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 wrote to her husband at the time were discovered during their subsequent divorce, revealing that she did not love the boy and regularly abused him.
Alice Rollinson Idlett was arrested on Thursday and charged with one count of second-degree murder in the brutal 1970 death of young Earl D. Bunch III, according to records reviewed by Law&Crime.
According to court documents from Idlett’s 1985 custody battle over her and her ex-husband’s surviving daughter, she was 18 when she gave birth to Earl in September 1968. Earl Bunch Jr., Idlett’s husband, was serving in the United States Army and was transferred to Thailand shortly after the child was born.
While Bunch was stationed in Thailand, Idlett sent him a series of disturbing letters, which the judge stated “expressed her despair and loneliness” and were “threatening in nature” to the victim.
“I just got through whipping that little basdard (sic),” she allegedly wrote in November 1969. “I hate him. That is the honest truth.
I can’t stand this life. God had to punish me by giving me that little brat. I wish I’d died when he was born. She wrote, “I hate myself.” “Now I understand how those people feel when they get rid of their kids. I think I can do it. “I am serious.”
That same month, Idlett reportedly wrote a letter stating that she never wanted to be a mother.
“I honestly wish he had never been born,” she wrote about the victim. “He knows he can’t get around me. I’ll kill him before he gets spoiled. I really mean that.”
Two days later, in another letter, Idlett threatened to “whip” the victim “until his darn seat turns red.”
“I can’t deal with this mess… I despise your son. “I wish he were dead,” the letter said.
In December 1969, Idlett allegedly wrote a letter in which she stated that her son “doesn’t even mean anything to me anymore.”
“I don’t really care if he dies tomorrow.” “He is the one who has ruined my life,” she wrote in the letter, referring to the victim. ”
Later that month, Idlett wrote to her husband, “I hate him.” I can’t help it. I wish I hadn’t had him.
Idlett’s husband also stated that he received similar “alarming letters” from Idlett in March and April 1969. He attempted to take emergency leave from service to return home, but his request was denied.
On January 19, 1970, Idlett brought Earl to the emergency room at West Calcasieu-Cameron Hospital in Sulphur, Louisiana. The document states that the child was “limp and gasping for breath.” X-rays showed Earl had “multiple fractures of the skull and right shoulder.” The baby succumbed to his injuries and died the next morning.
When Idlett’s husband returned from Thailand for the funeral and asked what had happened, she denied any involvement and stated that 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 think the death was “anything but accidental.”
Due to “marital discord and disharmony,” Idlett’s husband filed for legal separation in April 1983, agreeing to give Idlett full custody of their 7-year-old daughter.
“Shortly thereafter, [Idlett] began questioning [her husband] as to the whereabouts of the letters she had written to him while he was overseas,” according to the agreement. “These questions raised his suspicions.
He found the letters and read them for the first time in 13 years. [His] concern for his daughter’s safety prompted him to look into the circumstances surrounding his son’s death.”
Speaking with the doctor who examined his son, Idlett’s husband discovered that his son had bruises all over his body, as well as bite marks 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,” a doctor told the jury. “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 stated that Idlett was “stoic” rather than hysterical when she took the boy to the hospital.
Idlett’s husband then amended his separation petition to seek sole custody of his daughter, but several mental health professionals determined that Idlett and her daughter were in good physical and mental health.
Idlett also testified under oath that she could not recall writing any of the letters to her husband.
Idlett and her husband were granted joint custody, and no charges were filed in connection with Earl’s death for decades.
According to a report from Lake Charles, Louisiana NBC and CW affiliate KPLC, detectives with the Sulphur, Louisiana Police Department reopened the investigation into Idlett in 2022 at the request of Earl’s family members, and eventually exhumed the child’s body for further forensic examination.
Earl’s remains were transported to an FBI lab, where a forensic autopsy revealed that his death was a homicide.
Idlett is currently being held at the Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center under a $950,000 bond.
