Tucked In Her Bed After She Died, Then Abandoned-The Story of Kayleigh Slusher

Tucked In Her Bed After She Died, Then Abandoned-The Story of Kayleigh Slusher

The woman was waiting to be seated for breakfast when she decided to check the news on her phone. There, she saw photos of a couple wanted by police for murder, and as she looked back up from her phone, in walked the same two people that were in the photos. Welcome, or welcome back; I’m Cassie, and this is A Wicked World. The story I have for you today is yet another one in which violent tempers, methamphetamine, and a helpless child all come together, and the results are disastrous. This is the story of Kaylee Slusher.

Kaylee Slusher was born on May 3, 2010, to her mother, Sarah Krueger, and her father, Jason Slusher, in Napa, California. She was a smart little girl who loved playing dress-up, loved watching Sofia the First, and her favorite colors were pink and purple. Kaylee was a happy, bubbly three-year-old little girl who was always smiling.

Back in the summer of 2005, when Kaylee’s mother, Sarah, was only 15, she met a guy who was 17 by the name of Ryan Warner. They had a brief relationship and used methamphetamine together until Ryan moved away at the end of the summer. However, the following year, when Sarah was only 16, she met a guy named Jason Slusher at a drug house, and both Sarah and Jason were avid methamphetamine users at this point. The two began dating when Sarah was 17, and Jason and Sarah would move in with Jason’s parents. They lived there for a few years until they eventually got their own apartment at the Royal Garden Apartments in Napa.

Now, methamphetamine use was not the only problem that Jason and Sarah shared; both of them also had very violent tempers. They argued often, and Sarah at one point had hit Jason over the head with a 2×4, and Jason retaliated by slamming Sarah’s arm in the car door. A friend of the couple said that they had seen Sarah and Jason fighting often, and at one point, Jason had thrown something at Sarah, and Sarah retaliated by pulling out a knife on Jason.

At the time that Kaylee was born in May of 2010, Jason would actually be in jail for slamming Sarah’s arm in the car door. When Jason was released from jail, he continued his methamphetamine use, even though Sarah was now clean; she had quit when she found out she was pregnant with Kaylee and had remained clean ever since. Due to Jason’s continued drug use and the fact that Sarah was now clean, the couple would fight even more often, and they ended up splitting up in 2012. At that point, Sarah and Kaylee moved out of the apartment that they shared with Jason, and they moved into a new two-bedroom apartment in the same apartment complex. At some point, Jason had moved back in with them, but in June of 2013, he had gone back to prison, as he had broken the terms of his parole when he threatened to kill Sarah and kidnap Kaylee.

For the first three years of Kaylee’s life, even though she had a somewhat unstable environment, she was a happy and healthy child. Sarah was loving and attentive towards her; in fact, people would say that she was a great mother at that time. Sarah would also take Kaylee to visit her family, as well as Jason’s family, regularly.

Now, back in the summer of 2011, Sarah reconnected with her ex-boyfriend, Ryan, on Facebook. They had only talked online since then, but when Jason went back to jail in August of 2013, Sarah invited Ryan over to the apartment to visit. At first, he was only going to be there to visit, but after staying for a few days, he decided to move in.

Now, when Ryan first moved in, Sarah said that he acted like a stepfather towards Kaylee. He played with her, helped toilet train her, fed her, and he just seemed to love her. Though, sometimes, Ryan would make Kaylee sit on the toilet for 15 to 20 minutes at a time in order to have a bowel movement. Now, Ryan and Sarah would argue about this because Sarah thought it was much too long to have her sit there, but Ryan told Sarah that Kaylee was so backed up and constipated, and it was borderline child abuse to let her hold it in all day. Because she was in so much pain when she finally did move her bowels, Sarah decided that Ryan was right and it was better for Kaylee to sit on the toilet than to be in pain.

Now, unfortunately, as soon as Ryan moved in, Sarah would resume her methamphetamine use. The two of them would smoke in their bedroom while Kaylee would be in her bedroom or out in the living room watching TV. From the beginning of December 2013, Sarah would begin using methamphetamine every single day again, and unfortunately, when she came down from the meth, she would usually be upset, irritable, or angry. In the same month, Sarah learned that Ryan had a warrant out for his arrest. He now barely left the apartment and would lie to people, including police, about his real name. Since Ryan did not leave the apartment much, Sarah was the one running most of the errands, and she was usually leaving Kaylee with Ryan.

It seemed like Sarah was infatuated with Ryan, but his behavior showed that he did not feel the same way about her. And while no one had ever seen Ryan physically abusing Sarah, he was known to be mentally abusive and controlling. Apparently, Sarah also considered Ryan to be her boyfriend because, well, he was living there and they were sharing a bed at this point every night, so what else would she think? Well, Ryan did not think that they were a couple.

When Ryan moved in, Kaylee also started crying more, and she was now scared to use the bathroom. The apartment had also become a lot more messy and dirty, and Ryan was now preventing Kaylee from seeing her grandparents. This made her grandparents think that Sarah and Ryan were most likely engaging in illegal drug activity and, in turn, putting Kaylee in danger.

By January of 2014, Kaylee’s grandparents were becoming increasingly worried about the little girl, as they had not seen her since Thanksgiving the year prior. Every time they would try to see Kaylee, Sarah would come up with excuses, usually saying that Kaylee was sick. Other family members who were still seeing Kaylee began to notice bruises on the little girl’s body, including, at one point, a large one on her chin and neck. When Ryan was asked where this bruise had come from, he said that Kaylee had tripped and fallen into the bathtub. But when Sarah was asked how this bruise occurred, she said that Kaylee had actually tripped over a clothes hamper and then hit it on the floor. Soon, Kaylee started to look pale and tired, and she was often sick and vomiting.

So, jumping back a month to December of 2013, Sarah decided that she wanted to stop using methamphetamine, and she also did not want the drug in her house any longer. Ryan did not agree with her, and this caused a lot of tension and fighting for the couple. During one of these arguments on January 9, Ryan slammed Sarah’s hand in the door and left it badly injured. Yes, you heard that right; this is the second time now that Sarah has had her hand slammed in a door somehow.

Then, on January 23, 2014, Robin, Kaylee’s grandmother, would show up at the apartment and demand to see her granddaughter, but she was once again denied, as Sarah told her that Kaylee was sick again. But this time, Robin would call the Napa Police Department to request a welfare check be done on Kaylee. She expressed her concern that Kaylee was under the care of drug addicts and that she was being mistreated. She also told police that Ryan had an outstanding warrant and he might be armed. A police officer named Officer Wade would go out to the apartment where Kaylee lived later that same day, but he would conclude that the situation was unsafe for him and his partner. He didn’t call for backup, and he didn’t investigate the allegations of child abuse and neglect.

Also that same day, Robin made numerous attempts to call Child Protective Services to report her concerns about Kaylee’s well-being to them, but Robin was told there was nothing they could do and she needed to call the police instead. Wow, just wow.

Then, on January 27, just a few days later, around 9:40 a.m., police would respond to a noise complaint at Sarah’s apartment. Sarah opened the door when the police officers arrived, and before they could even say anything to her, she blurted out, “Is it illegal to argue?” The police would end up leaving that day because they said they saw no signs of domestic violence.

Only two days later, on January 29, around 6:00 p.m., Robin, fearing that Kaylee was in grave danger, once again reached out to the police for assistance. So, Officer Wade, along with another police officer, went out to Sarah’s apartment to check on things. When they got there, Sarah tried to keep them from seeing inside the apartment by blocking the door with her body. She did, however, have Kaylee come over to the door, and the officers noted at the time that Kaylee had bruises on her face, appeared gaunt, sick, malnourished, and distressed. But Sarah would say that Kaylee had just fallen off her bike recently and she had the flu; that’s why she looked so bad.

While there, officers spoke with Ryan, who gave them the fake name “Ryan Howard.” He also looked under the influence of narcotics at the time. And while police were in the apartment still, Kaylee would vomit in front of them. Sarah took her and ran to the bathroom and asked the officers to leave. They complied without making any effort to speak to Kaylee or to physically examine her, which is the whole reason why her grandmother called in the first place. After the police visit, they discovered that “Ryan Howard” was actually Ryan Warner, and he had a warrant out for his arrest. But despite this, as well as their observations while at the apartment, police made no effort to get a warrant to re-enter the apartment or to arrest him. Instead, Officer Wade called Robin, Kaylee’s grandmother, and told her that Kaylee had food and everything appeared normal at the apartment. He also told her that he would keep an eye on things.

Now, had police investigated just a little bit further, they would have realized that Ryan had an extensive criminal history, which included assault and possession of drugs. Ryan had also had a restraining order taken out against him in the past for threatening to kill his pregnant ex-girlfriend, among making other extremely violent threats towards her. Two days after this welfare check, Robin texted Sarah to see if she and Kaylee could go to lunch with her, but Sarah replied back telling her that they were going to Santa Cruz for the weekend.

There was also a friend who had been at Sarah’s apartment the day police had gone over to do the welfare check. Prior to the police arriving, Sarah, Ryan, and this friend had been in the bedroom smoking methamphetamine. They had the door closed, and Kaylee was in the living room watching cartoons. At one point, Sarah went out into the living room to check on Kaylee, but she found her in the bathroom drinking from a cup that had Windex and tobacco in it. Sarah yelled to Ryan to get her phone so that she could call Poison Control. She then went out into the kitchen and began slamming things around. Sarah then went back to Kaylee and tried to get her to drink some water and throw up; she said that that’s what she needed to do because Poison Control had told her that.

The next day, January 30, the friend texted Sarah asking her for another Percocet, as she had given him one the night before, but he got no answer. He texted her the next day and did get a response this time; she said, “Hey, sorry, we bounced out of town for a minute after what happened the other night; we had to get away.”

In the early afternoon on February 1, Napa Police Officer Robert Chambers went to Sarah’s apartment in response to a telephone tip that they had received saying that Kaylee was in danger. The officer entered the apartment with a key after no one answered the door. Inside the apartment, in her bed under blankets, was Kaylee’s tiny body. Only her face was visible; it looked bruised, and there was blood coming from her nostrils. It appeared that Kaylee had been dead for some time, and her skin was ice-cold. The apartment was dark, dirty, and disorganized. The curtains were all pulled shut, and there was also extra fabric taped around the windows as well. There were latex gloves also found on the floor. Now, the kitchen was a filthy mess, and police officers noticed that the freezer was completely empty and a shelving unit had been removed from the freezer. But not surprisingly, Sarah and Ryan were nowhere to be seen. Police would try to ping Sarah’s cell phone in order to track the couple, but she had turned off the cell phone, so they were unable to.

In that same morning, around 9:00 a.m., a neighbor had seen Sarah and Ryan leaving the apartment complex with a bunch of luggage. The day after, the morning of February 2, a woman who was sitting in the lobby of an IHOP restaurant was looking at the news on her cell phone, and she noticed that the two people pictured in the article had just entered the restaurant. But at the same time, Sarah and Ryan had finally turned Sarah’s phone back on, and they had seen that police were now looking for them, and they quickly left.

Later that morning, the Bay Area Transit Police were alerted that Sarah and Ryan, who were wanted by the Napa Police, were seen at a restaurant that happened to be across from a BART train station. Upon police checking out the station, they found Sarah and Ryan, and when they did, Sarah broke down into tears and told the police officers that she needed to talk to them about something bad that had happened. They were both then arrested.

After Kaylee’s death, when police spoke with neighbors of Sarah, they said that after Ryan had moved in, they saw Kaylee playing outside a lot less often, and when she did, she would be all alone, when before Sarah would go outside to play with her. Neighbors would also say that Kaylee, in the last months of her life, had many bruises, she looked pale, acted subdued, and recently had a black eye. Neighbors also frequently heard yelling, screaming, and arguments coming from Sarah’s apartment, and about a week before Kaylee was found dead, a neighbor heard something large slam into their shared wall. And yet another neighbor of Sarah’s said they had been awoken to the slamming of a door in Sarah’s apartment multiple times; they had also heard Sarah and Ryan screaming at Kaylee, and they could hear them hitting her on occasion, but they didn’t call the police.

After her arrest, Sarah would tell police in an interview that on the morning of January 27, she and Ryan had gotten into an argument. She wanted to get clean of drugs, and he did not. So, Sarah had actually told him to move out, but this infuriated Ryan, and he had thrown a large abalone seashell against the wall. He then pushed Sarah against her bedroom wall and punched the seashell into the wall twice next to Sarah’s head. Sarah told police that Ryan had said the only way he was leaving that day is if police came and removed him, and if that happened, he would have his friends from a gang come handle her. This scared her, and she also didn’t want Child Protective Services taking Kaylee away, so she did nothing.

But police found out that after they had left Sarah’s apartment on January 27, Sarah had taken Kaylee to a friend’s house for a few hours and told Ryan to pack his things and get out before she got home. But while she was at the friend’s house, she sent Ryan a text message saying, “I really hope you’re home when I get there, are you kidding me?” He responded, “I got up, made pancakes for your daughter, put cinnamon rolls in the oven, and you woke up treating me like dog [expletive] for nothing.” She replied, “I am so sorry, you do so much for us, I am so sorry, I guess I was just mad because I wanted to cuddle with you last night.”

What exactly is it that he does for you guys besides make pancakes and cinnamon buns? So, needless to say, Sarah and Kaylee had gone back to the apartment with Ryan still there that night, and Sarah had also sent Ryan a text message the following day saying that she really cared for him, and it was clear that he did not feel the same way for her; all she wanted was to feel loved.

Sarah then went on to tell police that on the night of January 29, Kaylee had drunk out of the cup that had contained a few squirts of Windex as well as some tobacco from Ryan cleaning out one of his tobacco pipes. But Sarah said that Kaylee told her that she had actually poured out the dirty water and put clean water in to drink. After that, Kaylee had vomited quite a few times, but Sarah thought it was just because she might have ingested some tobacco. After Kaylee stopped throwing up, she was put to bed, and then Sarah went to bed herself.

Police also asked Sarah why she had not called the paramedics when she had found Kaylee drinking from the cup that she believed had poisoned her. Sarah said it was because she and Ryan had been using drugs that day. At the time Kaylee drank the liquid, Sarah was coming back to her senses from the methamphetamine use, and she wanted to call Poison Control, but Ryan told her that Kaylee was throwing up, which is what she needed to do, so they didn’t have to call.

But when Sarah woke up the next afternoon on January 30, she couldn’t find Kaylee in her room. She did, however, find her laying on the bathroom floor, and when Sarah went over to pick up her daughter, she was stiff and not breathing. There was also a bruise on Kaylee’s buttocks that Sarah had not previously seen. Sarah started screaming that Kaylee was dead. Ryan came into the room and grabbed the little girl out of Sarah’s arms. He then started shaking Kaylee and poking her in the stomach and saying, “Look, she’s breathing, she’s breathing.” Sarah told Ryan to stop and give her daughter back to her, which he did. She then told Ryan he needed to call 911, but Ryan said he needed 10 minutes to gather himself or to come up with a story. He then took Kaylee’s lifeless body and put her back in her bed.

Since Ryan wasn’t calling 911, Sarah asked him for her phone, as he had it at the time, but he told her that she couldn’t call 911 because they would think that he had done something to Kaylee due to the bruise on her buttocks. He said that the day before, Kaylee had gotten out of her timeout and he had spanked her; he said he didn’t think he had spanked her hard, but apparently, he had. Sarah told Ryan spanking would not have killed a child, and she thought that it was probably from Kaylee drinking out of the Windex and tobacco cup.

For the rest of that afternoon and the following day, Sarah said she went in and out of Kaylee’s bedroom to be with her, and Ryan would keep saying that he didn’t want to get in trouble for something he didn’t do. So, Sarah told him that he could run, and after he left, she would call the police. But he didn’t.

That night, Ryan’s friend Antonio, along with Antonio’s brother, went by Sarah’s apartment. Sarah told police that Antonio was a high-ranking gang member, and she was scared of him. Apparently, Ryan had asked Antonio and his brother to help them with their situation, but Antonio wanted nothing to do with it; in fact, he didn’t even know what the situation was until he had gotten to the apartment. But when Antonio had found out that little Kaylee was dead, he told the couple he couldn’t help them; they needed to call the police, to which Sarah promised she would, but clearly did not.

After the men left, in the early morning hours on February 1, Sarah said that she was going to call the police, and Ryan had actually put Kaylee’s body into the freezer in the kitchen to preserve evidence. Sarah thinks around that time she passed out and didn’t realize that Kaylee’s body was in the freezer until about three hours later when she came back to. At that time, she said she took her out of the freezer and put the little girl back in her bed and surrounded her with pillows, blankets, toys, and books. After that, Sarah and Ryan had gone back to sleep again for a few hours.

When they woke up, they decided it was now time to leave. So, they left the apartment and headed to a nearby GameStop where they tried to sell a PlayStation 3 for money. When they were unsuccessful there, the couple went and sold it to a friend in exchange for a ride to Vallejo, where they then got a bus to San Francisco. Here, Ryan and Sarah said they walked around then went to a church to pray and ask a pastor to help them call the police, but the church was closed. So, they pretty much said, “Ah [expletive] it, let’s flee instead,” and they went to San Francisco International Airport. They ended up staying the night at the airport, and for one reason or another, I’m guessing they probably didn’t have enough money, the couple then left the airport. After that, they headed to the IHOP where they had been spotted. And once they realized that they were wanted, the couple had walked across the street to the BART train station and were about to get on the train when police found them.

When police asked Sarah about Kaylee’s bruising that had been spotted on the little girl’s body weeks prior to her death, Sarah again gave them the story about Kaylee falling off her bicycle. Sarah told police that at one point Kaylee had a black eye, which they already knew, and she said that Ryan had told her that the two had bumped heads when Kaylee jumped up to try to give him a hug. Sarah was not present at the time, and she had no reason to not believe him. She said she had never seen Ryan put his hands on Kaylee except for a few times that he had spanked her, but Sarah had told him to not do that and Ryan promised to never do it again. And Sarah said that Ryan would get angry quite often, but he would not get physical; that is, except for that one time that he had gotten angry and slammed her hand in a door, but she said she didn’t know if he had done that on purpose or not.

During the last couple weeks of Kaylee’s life, Sarah said that her daughter and Ryan had gotten along well. Kaylee would sit on the couch with him and hug him, but sometimes Ryan would get mad at her for holding her bowels. At first, Sarah thought it was odd that he was getting so upset about this and bringing her to the bathroom every time, but she would end up being okay with it because she said that she heard Kaylee telling Ryan that she loved him and wanted him to be her dad. I don’t know about that.

When Sarah had first found Kaylee dead, her first thought was that she didn’t pour out what was in the cup and that she had drunk the stuff in there and had been poisoned. But the autopsy of Kaylee proved that Sarah’s theory was far from the truth. Kaylee had 41 external injuries to her body. There were numerous blunt force injuries along with many large bruises to her abdomen and on her back and buttocks. There were also external injuries to her arms, forearms, thighs, legs, and knees, as well as bruises on her forehead, cheek, and under her chin, as well as internal injuries to her scalp. Kaylee also had a healing broken rib, which looked like it occurred a few weeks prior to her death, and on top of that, Kaylee had a 12-inch segment of her intestine that was dead, which had resulted in a rupture of her intestine wall, and there was also a blunt force injury near her spine.

The extent of injuries on Kaylee’s body were a result of repeated episodes of major blunt force trauma. They were consistent with beating, not spanking or falling from a bike. During the autopsy, there was also no sign of constipation, abdominal disease, or spontaneous rupture found. Kaylee was also found to be dehydrated and slightly malnourished. Her cause of death was abdominal trauma, and as a result, the intestinal tissue had died and became perforated, spilling the contents into Kaylee’s stomach, which resulted in sepsis and then death.

Twenty-three-year-old Sarah Krueger and her 26-year-old boyfriend, Ryan Warner, were charged with murder and felony assault of a child resulting in death. Upon inspection of Sarah’s internet history, it was found that on January 25, there was a search for an article to the effect of “a woman booked or jailed on suspicion of child abuse.” On January 31, after Kaylee’s death, there was a search for “US cities with the highest populations.”

During Ryan Warner’s interrogation, he admitted that he had frozen Kaylee’s body after they had found her on the bathroom floor unresponsive. He said that he had wrapped Kaylee in a plastic bag and then put her into a suitcase and then into the freezer. He said she had been there for about 6 hours before Sarah had woken up, panicked, and taken her out, though Sarah had said 3 hours; so, it was sometime between 3 and 6 hours. He told police that before they had fled the apartment, Sarah had tucked Kaylee’s tiny body into bed, placed toys, pillows, and blankets around her, and then read her a bedtime story.

In November of 2015, the Napa County District Attorney additionally charged Sarah and Ryan with two counts of murder, this time with the special circumstance of torture and assault resulting in the death of a child under the age of eight. In May of 2017, both Ryan and Sarah would go to trial. The prosecution believed that Kaylee’s murder was by torture and that Sarah directly committed the crimes or aided and abetted Ryan in committing them.

Video surveillance footage from the San Francisco International Airport was shown to the jury, and in it, Sarah and Ryan were seen on an airport tram at about 11:15 p.m. on February 1. Sarah is seen talking and laughing with Ryan in the video; she appears calm and was even resting her head on Ryan’s shoulder and trying to snuggle with him. There was also additional security footage obtained from a Target that was near the couple’s apartment on the afternoon of January 31, the day after Kaylee was believed to have died. The couple was seen in Target buying ice cream, and of course, they again looked happy and like they had no concerns.

And another interesting thing is that Sarah’s medical records showed that she was treated for a hand injury on January 9. Here, she told medical personnel that her boyfriend had accidentally slammed her hand in a door. She was also seen for a hand injury the next day on January 10 at a different hospital; this time, she said that it was a friend who had slammed her hand in the door. So, maybe she was looking for drugs.

And although Sarah had told a detective during her interview that she had been in and out of Kaylee’s bedroom on January 30 and 31, she testified during the trial that Ryan actually would not let her into Kaylee’s room until after she had already taken her body out of the freezer. Sarah would also tell the court that she had only ever spanked her daughter three or four times in her life. She also said that she did not yell at Kaylee during the last week of her life, except once on January 29, when she was sitting on the couch with Kaylee, trying to get her to eat a Pedialyte popsicle to rehydrate her. But Kaylee was refusing it, so she had punished her, and eventually Kaylee would end up eating some of the Pedialyte popsicle.

Sarah said, though, that she was not concerned that her daughter was gravely ill, and she was just worried that her daughter was dehydrated. But she did think that it was odd that Kaylee refused a popsicle because she never did. Sarah would also reveal that Child Protective Services had actually been in her and Kaylee’s life from the time that Kaylee was about 5 months old until the time that she was two. Sarah also said that when Jason had gone to prison for an incident that occurred when he had come to her apartment, grabbed her arm, and twisted it, she had told her CPS worker that she lied to police and that Jason had not assaulted her as she had said, but had been jumped by gang members. She then admitted at trial that what she had told CPS was a lie. The truth was that she had fought back when Jason had assaulted her, and she had left marks on him, and both she and Jason were concerned that they could get in trouble with CPS and that Kaylee would be taken away and put into state custody.

A doctor diagnosed Sarah with PTSD with depressive symptoms and said that Sarah had experienced multiple traumatic events in her life, and that the trauma of finding Kaylee dead had caused Sarah to go into a dissociative state. The doctor believed that the dissociation was prevalent for the first few days after Kaylee’s death and intermittent from there on. But a psychiatrist testified that while there was a history of abuse with Jason that impaired Sarah’s reasoning and judgment, she did not have that same kind of history with Ryan, and there was no evidence that her relationship with Ryan had affected her in the way that her relationship with Jason had. And since being in custody, Sarah had described to a doctor a dissociative episode that lasted 3 months after the discovery of Kaylee’s body, but the doctor did not believe it. Rather, based on her actions and appearance in the security camera footage, as well as her recall of details when she was interviewed, she was not consistent with dissociation.

The jury ended up finding Ryan Warner guilty of both murder with a special circumstance of torture, as well as assault resulting in the death of a child under 8 years old. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury found Sarah Krueger guilty of the same, and she was also given the same sentence: life in prison without parole.

In January of 2021, both Sarah and Ryan had challenged their convictions and sentences, saying that there was not enough evidence presented to prove that they had intentionally killed Kaylee. An appeals court had ruled that the large bruises found on Kaylee’s body proved intent to harm but not intent to kill. The appeals court also saw Sarah’s gesture of giving Kaylee a Pedialyte popsicle as evidence that she wanted to rehydrate her daughter and not kill her. The Napa County District Attorney disagreed with the appeal court’s findings that Kaylee was not murdered intentionally, saying, “If not intent to kill, then why beat your baby so badly that you rupture her intestine? If not intent to kill, then why not call a doctor when your baby is screaming in pain, as evidenced by the testimony of neighbors? If not intent to kill, then why not call an ambulance when you found her lifeless body on the floor? I fully support the unanimous verdicts of 24 Napa County jurors who had the courage and common sense to call abject cruelty what it was.”

But based on those facts, the court would actually find that the evidence presented at trial was not enough to prove that they had intentionally killed Kaylee. This resulted in a reversal of their special circumstances charges, and they will both be resentenced at a future date.

In May of 2015, Kaylee’s father and grandparents, Robin and Benny Slusher, had filed a lawsuit against the city and county in federal court. They alleged that the Napa Police Department and child welfare service workers did not properly investigate allegations that Kaylee was being abused and neglected, and it wouldn’t be until 4 years later that the lawsuit was finally settled for $5 million. Kaylee’s father was given $2.5 million, and the grandparents were given the other $2.5 million.

Shortly after Kaylee’s death, neighbors, community members, family, and friends held a candlelight vigil for her, as well as set up a memorial with flowers, stuffed animals, and balloons in front of the apartment where she had once lived. A private funeral was held for Kaylee, and she was buried in Tulocay Cemetery in Napa County. Kaylee’s aunt also raised funds to have a bench put in at Napa’s Camille Park in remembrance of her beautiful niece.

Well, thank you for listening to all of Kaylee’s story today. This poor little girl never really had a stable life, but before Ryan came along, she seemed happy. After that, in her mother’s eyes, it was Ryan and drugs that came first, not her daughter. And to think she died in such a painful and brutal way, all while her mother let it happen. So, if you do like true crime and you want to hear from me, then don’t forget to hit that subscribe button below and turn on your notifications too, so you’ll know when I upload a new video, which is two to three times every week. Thanks!