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He's the most terrifying serial killer you've never heard of. Haddon Clark has confessed to several murders, but investigators say he could have over 100 victims. At the center of the mayhem, a cellmate of Haddon's that was able to get key evidence into Haddon's murder spree across America,

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They can also track your ballot so you know when it goes live. All the information on BallotReady.org is rigorously reviewed and linked to its source so you can be empowered as a voter with comprehensive, unbiased information. I recently used BallotReady.org to fill out my primary ballot, and it was so helpful. You can filter your research by choosing the issues you care the most about, and BallotReady will highlight a candidate's stance on those issues.

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We are working really hard on season two and we'll be bringing it to you this June. I am so excited to share that with you. In the meantime, I wanted to introduce you to another podcaster who is doing some really incredible work in this area. Lane of the podcast Suffer the Little Children, which is all about holding child abuse perpetrators to account, did a recent series on the Kenzia family. To say that this story is shocking is an

Blaine's reporting on it is excellent, and it is truly stunning what she and the family have managed to capture on tape.

A content warning up top that this story is difficult to hear, but it's definitely compelling and Lane is a compassionate and responsible storyteller. So without further ado, here is the first episode of the Kenzia Family series, and you can find the rest wherever you listen to podcasts. This podcast contains descriptions of violence against children and adult language and is not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. ♪♪

Hi everyone, and welcome to Groomed to Die, The Kensia Children, the first ever Suffer the Little Children podcast miniseries. I'm your host, Lane, and this is part one. Michael and Kevin, Susan Stevenson, Susan Cook, Susan Kensia, Susan Lee, all of these names belong to the same woman.

You'd never know by looking at this charming, gray-haired, 62-year-old Southern grandmother that she has spent decades leaving a trail of illness, abuse, and death in her wake. Even though the words Munchausen Syndrome by proxy have hovered over Susan's head since the mid-1980s like a dark cloud, she has been permitted to continue committing countless alleged atrocities against children and others for over 40 years with little to no consequence.

Over the course of this miniseries, I will expose Susan's alleged misdeeds with the help of those who were fortunate enough to survive her, and I will speak out for those who weren't. In today's episode, I will tell you about two baby boys who were adopted into the Kensia home nine months apart, and who died under similarly suspicious circumstances, also nine months apart. This is Part 1, Michael and Kevin.

Before I get into the story, I'd like to thank my newest patrons, Sarah H. and Nicole. Thank you so much for your support. To make a pledge, you can visit patreon.com slash stlcpod. To give a one-time or ongoing donation, you can also visit ko-fi.com slash stlcpod.

I also want to mention that this past weekend, the podcast reached a huge milestone. 2 million total downloads since I released the first episode in February of 2020. Thank all of you so much for sticking with me on this journey and for spreading the word that these kids' stories need to be told. The story I'm going to tell you in this miniseries is unlike any I've ever told on the podcast before. There are so many moving pieces that it took me literally months to wrap my head around the scope of it.

Because I've been given access to so much information about this case, and because there are so many facets and so many victims, some surviving, some not, I've decided the best way to tell this story is in the form of a miniseries. I hope you enjoy the format. Let me know what you think. This case is so full of injustices that there's really no way to summarize them all without telling the entire story, so that is what I plan to do.

I know for a fact that there are people out there who don't want this story told, the reasons for which will quickly become apparent. But when it comes to the suffering of so many children at the hands of one individual, there's no way on earth I'm going to be silent about it. This story needs to be told, and I'm honored to help tell it with the help of the survivors of this individual's decades-long reign of terror.

Susan Lee Stevenson was born on December 20, 1959, one of three children born to Navy veteran Marion Stevenson and his wife Betty, along with sister Renee and brother Gene. Susan was reportedly hyperactive as a child. She attended Rock Hill High School in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where she earned higher-than-average grades in a childcare course in 1976. Her father later said Susan always had a love of children.

It may or may not have been an idyllic childhood for the Stevenson siblings. Not much is known about that time period, but Susan later said that her brother and sister used to torment her, which included locking her in closets and other places she couldn't escape. Susan has also said that when she and her siblings were children, if her brother Gene misbehaved, her mother, Betty, would punish him by dressing him up like a girl and making him stand out in the front yard to humiliate him. She later said her father only had to spank her one time in her life.

However, Susan frequently got in trouble with her father. In high school, Susan Stevenson went by the nickname of Steve and even tried out for the football team. Everyone apparently thought she was a boy. When she actually made the football team, Susan got in a lot of trouble when her father, Marion, found out. She also refused to follow the female dress code at the time and was sent home and disciplined almost every day for wearing jeans and not wearing the required skirts or dresses, which Marion also took exception to.

Because of Marion's disapproval, Susan grew up craving her father's validation and wanting more than anything to make him proud of her. Susan was, according to friends, always a very melodramatic person with various emotional problems. She always seemed to be surrounded by drama. She was, however, very charismatic and charming when she wanted to be.

As a decent enough looking young woman with dark wavy hair, brown eyes, strong facial features, bold eyebrows, and a trim figure, Susan didn't seem to have any problem finding romantic partners. She married her first husband, Douglas Bruce Cook, on December 21, 1977, the day after her 18th birthday.

Because she had always wanted to be a mother, Susan and Doug immediately set to work trying for a baby, and on their one-year anniversary, December 21, 1978, their first child was born at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. Susan was convinced the child would be a boy and had planned to name him Christopher, but when the baby was born, Susan had to deal with the fact that she was, in fact, a girl. Christy Nicole Cook was an adorable, healthy baby with fine, dark hair, brown eyes, and chubby little cheeks.

When Christy was about a year old, Susan became pregnant with the couple's second child. Even though medical professionals had told Susan she was having a girl, she was hell-bent on the idea of having a boy, so much so that she apparently told family members to expect a boy. Tucked into the baby book she put together for her second child is a greeting card printed with a teddy bear and a little pair of denim overalls. The front of the card reads, To welcome your baby boy. The card is signed by Nana.

Once again, however, the baby was not a boy. Shannon Lee Cook was born on October 2, 1980, in the Hampton General Hospital in Hampton, Virginia. Susan wrote in Shannon's baby book that the first thing she said after giving birth to her daughter was, Does he have everything? Susan variously claimed Shannon was either three weeks or about six weeks early, depending on who she was telling.

However, Shannon weighed a perfectly normal 7 pounds 4 ounces at birth, which is the size of an average full-term baby girl. Shannon was just as adorable as her big sister, with the same brown eyes and chubby cheeks, although she was born with a fine dusting of blonde hair instead of brown. By the time Shannon was two weeks old, Susan began reporting her infant daughter suffered from a variety of health ailments, mostly gastrointestinal, although over time, various other illnesses were introduced into the mix.

Susan doted on Shannon, carting her off to one doctor after another, dutifully reporting every symptom her poor little girl suffered and insisting she be hospitalized any time the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with Shannon. In the meantime, things between Susan and Doug weren't going well, and the couple separated in March of 1981. Their divorce was finalized on June 3, 1982. All this time, despite having two beautiful daughters, Susan wasn't satisfied.

With each of her children, she had been hoping for a boy. However, after Shannon, due to health issues, Susan was unable to have any more biological children. This didn't stop Susan from entering into her second marriage. On October 16, 1982, when Christy was almost four and Shannon had just turned two, Susan married Thomas Anthony Kenzia Jr., the son of Thomas Kenzia Sr. and Mary Toms, who were divorced and lived in New Jersey.

The newly minted Kensia family moved into a home together in the Smithfield, Virginia area. Susan convinced Doug Cook to sign away his parental rights to Christy and Shannon by trading the girls for a stereo, and this arrangement allowed their new stepfather, Tom, to legally adopt them. Bizarrely, after Tom adopted the girls, Susan cut up their original birth certificates. Even more bizarrely, she bought each of them new baby books and copied over word for word what she had written in their original baby books.

She was that intent on erasing Doug Cook's presence from her daughters' lives. Tom was reportedly not a very emotional man, but he truly seemed to love his daughters, and they certainly loved him. Whenever Tom got home from work, Christy and Shannon would run to him, yelling, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. In addition to their two girls, Susan and Tom also took in foster children, so there was a steady stream of unrelated children in and out of the Kensia home.

Another source of love in the girls' early lives were Mike and Lynn Peters, Susan's close friends and Christy and Shannon's godparents. Even though Lynn was very close with Susan, she couldn't help noticing that something was just a little off with Susan's parenting, especially in regard to Shannon, who continued suffering from countless medical ailments, symptoms, and hospitalizations. Susan, Lynn noted, never bonded with her younger daughter, seemingly at all.

Lynn specifically remembered one incident in which she lifted Shannon into her arms and the little girl instantly attached herself to Lynn like an octopus. Lynn remembered looking over at Susan and saying, Look how your daughter just bonded with me. This is how she should be bonding with you. Lynn, an exceptionally kind and loving woman, continued trying to guide Susan on how to be more loving toward her children, especially Shannon, who clearly lacked the expected mother-daughter relationship.

It's worth mentioning at this point that nearly from the very beginning, Susan began playing her daughters against each other. In her eyes, Christy, who was rarely sick except for some recurring ear infections, could do no wrong. Susan had a habit of holding Christy's exceptional behavior and good health over Shannon's head, treating Christy like the golden child while telling Shannon she should be more like her older sister.

On the flip side of that coin, however, Susan spent so much time caring for Shannon throughout her constant maladies that it fostered intense feelings of jealousy in Christy, who felt neglected by her mother when compared to all the time Susan spent fussing over her sick baby sister. The disparity in Susan's treatment of her daughters led to a strained relationship with the girls, which only grew into jealousy, animosity, and even hatred between Christy and Shannon as they grew older. I'll be right back after a quick sponsor break.

Susan and Tom Kenzia, unable to have biological children together, ultimately decided to adopt a child. With the help of county social worker Gloria Wilson, who specialized in adoptions and foster care, they had begun looking for the baby boy Susan had always wanted. Susan was specifically seeking a biracial baby boy.

I was surprised to find out that in terms of adoption, until not that long ago, biracial babies were considered special needs because they were harder to place, which meant Susan and Tom would have an easier time adopting such a baby. On February 14, 1985, 6-year-old Christy passed out and was subsequently hospitalized for dehydration.

The same day, four-year-old Shannon sustained a broken ankle, which, according to Susan, she incurred when she refused to go to her room, pitched a fit, and fell off the steps. From the hospital the next day, Susan later said, she called social worker Gloria Wilson to tell her they had plenty of kids already and needed another baby like they needed a hole in the head. Instead, Gloria told Susan that they may have found a baby boy for placement in the Kansia home.

The biracial baby boy was born on November 9, 1984, in Annapolis, Maryland, reportedly to an unwed teenage mother who had used cocaine within the first couple of months she was pregnant. Medical tests performed shortly after the baby's birth, however, showed he was perfectly healthy, and Gloria assured Susan he should be placed in their home within two weeks. Gloria would continue to make the same two-week promise, according to Susan, for the next four months.

The social worker sent them pictures of their potential baby, an absolutely beautiful little guy with just a little bit of curly brown hair, big brown eyes, and a big, utterly captivating, toothless grin. He looked absolutely perfect, and again, it's important to point out that all of his medical tests reportedly showed he was just as healthy as he looked. After seeing the photos, Susan and Tom were in love with the little boy.

At this point, either the biological parents or the adoption agency, Bethany Christian Services, demanded more money for the adoption to go through, which Susan and Tom refused to provide. By June, Susan said she was all but fed up with waiting and negotiation and being put off over and over again. For two years, she and Tom had been planning to take the kids to Walt Disney World.

If they didn't have the baby by the time they left for Florida on June 28, 1985, Susan later said, she was going to tell Gloria to call off the adoption. With a now-or-never ultimatum in place, Gloria was able to finalize the process, and on June 28, the Kensias drove north from Virginia to Maryland to pick up their new son before heading south to Disney World to celebrate as a family of five.

Michael Thomas Kenzia was seven months old when the Kenzias adopted him, and by all accounts, he was an absolute sweetheart. In his baby book, Susan wrote, Michael is a very happy baby, very easygoing, hardly ever cries. His face lights up when Daddy comes into room. Sometimes he seems to be in a doze, a world of his own, but he is just a very beautiful, lovable angel. By this time, the Kenzias lived in a three-bedroom house at 44 Riverside Drive in Smithfield, Virginia.

Shannon and Christy shared the downstairs bedroom, while Tom and Susan's bedroom was upstairs. Instead of turning the third bedroom, which was also upstairs, into a nursery for the baby so they could more easily monitor him and attend to his needs, for whatever reason, they instead moved Michael into the girls' bedroom downstairs. While Tom worked at the nuclear power plant in nearby Surrey, Virginia, Susan helped pay the bills by offering babysitting services in her home for a few unrelated children.

In 1984, Susan had completed a CPR course and received her certification. This was partly due to Susan's bone-deep need to make her father proud, and she also thought it would come in handy to be CPR certified as a child care provider. In June of 1985, a woman named Julia Bates visited the Kansia home in response to a newspaper ad offering Susan's babysitting services. Julia ended up hiring Susan to care for her infant daughter, Julie.

Julia later said that she noticed Susan often kept baby Michael in his high chair because she didn't want him to get into trouble. On July 9, 1985, social worker Gloria Wilson, who oversaw Michael's adoption, made her first and only home visit since Michael's placement. After that, she made phone contact with Susan multiple times, but she never saw Michael alive again. In early to mid-August of 1985, Susan was caring for seven-month-old Julie Bates,

She claimed she gave Julie a bottle and laid her down for her nap. Julie always cried when she went down for a nap, Susan said, so she wasn't concerned until Julie abruptly stopped crying, at which point Susan went upstairs to check on the baby and found that Julie's skin had turned dark and she wasn't breathing. Susan performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the infant and managed to revive her.

Immediately, Susan said, she called the Isle of Wight County Rescue Squad, followed by Julie's father, Carter Bates, who was home sick that day from his job at the Smithfield Packing Company. When the rescue squad arrived at the Kansia home, baby Julie was awake but groggy. Susan told everyone who would listen that Julie had spit up some formula and choked on it, causing her to stop breathing.

Carter followed the ambulance carrying his daughter to Riverside Hospital in Newport News, Virginia, while his wife, Julia, rushed to the hospital from an appointment in Chesapeake. At the hospital, Julie was examined thoroughly. Doctors even took x-rays trying to determine what had caused the baby to stop breathing, but they were unable to come up with any plausible explanation. Although Julie was hospitalized briefly, doctors continued to be unable to explain what caused Julie to stop breathing, and the problem did not recur.

Susan later wrote a handwritten account of the event, as she seemed to have a propensity for documenting life events in writing.

Susan wrote, Sometime in July, Julie, the baby girl I was babysitting, choked. I had fed her and she was laying on the floor playing. She was really fussy so I took her upstairs to lay her down for her nap. I laid her on her stomach and I walked back downstairs. She always cried when I laid her down. She stopped crying all at once. She didn't gradually wind down like she normally did. She went wah and that was it.

I went running upstairs, and when I looked into the playpen, her face was almost black. I picked her up. She had white stuff around her mouth, like she had spit up. I brought her back around. I called the rescue squad. I told them what had happened. I waited 15 minutes. I live within five minutes of the squad building. I called back, and the dispatcher said, ah, you wanted me to send them to your house. I didn't know that.

The child was going into shock. What did she think I meant? Then, rescue squad finally got there. I reached Julie's mom about the time the rescue squad arrived. They got her permission to treat Julie. Because the Bateses believed Susan's story about Julie choking on formula, they left Julie in Susan's care until August 28, 1985, when an apparent tragedy struck the Kensia household. During the two months after baby Michael's adoption, he was apparently plagued with health issues.

Susan later insisted she and Tom knew instantly when they adopted Michael that there was something wrong with him, and she spoke with multiple health care providers about the possibility that her biracial infant son had cerebral palsy, telling them he exhibited the telltale stiffness and muscle issues the condition would cause. She claimed that at times, Michael was very stiff, and other times, he was floppy. According to her, Michael had a hard time sitting up on his own, and whenever he tried to pull himself up on furniture, he fell.

She also claimed doctors told her Michael suffered from epilepsy and social deprivation from the events of his first several months of life. On August 11, 1985, Susan took Michael to Maryview Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, telling medical staff her son had a seizure and stopped breathing, so she revived him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It's worth noting that Maryview was 24 miles from the Kensia home, which means it was about a 36-minute drive.

Riverside Hospital in Newport News was only 18 miles and about six minutes closer, so it's not entirely clear why Susan chose the farther option when the baby's son she'd wanted for so many years had been near death. Michael was hospitalized overnight, and various tests were performed on the baby. Tests were negative for the type of seizure Susan described, and medical staff did not witness any episodes of Michael holding his breath, so he was discharged the following day.

Susan claimed a doctor told her Michael may have a central nervous system disorder. Just over a week later, on August 21, 1985, Susan once again arrived at Maryview Hospital with Michael, saying the baby's heart had stopped and he had stopped breathing, so she had to revive him with CPR. Even though Michael appeared perfectly healthy to his pediatrician, Dr. Philip R. Thomason, Michael was hospitalized for three days because of Susan's claim that she had to perform CPR on him.

On August 24th, Michael was discharged in good condition, according to Dr. Thomason's partner, Dr. Harry D. Cox. After this incident, Michael was sent home with an apnea monitor, which would observe his breathing and heart rate while he slept. Over the next couple of days, the monitor apparently went off several times while Michael was asleep. A day or so after Michael's release from the hospital, Susan visited the home of Nancy Oliver, who ran an adoptive parents group in Newport News.

Nancy was surprised to see Susan on her doorstep bearing four large garbage bags, which were stuffed with dozens of disposable diapers, as well as two grocery bags containing 30 to 50 jars of baby food. There were multiple brands among the diapers in the bags, and although Michael was just nine months old and obviously still in diapers, Susan said she wanted Nancy to have them because she bought the wrong kind. Michael wouldn't eat the baby food, Susan said, because he didn't like it.

During that visit, Nancy later reported feeling very uncomfortable with the way Susan handled Michael. At one point, Susan squeezed Michael so hard he gasped for air, saying to her infant son, If I take you to the hospital with broken ribs, the doctors are never going to believe you got broken ribs from me hugging you too tight.

Over the next few days, Susan later claimed that Michael received a number of injuries caused by her two girls as well as the children she babysat, including being hit by toys and being hit in the face by a soccer ball and falling off the steps. The cause of these injuries, which left various bruises all over Michael's head and body, would soon become hotly contested.

According to Susan, at 5.05 p.m. on Wednesday, August 28, 1985, she discovered Michael in full respiratory and cardiac arrest at administered CPR until the county rescue squad arrived to take over. Still in full arrest, Michael was rushed by ambulance to Riverside Hospital in Newport News, where medical staff worked feverishly for over two hours to revive him.

Tragically, at 7.27 p.m., 9-month-old Michael Thomas Kenzia was pronounced dead exactly two months after his placement in the Kenzia home. Medical records documenting the incident note the multiple bruises covering Michael's face and body. In fact, the bruises were so concerning that medical staff at Riverside reported the injuries to a child abuse hotline. The medical records state, Michael is a 9-month-old infant who has a history of aborted SIDS and has been on a monitor.

It's important to point out here that the remark about Michael's history of aborted SIDS and his use of the apnea monitor was based solely on Susan's reporting. Medical staff never witnessed Michael's breathing stop. The records also stated that Susan says Michael was not his self today and was not feeling well. However, he was not excessively somnambulant and was able to sit as normal without ataxia.

For the record, somnambulant means sleepy or sluggish, and ataxia is a lack of muscle control, which Susan claimed all along that Michael suffered from. In fact, she told a lot of people that Michael couldn't sit up well by himself or even hold his head up, although these notes in his medical record indicate otherwise. Julia Bates later told the Virginian Pilot newspaper that Susan called and said to come pick up Julie, that Michael was dead.

Another child Susan cared for at the time, Christopher, had already been picked up by the time Susan found Michael dead. She claimed Christopher's mother, Helena Thompson, was the last adult besides herself to see Michael alive. When Helena picked up Christopher that afternoon, Susan said that both she and Helena looked at Michael and said in unison, He doesn't look good. Michael, Susan claimed, looked very tired, and she said to Helena, He doesn't look like he's going to make it through the day.

She claimed the remark meant she thought Michael would soon fall asleep. However, it's especially interesting in light of the medical records pointing out that Susan told Riverside Hospital staff that Michael had not been especially sleepy that day. The day after Michael's death, Susan wrote a poem in his baby book entitled You Are Loved.

Signing the poem SLK 82985, Susan wrote, You were given as a gift from God. We didn't have you long. You were not from our flesh and bone, but we chose you for our own. For years we prayed to have a son, and God sent us a very special one. Your curly brown hair and beautiful brown eyes brightened our days and enriched our lives. You were ours for only a very short while, but just like us, God couldn't resist your beautiful smile.

And now our son has gone to be with our God for eternity. No, not our own flesh and blood, but only you and God really know, my dear sweet son, just how much we wanted you and just how much you are loved. Now I'll pause for another sponsor break. Michael's autopsy was conducted on August 29th, 1985 by Dr. Farouk Behram-Preswala, the chief medical examiner for Eastern Virginia.

In his report, Dr. Presswalla described Michael as having brown hair, brown eyes, and just four little baby teeth. He said Michael was a nine-month-old Indian-Hispanic male infant adopted two months ago from alleged drug-abusing, while pregnant, 15-year-old mother and was known to have some type of CNS dysfunction, question mark CP, as well as a recently diagnosed apneic episode, was recently the victim of several accidents given his propensity to fall easily.

His parents state he was hit in face with soccer ball 826 while sitting on steps, allegedly causing facial and spinal bruising. He had also been hit several times by a toy popcorn popper by a two-year-old his mother babysits for during the past few days. Parents also noted recurrent injury to chin area caused by decedent's tries at lifting himself up and falling. They noted he had decreased his food intake in the past week and had become markedly more ataxic in his movements today.

Again, remember that the doctor's notes from the hospital on the day of Michael's death stated that Susan said the baby was able to sit as normal without ataxia. That's a pretty huge discrepancy. The medical examiner's pathological diagnosis included multiple components, the first of which was multiple bruises observed on Michael's face, a rectangular bruise on his forehead, several bruises on his back, and other bruises on his left thigh, his penis, his upper lip, his left elbow, and his abdomen.

Michael also had stitches inside his lower lip. The report made note of Michael's history of accidents due to his propensity to fall easily, which came directly from Susan. I'll include the body diagrams from Michael's autopsy report in the Facebook photo album for this episode so you can get the full picture of how banged up this baby really was.

Michael had suffered at least partial collapse in both lungs, and tissue examined under the microscope showed meat fibers and vegetable material, providing histological evidence that Michael had aspirated food matter not long before his death. Dr. Preswala also found green stick fractures to ribs 6 and 7 on Michael's left side, as well as an extrapleural hematoma or collection of blood between the left lung and the ribs. Michael had also suffered mild dehydration.

Dr. Praswala's case summary from the autopsy report reads, Microscopic examination of heart showed focal areas of myofibrillar degeneration consistent with stress cardiomyopathy described in Human Pathology, March 1980, in a paper entitled Stress Cardiomyopathy by Sebelin and Hirsch. These changes are seen as a result of stress from repeated trauma. Death is attributed to stress cardiomyopathy as a result of repeated trauma and bruising.

The circumstances of the injuries are incompatible with the history of accidental injuries as they are too numerous and too widely distributed to conform to this. The injuries suggest child abuse. However, it is consistent with injuries produced by an older sibling or another child. The circumstances of the death are, therefore, undetermined. After Dr. Perswala released the result of his autopsy, police began investigating Michael's death as suspicious.

Michael's graveside service took place on August 31, 1985, at St. Luke's Memorial Park in Smithfield, Virginia, with the services handled by the Colonial Funeral Home. Standing over Michael's grave, the minister read the poem Susan wrote. Carter Bates, father of baby Julie Bates, later told Anita Lee of the Virginian Pilot that the poem was very touching and everybody cried.

Susan later told police that she had decided Michael's casket would be closed at his funeral, saying she didn't think people could tolerate seeing a dead baby in a casket. Besides, Michael was covered in bruises, and she said, Michael's grave was eventually adorned with a small headstone with a lamb and a dove carved near the top.

The inscription reads, Below that is inscribed part of a biblical verse from Hebrews 13.2. After Michael's death, Susan put a halt to her in-home babysitting service.

In the fall of 1985, Susan enrolled in an EMT training course taught by Diana Trier, the same Isle of Wight County Rescue Squad member who taught the CPR course Susan completed in 1984. Susan also submitted an application to join the Rescue Squad, but once she learned police were investigating Michael's death, she quit the class and withdrew her application.

On October 10, 1985, Susan gave a long, rambling, extremely detailed two-hour statement to Smithfield Police Lieutenant Charles Phelps and Special Agent William Colton. At the time, she was not a suspect. As a matter of fact, only her husband, Thomas, who was by all accounts a non-violent man, was suspected of causing Michael's injuries.

During her statement, Susan told the investigators that she had studied to be an accountant for about a year at Key Business College in Newport News, but she was unable to finish because her younger daughter, Shannon, had a lot of stomach problems and required medical care.

When Special Agent Colton asked Susan to discuss Michael's adoption, Susan told them about her phone call with social worker Gloria Wilson on February 15th, during which Gloria told her there were two potential children for placement, a black baby who was a couple of weeks old and a three-and-a-half-month-old biracial baby. At first, Gloria thought they had already found a home for the biracial baby, but it turned out that the other family decided to take the younger boy.

Susan told the investigators that as soon as she saw Michael, she and Tom knew there was something wrong with him, even though Gloria told them all along that the baby was normal and healthy. When they finally drove to Maryland to collect Michael on June 28, Susan said, his foster mother gave her a little booklet of information about Michael that included instructions on keeping him in a restraint because he tended to fall out of his walker.

The booklet also contained the baby's daily schedule, in which the foster mother mentioned that the baby spent most of his day in his crib or playpen. Susan said the woman only held the baby to feed him or give him a bath. According to Susan, Michael's birth mother had been on drugs since she was 12, including heroin, cocaine, LSD, and marijuana, and drank and smoked all the while.

The original story was that the young lady had used cocaine within the first month or two of her pregnancy, but stopped. But Susan seemed keen to embellish for the investigators. When Michael was handed over to her, Susan said, After picking up their new son, Susan said, the family stopped for lunch.

it was as if we had him all his life he was just a happy baby the kids went crazy over him you know just all excited and kept asking me i guess because we had done foster care they kept saying is he ours forever mommy and i said yes then when he died it was you said we could have him forever mommy you can't explain to a six and four year old they don't understand

During the family's trip to Disney World, Susan said, they put Michael in the walker and she called Gloria from Florida, saying she was concerned about the stiffness in his arms and legs and how his left side was weaker than his right. In the walker, he pushed with his right foot and dragged his left. Michael was unable to crawl, Susan said, so in the hotel room, he scooted from the bedroom to the bathroom, where he went to sit up and hit his head twice on the tile floor.

He didn't seem phased, she said, and he didn't cry. We brought him home, and I had noticed several times when he would be taking a nap, I would be watching him, and there would be long pauses in between breaths. Regarding the evening Michael was first hospitalized, Susan told the investigators that she gave him a bath, fed him a bottle, took him upstairs, changed his diaper, and got him ready for bed.

When she laid him in his crib, she said, Michael started throwing up. So she took him into the bathroom, took off his clothes and rinsed him in the tub, wrapped him in a towel and carried him back to the changing table, where she laid him down and began drying him off. At that point, Susan said, It was like he was going into a seizure. His eyes rolled back in his head. He was bluish, his lips were purple, and the inside of his mouth was purple.

He bent his arms up like this and he was jerking. In fact, his whole body was jerking and his legs were real stiff. And after he stopped shaking, he stopped breathing. He did not breathe and so I gave him mouth to mouth. I did not have to give any chest pressure. His heart did not stop. He just stopped breathing. At the hospital, she said, pediatrician Dr. Thomason ordered an EEG performed on Michael as well as a CAT scan to be sure he didn't have a brain tumor.

Michael was hospitalized from August 11th through the 13th, Susan said, and Dr. Thomason wanted him to stay another night, but she insisted on taking Michael home on the 13th and bringing him back on the 14th for his scheduled EEG, because her husband worked and she couldn't be in two places at once to stay with Michael and take care of her other children. Dr. Thomason agreed, she said, that if it was more convenient for her, she could take Michael home.

Susan told the detective and the special agent that she and Tom bought a Fisher-Price baby monitor so they could hear Michael, and she carried her end of the monitor around the house with her. On the night of Friday, August 15th, Susan said, she checked on Michael and found him lying on his back, his lips blue, not breathing. She immediately picked him up, and he started breathing on his own again. She told the police, Dr. Thomas had explained to me that on babies, if you stimulate them, it makes them start breathing.

The following night, Susan told them, Michael stopped breathing again and she had to revive him with mouth-to-mouth, although she didn't explain why she didn't take him to the hospital that time or another subsequent time she said the same thing happened. She did, however, go off on a tangent about all the hard work she had put into Michael.

Most of his problems came during his nap. Tom and I were trying to figure out why it was starting to happen now when it wasn't happening before. But when we got him, he couldn't turn over, he couldn't sit up, he couldn't crawl, he couldn't pull up. He couldn't do anything but lay there, and he was happy and content just to do that. When we made him stop sucking his thumb, he started to do things. He started crawling. I worked on him. I had worked so hard to get him to pull up.

Every morning before I would get him out of his crib, I would show him how to pull up. I would put his hand on the crib bar and pull his leg up and then pull his other leg up. Well, he would still be squatting, but he would be holding on and his feet would be on the mattress and I would reach for him to get him to stand up and he would stand up and he would reach with his right hand and then he would start to fall back because he did not have enough strength in his left hand to hold on.

I would catch him before he would fall back, and I did that every time before I would get him out of bed to teach him to pull up. I had worked so hard on that. I had exercised his arms, his legs, his neck, and just like if you were going to physical therapy to try to work out some of the stiffness, and it did. It worked almost all of it out. This was not something I did occasionally. I did it every time I changed his diaper. She said the only thought she had about why Michael started having trouble breathing was because he had learned to turn over onto his back.

When he slept on his stomach, she said, he seemed fine, but If you walked in the room and he was asleep and he was laying on his back, you could see that he was having difficulty in breathing. You could see it by the way his chest was rising and everything. After lunch on August 21st, Susan said, she laid Michael down for a nap on his stomach and checked on him every 15 to 30 minutes. Because he hadn't had a morning nap, he didn't get up at 2 o'clock like he normally would. When she checked on him at 2 p.m., everything was fine and he was still on his stomach.

At 2.30, however, Susan said she found Michael lying on his back, his skin pale, and his lips and the inside of his mouth tinged blue.

When I picked him up out of the crib, it was like picking up a rag doll, and he was just totally limp. There was no heartbeat, no pulse, no nothing. No breathing or anything. I laid him on the changing table and started CPR, breathing into his mouth, and I did get some response out of him. It took me four or five minutes, but I got him back. He inhaled so deeply that his nose collapsed. He was trying to suck in so much air.

Unprompted, she added, I babysit. I don't know if you know about the case of the baby that they had to take to Riverside because she had spit up and was crying and she sucked it into her lungs. As you probably recall, the doctors never figured out why Julie Bates stopped breathing. It was Susan who insisted Julie choked on spit-up formula. In the hospital after the incident on the 21st, Susan said, Michael had to be watched 24 hours a day. She went back to see him on Thursday after Tom got home from work to watch the girls.

I don't remember the nurse's name, but when I got there, I got Michael up out of the crib. He had all the monitor wires, and I sat down in the rocking chair with him and was rocking him and just doing what I normally do, just kissing him and hugging him and squeezing him.

After about two hours, the nurse said, are you always this way towards him? And I said, what do you mean? And said, since you came through that door, you have done nothing but hug and kiss and squeeze on him. I said, yes, when you have waited eight years for something and you almost lose it, you don't take it for granted. I said, I have waited eight years for him and the thought of losing him kills me. She said, well, you've done nothing but hug him and squeeze him since you've been in here. I said, well, it was too close of a call. That last part stood out to me.

There was no reason to include that little anecdote except to make herself sound like the perfect, loving, long-suffering mother. You know who tries really hard to convince others they're the best mothers? The worst mothers.

Susan went on to lean hard into the idea that Michael had cerebral palsy, telling the investigators that several doctors and nurses had given her the same opinion, although they told her they wouldn't know until Michael was a year old whether his stiffness and other issues were caused by cerebral palsy, social deprivation, or some combination of the two. Just like Dr. Cox told Dr. Robinson, in the back of his mind, he said he felt Michael had epilepsy and maybe the possibility of cerebral palsy. He said he worked with a lot of kids, and Michael strikes him as a kid with CP.

I said, well, I'm glad to hear you say that. I've been around kids with cerebral palsy, and when Michael would sit on the floor, he would hold his arms out to the side. His toes stayed curled. I kept those hard white shoes on him to try to straighten his toes up, and then when I finally figured out the little monkey was curling them under there anyway, there was no point in keeping his shoes on because he was bruising his knees. I don't think he bruised the right knee because he was always kicking himself in the right knee. With those hard white shoes, he would kick himself in the knee. I have to interject here with two observations.

First, if Michael's left side was the weaker side, how was he kicking himself with that leg and the right knee hard enough to bruise? Secondly, if you have a child that you suspect has cerebral palsy who can't control their neck movements, why on earth would you put them in a walker and let them just flop around?

A 1983 study in the American Journal of Diseases of Children discussed how using an infant walker with a child with cerebral palsy produced negative results and prevented the infant from developing equilibrium reactions and protective responses, as well as perpetuating physical problems that can develop with the condition. Yet Michael, who supposedly couldn't support his own head, had been playing in a walker even before the Kenzies adopted him.

When she spontaneously launched into a description of the morning of Michael's death, Susan told the investigators, On Wednesday, August 28th, Michael woke up around 6.30. He had the monitor wires wrapped around his neck. Tom had been up with him five or six times during the night because Michael was very restless. The alarm did not go off. He could hear that he was restless and having a very restless night, and I had gotten up with him two times. He ate breakfast at 7 o'clock. He had mixed cereal with fruit and six ounces of formula.

He had no vomiting. I was talking to Tom and I said, you won't believe it, he had breakfast without even a fuss because we were having a problem getting him to eat. Lunch was offered at 11 o'clock. He ate very little. He drank three ounces of formula. He played with Catherine and Christopher. Christopher jumped off the couch onto Catherine and Michael, mainly Michael, hitting him in the groin area. Christopher also climbed into a wooden kitchen chair.

Well, when he stood up in it, it fell backwards. Well, it fell on Michael. And well, the kitchen chair leaned over and it fell over onto Michael, hitting him in the lower abdomen, groin area, and leg area. Christopher's head hit Michael's head. Catherine and Christopher were fighting over the toy popper. Christopher let go and Michael got hit because Catherine was still pulling.

tried to get Michael to drink some juice, he wouldn't do that. At three o'clock, I fed him some beef and vegetables. He was very reluctant to eat. He made a big mess. It was all over him and everything. So I put him in the bathtub and he fell over about three times, but he did not hit his head. He did not hit his head on the tub that I know of. I mean, I was right there with him. He was splashing, was what he was doing, and fell over three or four times. And after his bath, he did throw up. I called his doctor around four o'clock.

i was concerned about his lack of interest in eating i've got the phone bill right there and the circle shows that i called on the day he died an hour and nine minutes before he died i called because i was concerned about the fact that the child would not eat he would not eat he had acted weird all day

I called them because I was concerned because here I had tried to feed him lunch, and I tried to feed him supper, and he did not want to eat supper, and I kind of made him eat supper whether he wanted to or not. I just put so much food in that he had to swallow something, but other than that, he spit it out, and the nurse told me not to be concerned as long as he was taking 18, 24 ounces of formula, and they told me not to bring him in. Remember that meat fibers and vegetable matter was found in Michael's lungs indicating that he had aspirated food.

It's no wonder, considering Susan describes force-feeding him at suppertime.

After all the kids had left except Julie, Susan said, I had sent the girls. They wanted to go play, and I think they left the house at 4.15. Thank God they were not there. I was sitting there by myself because all the other kids I babysat for had left. The alarm went off. It was 5.10 p.m. I jumped up and started upstairs. I'm thinking, he's pulled the lead loose. And then I'm thinking he couldn't have pulled the lead loose because he was in too deep in sleep. When I walked into his bedroom, all I can see is the front of the crib.

I could see his right arm hanging out of the crib. Well, when I saw that, I was scared to death to go to the crib. So I walked over and looked into the crib, and his left arm was bent up under his body like he had rolled over, and his right arm was outside the crib, and his eyes were wide open, and there was some brown stuff around his mouth, like he'd either had a seizure or spit up some. I picked him up, and I pushed the reset button, and I kept pushing the reset button. What I was wanting to do was leave the monitor on so that when I got a heartbeat back, but I

But after trying too long, I just tore the monitor off him, and the first time I blew in his mouth, his stomach went up like I thought his airway might be blocked. I turned him over, and I hit him three or four times on the back because I thought maybe there was something blocking his airway, because when I pushed down on his stomach, it all came out his nose, didn't come out his mouth, which made me think the airway was blocked, and I turned him back over, laid him on the changing table. Like blowing into a hollow jug is what it sounded like. I was beginning to panic because I knew.

I knew when I looked in the crib that he was dead, but I was hoping that I could bring him back, because it had worked before. I know now that when I looked in the crib that I knew he was dead. Just from looking at him, you could tell that the spirit was not there. He was dead. I don't care if it took me but sixty seconds to get up there when the alarm went off. He was gone. But I tried my best. I did not want him to be dead. I had waited too long to have him, to lose him, and only have him two months.

Susan said she took Michael downstairs after about 10 minutes and laid him on the table to continue CPR while she called Michael Peters because she couldn't remember the rescue squad's number.

Lynn Peters called the squad, and Susan said, Well, I still had him on the table and was still doing CPR, but I didn't get any response and it was 20 to 30 minutes of doing CPR. I knew that he was dead. Alvin was the first one to get there. It was about 10 minutes after I got Lynn and then Alvin took over CPR and I told Mike it is not going to do any good because he is dead.

During her interview, Susan threw shade in Dr. Preswala's direction, saying he had neglected in the autopsy report to mention some injuries she knew Michael had, such as a scratch from one of the family's cats, another bruise, and bite marks on his foot and right arm from a toddler she babysat. She told the investigators that she had called the medical examiner for information, and he made her feel like he was accusing her during that phone call of harming her baby.

She also gave yet another account of several injuries Michael supposedly suffered in the two to three days before his death, saying that after bringing Michael home from the hospital that weekend, she took him and the girls to Penny's to get the girls soccer shoes and things, and Michael was in the stroller. She didn't park the stroller far enough from the door of her Suburban. And when I went to shut it, I could see that it was going to hit him, and I had got to it right as it got to his face and stopped it from hitting him as hard as it would have hit him. It just barely hit him. He didn't even cry.

She mentioned that two of her charges, Catherine and Christopher, had hit Michael in the head with the popcorn popper more than once during the day and that Christopher was very jealous of Michael. In one incident, she said Michael and Christopher were struggling over a toy radio and Christopher let go and Michael smacked himself in the face with it. Susan talked about Michael and Catherine playing with what she called a ball in the bowl while Christopher jumped off the couch onto them, with Michael taking most of the hit.

Later that afternoon, she said, Tom came home and was bombarded by the kids. Tom sat down on the couch and Christy went to jump on him, not knowing Michael was crawling up behind her and accidentally kicking Michael between the eyes. She also said one of her five cats had scratched Michael and that none of the kids except Christopher would do anything to hurt him on purpose. Just to put a cherry on top, Susan claimed Michael bruised very easily.

When Susan asked if they would be talking to the people she used to babysit for, Special Agent Colton said, The last thing Susan said during her police interview was this,

I can't get on with my life until this investigation is over. We do want to be able to adopt again, but because of what Presswala put on that piece of paper, that will affect us the rest of our life, and we won't be able to adopt again. If only she were right. I'll pause here for one last sponsor break.

In October of 1985, the two-month investigation into the suspicious death of nine-month-old Michael Thomas Kenzia ended with the Commonwealth's attorney W. Parker Counsel's announcement that no charges would be pressed against adoptive mother Susan Kenzia. The same month, medical examiner Dr. Farouk Presswala spoke to a newspaper reporter about Michael's autopsy, saying that his examination of the baby's body uncovered no pre-existing medical conditions.

He also mentioned that the bruises all over Michael's body indicated that SIDS was absolutely not Michael's cause of death. Soon afterward, Susan called a reporter herself, she said, to give my side of the story. Once again, she insisted that Michael had a nervous system disorder that caused him to fall down any time he used furniture to pull himself up to a standing position. She blamed Michael's frequent falls for many of the bruises found during the autopsy and insisted others could have been caused by her CPR attempts.

The reporter quoted Susan as saying, Unless you've lost a baby, you have no idea how painful it is. After Michael's death, Susan was prescribed tranquilizers to help her deal with the pain of the tragedy. In February of 1986, Susan took too many of the pills. It's unclear who called for help, but Evelyn Fancher, the president of the Isle of Wight County Rescue Squad, later told a reporter that she responded to the call and found Susan lying on her bed, awake but disoriented.

Evelyn said Susan had taken numerous pills from a couple of prescriptions. She said she couldn't sleep because every time she closed her eyes, she saw the baby. It's very much worth noting that Evelyn's account doesn't match the one Susan herself wrote down in a manuscript she later wrote, in which she described taking her pills over and over because she kept forgetting she had already taken them, growing more and more confused the more pills she took. She also didn't mention not being able to sleep as the reason for taking the pills.

In fact, she only described being wide awake, grieving for Michael while she folded clean laundry. She only retired to her bedroom after taking multiple doses of her medication. Susan was taken by ambulance to Riverside Hospital, where she was admitted for psychological treatment. During her hospitalization, Susan met a man named George Geis, who was also in treatment for depression. George later told a reporter that upon talking to Susan, he realized he worked with her husband, Tom, at the nuclear power station.

Of Susan's depression, George said, she was in about ten times worse shape than I was. During a group therapy session, George described Susan telling the group about finding Michael hooked up to his apnea monitor with foam coming out of his mouth. She told the horrified group how she unhooked the monitor and tried to revive him. George said, she tried so hard. She just wanted the baby to come back. When Susan told that story in group, he said, everybody in the room, they had to leave. They couldn't handle it.

George and Susan were both released from the hospital on March 7, 1986. Because their families lived in the same subdivision, they saw each other multiple times afterward and even became friends. Tom and Susan brought their girls over to play with the Geis' two children, who were the same ages as Christy and Shannon. The Kensia family soon had another child to bring over to play at the Geis' home.

Less than a month after Susan's release from the hospital, against all child welfare protocol, somehow, the adoption of a second child was approved. This baby boy, born on January 11, 1986, in Galax, Virginia, was placed into Susan and Tom's home by the Grayson County Department of Social Services. This adoption was overseen by Gloria Wilson, the same social worker responsible for Michael's adoption. Kevin Ryan Kenzia was just two and a half months old when he was placed into the Kenzia home.

He was also a biracial baby, a tiny little guy with dark eyes and black hair. As of this recording, there are no known photographs of baby Kevin. Susan did create a baby book for Kevin. However, it appears to have been repurposed. Kevin's name was written over the sloppily erased name of another little boy, Jonathan Price, who was a special needs foster child who lived in the home for a while.

Martha D. Waters, from the Adoption Resource Exchange of Virginia, spoke several times on the phone with Susan while she searched for a child to adopt. When the Virginian pilot's Anita Lee asked Ms. Waters if she knew that prior to Kevin's adoption, another adopted son had died under Susan's care, Ms. Waters said, I think she indicated that she had gotten a child. I think she might have mentioned that there was a tragedy.

George Geis later told the same reporter that Susan wanted a biracial baby because they were easier to find. She wanted more kids and she could not have another baby and that was the only one she could get at that time. He said Susan was great with Kevin. She would lay him on a pallet in the living room and watch him through the open doorway from her seat at the kitchen table. She never took her eyes off him. Kevin was apparently a perfectly healthy baby boy.

Susan never made mention to anyone of any potential medical problems or disorders the way she did with Michael, which makes what I'm about to tell you even more shocking. On the morning of May 25, 1986, Susan Kenzia made a phone call to her close friend, Lynn Peters, who immediately rushed over. A local doctor was also called to the Kenzia home at 44 Riverside Drive in Smithfield.

Lynn opened the front window of the home and retrieved her goddaughters, seven-year-old Christy and five-year-old Shannon, through the window, putting them in the back seat of her car and pulling away from the house without any explanation. Shannon watched through the back window of the car as they drove away, asking Lynn if all the flashing lights were the reason she picked them up. At just four and a half months old, Kevin was pronounced dead just days short of the two-month anniversary of his placement into the Kansia home.

Susan later said the reason she called her friends instead of the rescue squad was because she knew it was too late. Kevin was already dead. On May 28, 1986, Kevin was laid to rest at St. Luke's Memorial Park in Smithfield, right next to the older brother he never met. The Colonial Funeral Home again handled the funeral arrangements, and the Reverend James Cheshire conducted the service as he had with Michael's.

Unlike Michael's grave, which is marked by a small headstone, Kevin's grave remains unmarked to this day. An autopsy was conducted by Dr. Gregory Wanger, who wrote under case summary and comment, The decedent is a second of two adopted male infants to die in the custody of the same woman. The first, Michael Kenzia, autopsy number 345-85, died nine months before with numerous bruises inconsistent with the history. This decedent had a few bruises on the right thigh and knee area.

Autopsy examination did not show any lethal injuries. A right otitis media ear infection was found with cultures growing E. coli and Staph aureus. CSF and blood cultures were negative, indicating no systemic infection. Police investigation revealed a history of foreign material being placed in the child's mouth to control its crying. In view of the suspicious circumstances of the first death combined with the history, this death is viewed as suspicious.

Autopsy examination cannot rule out an asphyxial death. Therefore, the cause and manner is undetermined. After Kevin died, the investigation into Michael's murder was reopened.

In next week's episode, I'll delve into the aftermath of the deaths of not one but two adopted baby boys in Susan Kenzia's care just nine months apart, the criminal charges that resulted, the weird relationship between Susan and her defense attorney, and the murder trial, the outcome of which I think you'll find as mind-boggling as I did. That's it for part one of Groomed to Die, The Kenzia Children, the first-ever Suffer the Little Children podcast miniseries.

Join me next week for part two. If you like the show, please follow or subscribe to Suffer the Little Children on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Spreaker, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast listening app. And please leave me a five-star rating and a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Visit the website at sufferthelittlechildrenpod.com.

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This podcast is researched, written, hosted, edited, and produced by Lane. All music for the show is licensed from audiojungle.net. For more information about preventing or reporting child abuse, visit childhelp.org or call your area's child abuse hotline. And remember, if you see something, say something.