III, records reviewed by Law&Crime show. According to court documents stemming from Idlett’s 1985 custody battle over her and her ex-husband’s surviving daughter, Idlett was 18 years old when she gave birth to Earl in September 1968. Shortly after the child’s birth, Idlett’s husband, Earl Bunch Jr., was serving in the U.S. Army at the time and was transferred to Thailand.
While Bunch was stationed in Thailand, Idlett sent him a series of disturbing letters which the judge said “expressed her despair and loneliness” and were “threatening in nature” toward the victim.
“I just got through whipping that little basdard (sic),” she allegedly wrote in November 1969. “I hate him. That’s the honest truth. I can’t stand this life. God had to punish me by letting me have that little brat. I wish I would have died when he was born. I hate myself,” she wrote. “Now I know how those people feel that get rid of their kids. I believe I could do it. I’m serious.”
That same month, Idlett also apparently wrote a letter stating that she never wanted to be a mother.
“I honestly wish he had never been born,” she wrote, referring to the victim. “He knows he won’t get his way around me. I’ll kill him before he becomes spoilt. I honestly mean that.”
Two days later, in another letter, Idlett threatened to “whip” the victim “until his darn seat is red.”
“I can’t put up with this mess … I hate your son. I wish he was dead,” the letter stated.
In December 1969, Idlett is alleged to have penned a letter in which she said that her son “doesn’t even mean anything to me anymore.”
“I feel like if he would die tomorrow I wouldn’t care. He is the one who ruint my life,” she wrote in that letter, referring to the victim. ”
Later that month, Idlett wrote to her husband saying, “I got to the point where I hate him. I can’t help it. I wish I had never had him.”
Idlett’s husband further testified that he received similar “alarming letters” from Idlett in March and April of 1969. He attempted to take emergency leave from service to return home but the request was denied.
Idlett on Jan. 19, 1970, brought Earl to the emergency room of West Calcasieu-Cameron Hospital in Sulphur, Louisiana. The document states the child was “limp and gasping for breath.” X-rays revealed that Earl had suffered “multiple fractures of the skull and right shoulder.” The baby succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead the following morning.
When Idlett’s husband returned from Thailand for the funeral and asked his wife what happened, she denied having any involvement and said their son “probably fractured his skull when he fell out of bed at his grandmother’s house in New Orleans a few weeks prior to his death.” Authorities gave him “no reason” to believe the death was “anything but accidental.”
“Shortly thereafter, [Idlett] began questioning [her husband] as to the whereabouts of the letters she had written to him while he was overseas,” the document states. “These questions aroused [his] suspicions. He found the letters and reread them for the first time in thirteen years. [His] concern for the welfare of his daughter prompted him to further investigate the incidents surrounding his son’s death.”
Speaking to the doctor who examined his son, Idlett’s husband learned that his son had bruises all over his body along with bite marks on his body and “a burn mark on his buttocks.”
“These were not the type of injuries I would have expected to see from a fall from a crib, for example, or a porch, or something like that where you get a fairly severe injury,” the doctor said in sworn testimony. “It looked more like a child that had been beaten; that perhaps somebody had taken it by the feet, and swung it against a piece of furniture or the wall.”
The doctor also said that Idlett was “stoic” rather then hysterical when she brought the boy to the hospital.
Idlett’s husband then amended his petition for separation to seek sole custody of his daughter, but multiple mental health professionals deemed Idlett and her daughter to be in good physical and mental health. Idlett also testified under oath that she did not remember writing any of the letters to her husband.
Joint custody was awarded to Idlett and her husband and no arrests were made in connection with Earl’s death for decades.
Detectives with the Sulphur, Louisiana Police Department in 2022 reopened the investigation into Idlett at the request of Earl’s family members and eventually ended up exhuming the child’s body for additional forensic examination, according to a report from Lake Charles, Louisiana NBC and CW affiliate KPLC.
Earls remains were sent to an FBI lab where a forensic autopsy determined that his manner of death was a homicide.
Idlett is currently being held at the Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center on a $950,000 bond.
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