Mom Thinks Son She Horrifically Killed Was “Resurrected by God”
Alexandro Gabriel Radita was born on January 30th, 1998, to Emil and Rodica Radita, who immigrated from Romania to Canada in 1985, 13 years before his birth. Rodica was a stay-at-home mom and Emil worked in construction. The Raditas had a big family; Alex had seven siblings, five older and two younger. He also had another sister born in 1990 who died at 3 and a half years old. Alex was a sweet-natured little boy with a bright smile. His kindergarten teacher described him as very outgoing. She said, “He was inquisitive, he asked lots of questions and he loved going to school.” According to his younger sister, he was a smart, creative boy who enjoyed drawing and making art. He also liked playing with Legos and Pokemon.
However, Alex had some troubles early on in life. A month and a half before his third birthday, in the early evening hours of December 13th, 2000, Alex experienced his first medical crisis. He was taken to the emergency room of Surrey Memorial Hospital in British Columbia. Doctors noted that he was feverish and quite ill. Alex was suffering from belly pain, he was vomiting, and he was extremely thirsty. He had dark circles under his eyes and exhibited an altered state of consciousness. To be clear, he wasn’t unconscious; in small children, an altered state would likely mean the child seemed lethargic, confused, or inattentive. Dr. White, the on-call pediatrician, also noted the distinct fruit smell of ketones on Alex’s breath. Once the laboratory tests returned, they confirmed what Dr. White already could tell: Alex was suffering from type 1 diabetes.
In order to understand Alex’s story, it is important to understand type 1 diabetes. Many people are familiar with type 2 diabetes, which is the disease that can be associated with obesity. Type 2, which is usually found in adults, the body still makes insulin but it can’t use it efficiently. There are a lot of ways to treat type 2 diabetes, such as diet, exercise, and a variety of medicines. However, type 1 diabetes, also called insulin-dependent diabetes, produces similar symptoms but it’s a very different disease. In type 1 diabetes, which is usually found in children and young adults, the body loses the ability to produce insulin. There’s only one treatment: people suffering from type 1 diabetes must take insulin via something like a syringe, a pen, or a needle, or even a pump. Type 1 never goes away; there is no cure for it, and those affected by it must take insulin every single day for the rest of their lives.
Insulin is a hormone that lets the body use glucose in food and turn it into energy. It is often described as a key that unlocks the energy and sugar. A healthy body makes small adjustments to insulin secretion every few minutes based on physical activity and food eating, and can easily access the energy stored in glucose. If a diabetic eats a normal amount of food with no insulin to turn it into energy, no key to unlock it, the glucose in that food will be trapped in the bloodstream leading to high blood sugar. This stresses the kidneys and they will try to flush the excess sugar from the body. With no glucose to provide energy, the body will burn fat, which causes acids to build up in the blood. These acids are called ketones, the cause of the fruity breath Dr. White smelled when examining Alex. This state is called diabetic ketoacidosis and is characterized by nausea, vomiting, and lethargy, followed by coma, shock, and then death.
With proper treatment, children with type 1 can live long lives; without proper treatment, death is unavoidable. Before insulin was discovered in 1922, babies born with this disease died within a year. A starvation diet was found to prolong life by preventing diabetic ketoacidosis but left the children with no energy to move, grow, heal, or fight off the disease whatsoever. Dr. White spoke with Rodica and explained that Alex had type 1 diabetes, what it was and how he would need to be treated. However, Rodica insisted that the diagnosis was incorrect and that “She and God were going to prove all of the doctors wrong.” Now, Dr. White found this behavior most unusual. Most parents he observed in similar situations were more concerned with how ill their child is, but she was more concerned with challenging the diagnosis.
Dr. White was not the only official frustrated by the behavior of Rodica and Emil. There was a pattern to their abuse, described as odd, stubborn, and often hostile to medical personnel. The couple had challenged doctors and caseworkers before. In 1991, while living in Ontario, the Raditas had a 3-and-a-half-month-old daughter who died without any medical care. According to the coroner’s report, the Raditas told the investigators they were new to the country, arriving in 1990, and “Didn’t realize there was health care available to them.” Now, this is incorrect; according to reporting from the National Post, the Raditas immigrated in the mid-80s, years before the infant girl died. It is hard to believe they remained ignorant for so long.
Rodica also had a baby boy in the ’90s; the exact date is unclear, but the child was not Alex. The baby was born premature and required oxygen. Rodica refused life-saving treatment so adamantly that the Children’s Aid Society had to temporarily cease custody of the child. At 5 and a half months old, the same child developed a seizure disorder and Rodica again rejected the advice of the doctors, refusing to give him the prescribed anti-seizure medication. Social workers once again had to take custody, returning him once the Raditas agreed to comply with the doctor’s orders. In both cases, not long after officials were involved, the Radita family moved before the investigation could be completed.
First to Windsor, Ontario, and then to Kitchener, Ontario, and then leaving the province of Ontario altogether for British Columbia on the other side of the country, approximately a 40-hour car drive away. Because the various provinces didn’t have robust procedures to follow families that left their jurisdictions, no one taking care of Alex in British Columbia knew that his family habitually rejected medical advice in the past. Once Alex’s condition was stabilized in the Surrey emergency room, he was transferred to the British Columbia Children’s Hospital Intensive Care Unit, where they had more resources to care for the severely ill little boy, along with a staff and a clinic designed to teach parents about diabetes and train them to take care of their diabetic child.
Alex arrived at the Children’s Hospital on December 14th, 2000, where his new pediatrician, Dr. Daniel Metzger, also diagnosed him as a type 1 diabetic in the state of diabetic ketoacidosis, confirming this diagnosis with lab work. Dr. Metzger soon realized that the Raditas were in what he called “Gross denial of Alex’s disease.” He alerted the hospital social worker as well as the Ministry for Children and Family Services. The officials told Rodica and Emil they would not be allowed to take Alex home when he recovered if they didn’t take training at the diabetes clinic and agree to administer his medicine properly.
At the BCCH clinic, Rodica and Emil learned how to test Alex’s blood sugar, keep a log book of his readings, plan a healthy diet, calculate how much insulin was needed based on this diet, to administer that insulin, and what symptoms signified danger. They were given a hotline number they could call 24 hours a day if they were confused or had any questions about his care. In addition, they would have learned that proper treatment has to happen every day. In Alex’s case, he would test his glucose at least four times a day and inject insulin at least three times a day. The clinic also provided all diabetic supplies, including insulin, free of charge.
On December 22nd, 2000, Alex was released to the care of his parents. BC arranged for a nurse to visit twice a day and they had to keep regular appointments with Dr. Metzger. A couple of months later, in February of 2001, Dr. Metzger suspected the Raditas were lying about Alex’s blood sugar readings because the log book full of normal readings didn’t mesh with the weight Alex had lost. He asked the nurse to double-check the readings and she confirmed his suspicions. High blood sugar readings were followed by low blood sugar readings within minutes in a way that was not medically possible. They were testing the blood of someone without diabetes instead of testing Alex’s blood, putting him in serious danger of another bout of diabetic ketoacidosis.
This was so dangerous and so dishonest that Dr. Metzger reported it to the Ministry and recommended that Alex be placed in the Ministry’s care. The Raditas responded by saying that Dr. Metzger was picking on them and claimed that “They didn’t understand because they hadn’t had enough training,” as if advanced training was required to understand the blood samples had to come from the sick child, not from someone else in their house. Alex was placed in the Surrey Memorial Hospital to help him recover from the mismanagement and the Raditas were required to complete additional diabetic training.
Instead of being taken away, Alex was returned to his parents’ custody and switched to the care of Dr. White, who had first diagnosed Alex in the ER. Alex had 11 visits with Dr. White from April 2001 to September 2001. At first the visits were weekly, then every two weeks, and finally once a month in June, July, August, and September. Now that they had a new doctor, the Raditas complied with the instructions just enough and just long enough to avoid suspicion. Both Emil and Rodica came to almost all of the meetings. Dr. White did have some concerns; sometimes Alex appeared gray and clammy and sunken and unwell, but over the course of Dr. White’s care, Alex gained approximately 12 lbs, so it appeared that the Raditas were giving him insulin injections.
Alex weighed 44 lbs, which is near the top of the healthy weight range for an almost 4-year-old boy. At his September 18th visit, Dr. White stressed again that the Raditas should not lower Alex’s insulin dosage without consulting a doctor. That appointment would be the last time Alex saw a doctor for years. According to Dr. White, he often only saw patients for a short time while the parents were getting used to the care regimen and didn’t realize Alex and his parents had stopped coming to the clinic. This was just one of the times that a lack of follow-up placed Alex in a dangerous situation.
Over 2 years later, on October 16th, 2003, Dr. White was on call when Alex was again brought via ambulance into the ER of Surrey Memorial Hospital. Instead of diabetic ketoacidosis, this time Alex was suffering from the last stages of malnutrition and hypoglycemia. He was also unconscious and near death. Dr. White found a chunk of unchewed, undigested hot dogs stuck in his throat when they resuscitated him. In addition to this immediate emergency, Alex was also in the throes of multi-system organ failure. His heart was failing, his eyes were sunken, his belly swollen, and his arms and legs were stick-thin.
His hair was falling out in clumps. He couldn’t lift his head, arms, or legs. He could barely talk; he could just whisper a few words at a time. His teeth were rotted away. Alex was again transferred to the Intensive Care Unit of the Children’s Hospital under the care of Dr. Seer and Dr. Korn. Dr. Korn described the seriousness of his condition, saying Alex “Had profound malnutrition, he had no subcutaneous tissue and he had what we call peripheral edema. His legs were very swollen, he had a big swollen abdomen which had fluid in it called ascites. He had pleural effusion, which is fluid between the lung wall and the lung itself, fluid shouldn’t be there, and he had fluid around his heart.”
“We also know he had a big liver, he had a mass behind his stomach which I believe was finally diagnosed as a pancreatic pseudocyst. The blood work was entirely consistent with the concerns in that his protein in the blood was very low and that’s what was causing the edema with malnutrition. He also was profoundly anemic, his hemoglobin was 44, which is really, really low for a child of this age, and he was very pale. He had mildly enlarged kidneys because when you’re profoundly dehydrated you end up with damage to the kidneys,” the doctor stated. He was so starved that his immune system didn’t have any energy to fight off disease. Records show he had pneumonia in his lungs and Staphylococcus aureus in his blood. There was candida growing on his tongue and present in his urine.
Dr. Seer had never seen such an extreme case of starvation. Instead, Alex had no more than a day to live when he arrived at the hospital. Rodica, however, was busy telling stories. She told one doctor he had only been sick for a week and told another that he had only been sick for 2 weeks. She claimed “The insulin was giving him a rash so she had to change his dosage,” that he had gotten a flu and that was why he was sick. None of these stories were consistent with the state Alex was in. When Dr. Korn asked Rodica whether she understood Alex had diabetes, she refused to respond.
The starvation Alex was experiencing has a medical name: kwashiorkor. It happens primarily to children with severe lack of protein in their diet. It causes distended bellies and stick limbs, often seen on children in countries with widespread famine. If the Raditas had been feeding Alex and not giving him any insulin, he would have likely ended up with diabetic ketoacidosis like he had in the year 2000. If they hadn’t been feeding him at all, he would have likely died before developing kwashiorkor. What this means was truly horrific: Alex was being given a minimal amount of insulin and a minimal amount of food, just enough to keep him alive and starving for months, at least 2 months but likely more.
Within a month of being in the hospital, where he was given appropriate amounts of food and insulin, Alex was healthy again. With access to energy, his body was able to clear the multiple infections, the cyst disappeared, and he was able to put on weight and he was able to walk and talk and play like a little boy again. Alex was taken from his parents and placed in foster care with Vera Boyoko, whom Alex called “Grandma Vera.” She herself was a type 1 diabetic with 30 years’ experience in child welfare. This could have been Alex’s happy ending.
The two attended church together. He went to regular doctor’s appointments with Dr. Metzger to manage his diabetes. He was enrolled in school for the first time and he loved going to school. He learned how to poke his finger and do his own blood sugar test. He spent time playing with Vera’s granddaughter, going swimming in kiddie pools and pictures. But there was a cloud over his time there. On weekends, he had scheduled visitations with his parents. When he returned, his blood sugar hadn’t been managed properly. Even at 6 years old, he knew he needed insulin. In an interview, he told Corporal Charlene Beck that his mother said, “Don’t take your blood sugar at home,” while he was on his scheduled visitations.
All of the professionals involved—all the doctors, his foster mother, his social worker Patricia McDonald, his kindergarten teacher Sandy Wong, the police investigator Corporal Beck—they all thought Alex should stay with his foster mother where his medical needs were taken seriously, where he was safe. But Rodica started spinning the truth again. She claimed that she never denied that Alex had diabetes. She claimed the slow starvation was simply because she didn’t understand the complex treatment regimen and again claimed she hadn’t been trained properly.
Despite all the testimony about their neglect, and despite Patricia McDonald explaining that the Raditas had already twice moved in order to evade the oversight of child protection agencies in the past, Judge Gary Cohen decided to return Alex to the care of Emil and Rodica. In his own words, Cohen said, “They saw their child almost die, do you think that will have no effect? Will they actually do anything as foolish as completely taking away one type of insulin again? They would have to be crazy to do it again.” In January of 2005, Alex was given back to his parents and the family was placed under 6 months of supervision.
Again, the couple complied with the diabetes regimen just enough to avoid suspicion. They attended regular appointments with Dr. Metzger. At these appointments, Alex’s height, weight, and A1C were monitored. At his April 4th visit, Alex was 7 years old. He weighed approximately 74 lbs and was 3 feet 11 inches tall. His A1C was 8.0, which was on target for a child of his age. Over the rest of 2005 and into the beginning of 2006, Alex continued to grow and present with good A1C readings. In May of 2006, at 8 years old, Alex’s A1C was a little too high and Dr. Metzger explained that because he was a growing boy, he would need more insulin.
Rodica started complaining again, this time saying that “The insulin was giving Alex cold sores,” even though that is impossible because cold sores are caused by a virus. She did not want to increase his dosage due to this. At his two appointments in 2007, his diabetes was under control. On January 16th, 2008, his A1C was high at 8.8 and Dr. Metzger advised an increase in his insulin. Rodica again complained that “The insulin was giving Alex cold sores” and resisted the increase. Alex never saw a doctor again. Like they had before, the Raditas took the kids out of school and moved almost 600 miles away, this time to Calgary, Alberta.
No one in Alberta Social Services was ever alerted. A representative from Dr. Metzger’s office tried to find him, but she was unable to. A social worker found an address for Alex’s brother in Calgary, but her supervisor told her to close the file. In 2009, Alex was enrolled in the School of Hope’s online program in Alberta. He never submitted any work and was withdrawn by the school in June of 2010 after repeated failed attempts to contact his parents. Alex lived with his parents and seven other siblings in a two-story home located in the Citadel community of Northwest Calgary.
The house had four bedrooms upstairs and two large shared bedrooms in the basement. Alex apparently shared an upstairs bedroom with his parents. Five of his siblings were above the age of 18 and worked outside of the home. One of his younger siblings was attending school and one of his younger siblings was not enrolled in school. On May 7th, 2013, just after 10 p.m., Alberta EMS responded to a 911 call regarding a teenage boy who was not breathing.
On arrival, they found Alex in a bed upstairs in his parents’ room. He was a skeleton, so emaciated that paramedic Deborah Baumback described him as “mummified.” He had black necrotic sores on his face, one of which was so deep she could see his jawbone. The paramedic estimated his waistline to be 3 inches. Alex was wearing a yellow T-shirt with blue sleeves and a diaper. His eyes were open, he was cold to the touch, he had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. It was quickly clear that he could not be revived. Alex Radita was pronounced dead at the scene. He was just 15 years old.
Downstairs, family members along with up to 20 members of the Romanian Apostolic Church were praying. The pastor, Nicolay Brancu, had arrived at 9:00 p.m. to find Rodica lying on the bed touching Alex. Pastor Brancu realized that Alex was already dead and told Emil to “immediately call an ambulance,” which Emil did. After talking to his family, Emil told paramedic Baumback that “Alex had been diagnosed with diabetes 1 month prior” and said Alex was on two types of insulin. He also told her that he had last seen Alex alive the day before.
He claimed he found him in his current condition at 6 p.m. but “waited until the church came over to call EMS.” Finding the situation suspicious, she called the Calgary police who arrived at 10:10 p.m. Constable Pugal interviewed Emil and Rodica and they both continued to tell half-truths and lies. Emil told the constable that “Alex was diabetic and there was insulin in the fridge.” Rodica told him that “Alex had no medical issues and took no medication.” When the constable told her Emil said something different, she said “Alex was diagnosed with diabetes when he was three but she didn’t believe it but she still gave him insulin anyway.”
She said Alex had the flu and diarrhea. She said “He had a yeast infection in his throat so she was feeding him baby formula and baby food,” but failed to mention the gaping hole in his jaw. Emil said he didn’t call EMS at 6 p.m. because “Alex didn’t want medical treatment due to a bad experience with doctors when he was 3 years old.” But he also said Alex was already dead at 6 p.m., which seems to contradict his first statement. Rodica said “Alex was still alive at 6:00 p.m.” In actuality, Alex had died somewhere between 24 and 36 hours earlier.
An autopsy revealed that Alex weighed only 37 lbs at the time of his death. The average 15-year-old boy weighs about 120 lbs; Alex weighed less than he did when he was 3 and a half years old. He was only 4 feet 3 inches tall; the average height of a 15-year-old is 5 feet 5 inches tall. His official cause of death was bacterial sepsis in the context of neglect and severe malnutrition. The autopsy also confirmed that Alex was a type 1 diabetic, as if anyone but Rodica had any question about that. Diabetic children and teens need a certain amount of insulin in order to grow.
His body mass index was in the 0.1 percentile for his group, confirming that he had not received enough insulin for a long period of time. His body was covered in 44 sores. Some of these sores occurred near his death, but others were deep, showing signs of chronic inflammation, indicating that they had been there much longer, possibly weeks or even months. There was no evidence that the wounds were cleaned and the only sign of treatment was a single piece of gauze on his leg. The large neck wound, which was so deep that the jawbone and salivary glands were showing, would have required immediate medical attention and possibly surgery.
The muscles in his neck were near liquefaction; they were so infected they were no longer present and they just turned into this necrotic liquid. Judging by the overall condition of his body, the medical examiner concluded that the Raditas had been starving Alex and giving him just enough insulin to survive for years while he slowly and painfully died. His death was unnecessary and completely avoidable. Rodica and Emil were arrested and charged with Alex’s death 10 months later, in February of 2014. They were denied bail and held in prison until their trial began on May 24th, 2016.
The couple conceded to manslaughter but pled not guilty to first-degree homicide. They chose a trial by judge alone, meaning there would not be a jury involved. Much of this trial focused on proving the couple planned to kill Alex and proving they killed him while he was forcibly confined. In order to prove the charge of first-degree homicide, the testimony was at times so horrific that people, including the judge, Justice Karen Horner, were brought to tears. But the parents sat in the prisoner box unmoved and showed no emotion.
During this trial, it was revealed that Rodica had proclaimed “Alex had died and been resurrected the morning of May 7th.” News of the resurrection spread among churchgoers who visited the home to pray. Alex appeared dead to the church members, but Rodica said “He was alive because he had blinked his eyes and had a bowel movement.” Since Alex had died a number of hours earlier, it seems like Rodica mistook after-death changes in the body, such as eyes opening and the body expelling waste, as signs of life.
As part of their defense, the Raditas presented a video of Alex on his 15th birthday as evidence that they loved their son. In the video, Alex struggles to open a birthday card and to pull a teddy bear from a gift bag, but despite his bruised and skeletal appearance, he smiles at the camera. His gifts seem appropriate for a much younger child. The video played while Alex’s younger sister testified for the defense. Since she was a minor at the time, she was referred to as A.R. to protect her identity. When the video showed her brother saying “thanks for the gifts,” A.R. cried on the stand.
Under cross-examination, A.R. explained that “Her parents didn’t believe in doctors because of their religion.” She said her mother provided most of the care for her brother and that when he was sick, she would treat him with tea and herbs. She recounted a time when she dislocated her knee jumping on a trampoline and her mother massaged it instead of taking her for treatment. In separate testimony, the pastor from the Romanian Apostolic Church said distrusting doctors was not part of their faith and not something taught by their church.
When Dr. Seer, who treated Alex at BCCH, saw a picture taken of the 15-year-old on the day he died, he was audibly upset, saying “My God” and noting that the blood on his lips and teeth was evidence of scurvy, a disease unheard of in modern Canada. He called Alex’s condition “Utter neglect with an emaciated corpse in the middle of it.” He added, “He has no muscles. The common expression is skin and bones. There’s only tendon and bones; there is nothing left.”
Prosecutors used records showing the purchase of insufficient diabetic supplies to show that the Raditas planned Alex’s death. An expert in diabetic care testified that insulin the couple obtained through Alberta Healthcare was enough to provide adequate care for Alex for only 260 out of the 365 days in 2011, 80 days in 2012, and zero days in 2013, leaving the boy severely undermedicated. Records showing Alex never attended school or visited a doctor were used to prove he had been unlawfully confined. On February 24th, both Emil and Rodica were convicted of first-degree homicide and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
After her conviction, Rodica tried to appeal, saying that “The tears Justice Horner shed during the trial were evidence of bias against her.” She also complained the judge called her arguments “nonsensical” and said “The judge did not understand how to properly apply the law.” Rodica did not win her appeal, thankfully. Patricia McDonald, the caseworker who fought so hard to have Alex placed permanently in foster care, suffered PTSD and had to retire after hearing of his death. In his honor, she has been advocating for legislation establishing an “Alex Alert” in Canada.
Canada has not yet passed such legislation, but they have made some improvements. They now have an automated system that detects when students are not registered for schooling and alerts the school boards. It’s not perfect, but had the safeguard been in place in 2009, school officials might have checked on Alex’s welfare and prevented this tragedy. The government also held a fatality inquiry that started in September of 2022 and continued into 2023. Judge Sharon Van de Veen examined Alex’s case to see if the government could make changes to prevent similar deaths in the future.
Improvements she has considered are better supervision of online education, better collaboration between provinces in order to protect vulnerable children, and a public awareness campaign to let people know that some illnesses require treatment with pharmaceuticals. Her official report is still forthcoming. Alex’s foster mother, Vera Boyoko, passed away shortly after Alex and never got to see justice for the little boy she treated as her own. Vera’s daughter, Tracy Brady, likes to focus on the happy times they shared as a family.
She said, “What I keep remembering is all the times with Alex and my daughter who was a year younger than him. I remember them going trick-or-treating as he had never gone out for Halloween. He wore the pumpkin costume and he was so excited about the candy. We had to be careful what he could have and substitute most of it for something healthy.” She also reminisced about celebrating Canada Day when the two youngsters got flags painted on their cheeks. His time with Grandma was a happy time, a time when his diabetes was accepted, accommodated, and treated every day. It seems appropriate to think of the reunion they must have had in a better place.
