Mother Microwaves Daughter, Then Frames Her Nephew

Who killed her baby in a microwave oven? Purposely killed her 28-day-old daughter, Paris Talley, cooking her baby to death in a microwave. Some call China Arnold the “microwave mom,” but family members are now criticizing the court, saying she didn’t get a fair trial. “What you have is you have a defendant with no mental problems, and you have a defendant with no excuses.”

She means so much. We’ve become known for exposing crimes against children and the failings of CPS with regards to keeping them safe. But what about the cases where CPS hadn’t been involved prior? Are there things family members could have done to prevent tragedies from happening? Today, we’re presenting you with a horrific case with a very unlikely weapon of choice—something I’m sure you too have in your own home.

On August 30th, 2005, China Arnold and Terrell Talley arrived at Children’s Medical Center at 7:15 in the morning with their 28-day-old infant, Paris Talley. The baby had a temperature of 95 degrees and had no pulse, respiration, or blood pressure when she arrived at the hospital. After trying to resuscitate Paris for about 15 minutes, emergency personnel pronounced her dead.

Doctors are mystified and puzzled by the baby’s injuries. The baby had burns, but they were not like scalding or liquid burns that you normally see. During the attempts to revive Paris, the parents were in the room. The father was upset and crying, and Arnold shouted that her baby was not burned, that her skin was just peeling off. Another unusual factor was that Paris was dressed in a clean nightgown; however, based on her injuries, the garment should have contained seepage and skin.

When Arnold was asked at the hospital about what had happened, she said that she had arrived at home at 2:00 in the morning and had tried to feed Paris, but Paris would not drink. Paris felt warm to the touch, so Arnold placed her in a bassinet and put a fan on her. When Arnold got up in the morning, Paris was not acting right, so she brought the baby to the hospital after getting her other children ready for school, placing them on the bus, and calling Talley. Both Arnold and Talley were taken to the police station from the hospital.

Contrary to her earlier statement, Arnold said during her police interview that she arrived home at 9:30 or 10:00 PM that evening and had been sleeping in the living room with Paris on her chest when Paris’s crying woke her around 2:30 that morning. She heated a bottle in the microwave and fed her. After changing the baby’s diaper, she laid down on the couch, put Paris on her chest, and went back to sleep. Arnold stated that when she woke up in the morning, Talley was on the couch beside her, and she did not know where Paris was, but thought Talley had put her in the bassinet which was upstairs.

Talley told the police that he arrived home between 3:00 and 4:00 that morning and laid down on a small couch. After sleeping for a bit, Talley moved to a large couch where Arnold was sleeping. When he woke up in the morning, he found the baby dead, face down on a large couch in the corner.

In the meantime, the police had received consent to search the apartment where Arnold and Talley had lived with baby Paris and Arnold’s other three children. Prior to the search, the police knew that Paris had been burned, but they did not know the cause of the burns. During the search, detectives learned from the coroner that the burns had been caused by some sort of thermal injury. Nonetheless, the burns had not been caused by anything with which the police were familiar.

The burns were clearly defined; in some areas, the extent of the burn was severe, while others were spared entirely. However, for example, Paris’s full back had not been burnt. As a result, when detectives went back to the scene of the search, they looked for a cookie tin, heating pad, or something that was rectangular that could have caused the burns on her body. The police saw the microwave oven on the counter but did not suspect that it had been involved.

The police did find a plastic tub upstairs with cloudy water that looked like sediment. This material was taken from the house. Otherwise, the search of the house was essentially negative. Police also talked to people in the neighborhood and learned that Talley’s sister, Leonda, had watched Arnold’s children the night before Paris had died.

When approached regarding this information, Arnold acknowledged that she and Talley had gone out for a couple of hours starting around 7:00 PM. After arriving back home, Arnold stayed outside for a bit and then came into the house between 9:30 and 10:00. Arnold stated that Leonda was there when she came home. After coming home, Arnold fed Paris a bottle. She said Paris felt hot, and so she laid her down. Arnold then repeated the story she had already given about waking up at 2:30 in the morning and later going to the hospital.

By the time of Arnold’s third interview on August 30th, 2005, the police knew that Arnold had been seen outside on her porch at 4:00 AM, that she had been arguing with Terrell Talley earlier in the evening, and that a plastic tub of water had been found. At that point, Arnold said that she had bathed Paris at noon but had not emptied the water.

Arnold first said that she and Talley had been arguing about her driving, but later admitted that they were arguing about Paris’s paternity. Arnold also initially denied being on the porch at 4:00 in the morning, but eventually admitted it. Arnold said she was waiting for Talley to come home. Arnold then told the police that she was waiting because Talley had taken Paris with him earlier.

When Arnold was asked why she had not said anything about that earlier, she stated that she loved Talley and was protecting him. She did not respond when police asked her about Talley having handed her a burned baby when he returned. Talley was allowed to leave the police station that day, and Arnold was arrested for child endangering because she was apparently the only one home at the time of the baby’s injury. At that time, the coroner still had no idea how the baby’s death had been caused, other than that it was due to an elevated temperature caused by thermal injuries. Arnold was released from jail a few days later.

In early 2006, the coroner became aware of children that had been allegedly injured in microwave ovens and of microwave experiments that had been done on pigs that are about the same size as a small baby. The coroner was alerted to a case in Virginia in which an infant had been found deceased inside of a microwave. Upon investigation, the coroner discovered that the burns in the two cases were very similar.

Subsequently, on May 18, 2006, the police returned to 415 Hall Avenue where Arnold and her family had been living at the time of Paris’s death. Although the apartment had been abandoned, the microwave oven was still there. After testing was conducted, an examiner from the Miami Valley Crime Lab found a partial DNA profile from the ceiling of the microwave oven that matched Paris. Arnold was excluded as a source of the DNA.

The coroner also tested the microwave oven and concluded that a baby of Paris’s size could fit in it. In addition, the coroner concluded that burn patterns on Paris were consistent with the heating element in the oven, which was located on the dome or roof of the inside part of the oven. According to the coroner, Paris was placed on her back and was faced up towards the heating element. The coroner concluded that Paris died no earlier than 1:00 AM and not significantly later than 3:00 AM on August 30th, 2005.

On November 27, 2006, Arnold was arrested for the aggravated murder of Paris. She was then indicted in December 2006 for aggravated murder, together with a specification that she had purposefully caused the death of another who was under the age of 13 at the time of the offense and was the principal offender in the commission of the offense.

A jury trial was conducted during January and February of 2008, but the trial court granted a mistrial during the trial based on the surprise discovery of alleged exculpatory evidence. The newly discovered evidence was based on allegations that Arnold’s nephew had placed the baby in the microwave oven and had turned it on. The case was retried in August of 2008, and the defense presented testimony from an eight-year-old boy who stated that he saw Arnold’s nephew put the baby in the microwave oven and turn it on.

The trial court precluded the defense from calling two additional witnesses who would testify that Arnold’s nephew had told them that he placed the baby in the microwave. At the conclusion of the evidence, the jury found Arnold guilty but deadlocked during the sentencing phase. The trial court then sentenced Arnold to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In addition, the court denied Arnold’s motion for a new trial. The court then reversed Arnold’s conviction in November of 2010 based on prosecutorial misconduct and error in excluding the testimony of a witness. On remand, the case was tried for a third time in April and May of 2011.

At trial, the state presented the following evidence: on the evening of August 29, 2005, Terrell Talley’s sister, Leonda, offered to babysit Paris while Talley and Arnold went out. Talley and Arnold left at about 6:30 or 7:00 PM, purchased a bottle of Bacardi 151, and went to a park where they sat and drank almost the entire bottle. While at the park, they argued about whether Paris was Talley’s baby because Talley had heard that Arnold had been cheating on him.

After about two hours, they drove home. Arnold was intoxicated, driving erratically, and going way beyond the speed limit. When they arrived back home between 9:00 and 10:00 PM, they got into a physical altercation in the parking lot during which, according to Talley, Arnold bit his lip and he slapped her in the face. Witnesses described Arnold as very intoxicated and barely able to walk and talk.

After the aforementioned altercation, Talley’s sister Leonda took her children home and put them to bed. In the meantime, Talley went with a next-door neighbor named Jason Strouffe to a nearby apartment called “The Bootleg” to buy some beer. Talley and Strouffe then came back and drank the beer on Strouffe’s porch. When Leonda came back outside, she saw Arnold attempting to drive away in the car. Leonda told Arnold that she was too drunk to drive and took Arnold to get cigarettes. On the way back, Arnold asked Leonda to stop the car because she thought she was going to vomit. They returned about 40 minutes after they left, and Arnold went into her own house.

Subsequently, Talley went into an apartment called “The Spot” where he and another individual normally sold drugs. Talley stayed at “The Spot” until 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning when he returned to Arnold’s apartment.

The state presented evidence that Paris was alive and fine at various intervals during the time that Leonda babysat and after they came home from the cigarette run. Both Leonda and a woman named Marcelina Perry testified that Leonda checked on Paris and China at approximately 11:45 that evening at Talley’s request. According to Leonda and Perry, Arnold was asleep on the couch, and the baby was in a car seat next to another couch. After checking on Paris, Leonda locked the house and took the house keys to Talley at “The Spot.” According to Leonda, Paris was sleeping and she did not see any injuries; nothing was wrong with Paris at the time, which was around midnight.

As was indicated, Arnold told the police that she last saw Paris alive around 2:30 in the morning when Paris woke her. Again, Arnold claimed that she had fed Paris, had changed the baby’s diaper, and had gone back to sleep. At trial, the state presented evidence that the time of death was between 1:00 and 3:15 in the morning, and that Arnold was seen outside on her porch at around 4:00 in the morning, as well as that Paris’s DNA had been found in the microwave oven, and that Paris’s DNA was the source of a translucent material or suspected skin found in the plastic tub.

In addition, the state presented evidence from two women who were housed with Arnold in jail. During an altercation in which one of the inmates called Arnold a “baby killer,” Arnold stated, “I didn’t mean to do it.”

The defense challenged the timelines presented and also presented evidence establishing that Talley was in fact Paris’s father and that he was a jealous and violent individual. After hearing the evidence, the jury convicted Arnold on the aggravated murder charge. Following the trial, the court allowed the defense and state to offer testimony and exhibits regarding the alleged third-party guilt of Arnold’s nephew. Subsequently, the jury unanimously recommended that Arnold be sentenced to life in prison without parole, where she still remains to this day.

So, Arnold’s nephew, you know, they went and threatened him. They probably brought him to “The Spot” and harassed him, like, can you imagine taking your own nephew and being like, “Hey, you’re going to admit to this because you’re going to get off scot-free for it”? Like, just how disgusting. And then roping some other eight-year-old into it as well. You had to say, “Oh yeah, I saw it too.” Like, they should have been charged for that on top of it, both of them.

Now you might be thinking, killing a baby with a microwave has to be rare. This must be the only case where a mother would do this to a child. Well, you’d be surprised, and hopefully next week we will be providing you with many more examples. And if you’re watching this in March, you will see a link to this next episode at the end of this video, so please watch until the very end so you can see what we’re talking about.

It’s absolutely unbelievable to think that parents are capable of this. If you appreciate this episode, please understand that it is very hard for us to get into the YouTube algorithm because we are considered borderline content and a non-authoritative news source. Even though I don’t consider us journalists, just simply raising awareness of this type of crime is something YouTube does not like. So if you could hit the like button for me and share this video with someone who might like it, this would go a very long way to helping us fight against the YouTube algorithm.

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