WOODLAND — A young Woodland mother told authorities she and her newborn son were abducted, and that’s why they vanished two days before searchers found the baby’s body on the bank of a Knights Landing slough, the woman’s family said Thursday.
Samantha Green gave the name of her alleged abductor to Yolo County sheriff’s detectives who are investigating the death of 3-week-old Justice Talliesen Rees, who along with his mother were the subjects of a missing-person report filed Monday with Woodland police.
“She knew the person,” said Patty Rees, Justice’s paternal grandmother, with whom the baby and his parents were living after his birth. Rees said the incident occurred sometime on Monday, away from the family’s home on the west side of Woodland.
Rees said she wasn’t privy to any additional details, but is confident her son’s fiancee is telling the truth.
“We have not been able to substantiate any abduction at this point, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t occur,” Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto said Thursday as roughly a dozen investigators continued to work the baffling case. “This is a very convoluted investigation — we don’t know what happened.”
Also a mystery at this point is what claimed the life of baby Justice. Coroner’s officials who conducted his autopsy Thursday said they are awaiting further tests and toxicology results before pinpointing his cause and manner of death, a process that ultimately could take several months.
According to Prieto, Justice, dressed only in a onesie, could have succumbed to exposure or drowning — or something else entirely. He had been a healthy baby, with no external signs of injury other than minor scratches to his head and body that likely came from the thicket in which he was found.
While the baby’s date and time of death also have not been determined, “it is most likely to have occurred prior to the search for him being initiated early Tuesday evening,” sheriff’s Capt. Larry Cecchettini said in a news release.
Cecchettini said shortly after Justice was found that “we don’t have any information to believe that it would be a homicide.”
Prieto called Green a “person of interest” in the case, “but not from a criminal aspect. Anyone that we speak to is a person of interest.” He also noted that Green has been cooperative, but investigators still lack any concrete evidence explaining how she ended up along Ridge Cut Slough.
“That’s what we’re trying to determine, step by step,” Prieto said. “We’re not going to leave any stone unturned.”
Family grieves
Green resurfaced, disheveled and distraught, at about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday on the slough’s east levee. It would be another 17 hours before searchers found the infant on the opposite bank shortly before 10 a.m. Wednesday, which also marked Green’s 23rd birthday.
Patty Rees said her son, Frank Rees, and Green were interviewed for several hours Wednesday night following Green’s discharge from Woodland Memorial Hospital, where she was taken after a Knights Landing resident encountered the screaming woman about a mile away from her abandoned car.
She was back at the Rees home Thursday morning, but Patty Rees said she was grief-stricken over her son’s death and not up for speaking with a reporter.
“He was the sweetest baby I ever knew,” said Patty Rees, a grandmother of 12, four of whom live with her in the Woodland home. “He liked having his feet rubbed,” something Green would do through her abdomen while Justice was still in the womb.
Although Frank Rees, 29, has four other children, baby Justice was Green’s first, and she was encountering the typical struggles of a young, first-time mom.
“But she had a lot of help,” Patty Rees said. “She could take naps because I was here, and Frank was getting up with him at night. She was doing OK.”
Randy Green, Samantha’s father, told reporters on Wednesday that he had made plans to see his daughter and grandson on Saturday, but they never showed. Patty Rees described Green as someone who “likes to be at home, so they ended up not going.”
And nothing appeared amiss on Monday morning, the last time Rees spoke with Green as she got her other grandchildren ready for school.
“We expected her to pick up the boys from school, and when she didn’t then we started to get worried,” Rees said. When Green’s sister said she hadn’t heard from her, the family began working their phones and social media in a frantic attempt to find the mother and baby.
Green had a cell phone belonging to Patty Rees’ husband, but the service had been turned off, Rees said.
Now, the family that just three weeks ago celebrated a new life is making burial arrangements, and seeking help from the community to cover the expenses. A Justice Rees memorial fund has been established at U.S. Bank.
“We’re just all pretty much torn up right now,” Patty Rees said. Justice’s half-siblings “are devastated that their baby brother’s gone.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene