GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A woman has been charged with murder after deputies say she told them she suffocated her 2-year-old daughter, admitting outright, “I killed her.”
Irene Whitehead, 27, was arraigned Monday on felony charges of first-degree child abuse and first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Ryleigh.
According to probable cause documents obtained by News 8, Kent County sheriff’s deputies responded Sept. 3 to Whitehead’s home on Allen Street off Northland Drive in Cedar Springs, where they found 2-year-old Ryleigh unresponsive and not breathing. She died at the scene. At the time of her death, Ryleigh was alone in the home with Whitehead, deputies said.
Her death certificate lists her cause of death as asphyxia by smothering.
The court documents include a partial transcription of a Nov. 25 police interview in which Whitehead repeatedly admitted to killing her daughter by suffocating her with a bag. When detectives asked what her intentions were when she put the bag over her daughter’s mouth, she said, “That she wouldn’t be here anymore… That she’d die.”
Whitehead signed a statement saying, “I Killed them,” according to the document — referring to Ryleigh and another child, Leonard — who is referred to in court documents as Leo and who died in 2021 at 2 months old.
Leo’s death certificate lists his cause of death as “parainfluenza viral-type pneumonia.” The Kent County Medical Examiner completed an autopsy and ruled his death as natural.
Whitehead has not been charged in relation to Leo’s death and the sheriff’s office declined to comment on it.
Ryleigh had been in and out of the hospital for much of her life due to “breathing episodes,” according to court documents. Investigators now allege that those episodes were the result of Whitehead repeatedly suffocating her.
“Why did you keep putting Ryleigh in the hospital? Was that because you were doing that to make her look sick so later on you could kill her?” a detective asked.
“I wanted to kill her,” Whitehead replied.
“When did you decide that you wanted to kill her?” detectives followed up.
“Right after she was born,” she said.
Whitehead admitted to police that on Sept. 8, five days after Ryleigh’s death, she searched online “how hard is it to prove if cause of death is suffocation by bag in toddler.”
Throughout her police interview, Whitehead discussed the stress her children caused and her desire to kill them, documents show. She said she “just wanted it to stop” and “couldn’t take it anymore” — referring to her daughter’s cries.
Police obtained a Facebook conversation between Whitehead and her mother in which she said she wished she only had one child.
In a video taken just weeks before Ryleigh’s death, another one of Whitehead’s children can be heard saying, “You never even wanted me, you only want me to die. I know you want me to die,” and, “Just kill me already,” deputies say.
An autopsy initially found Ryleigh’s cause of death to be indeterminate, with the medical examiner saying that “An asphyxia cause of death (suffocation or smothering) can not be excluded.” The death certificate has since been amended to list the manner of death as homicide caused by smothering.
On Monday afternoon, Kent County 63rd District Judge Kirsten Holz ordered that Whitehead be held without bail as her case makes its way through the court system. She has been in the Kent County jail since Nov. 25, records show.
“Based on the statements in the probable cause affidavit, proof of guilt is evident, and presumption is great in this matter,” Holz said while issuing her ruling on bond. “…The allegations are horrific.”
Whitehead had four children in all and filed paternity cases against four men in Kent County Circuit Court. Paternity could not be determined for Ryleigh and Leo. The fathers of the two remaining children each gained custody after Ryleigh’s death, court records show.
Whitehead also appears to have launched multiple GoFundMe accounts through which she tried to raise money for her kids’ medical expenses and to cover Leo’s funeral in 2021.
She had been living at the Allen Street address for only a short time before her daughter died. She worked at an Arby’s in Cedar Springs and has no criminal record, an attorney said on her behalf at arraignment.
Whitehead asked for an attorney to be appointed to her, saying she could not afford one. She is scheduled to be back in court Dec. 10 for a probable cause conference. If found guilty of first-degree murder, she faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
—Target 8 investigator Susan Samples contributed to this report.