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Hey, it's Nancy. Before we begin today, I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. 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.
because hadn't thought he was Jesus Christ. Born Evil, the Serial Killer and the Savior, an ID true crime event, premieres Monday, September 2nd at 9. Watch on ID or stream on Max. Set your DVR. A listener's note. The following episode contains coarse language, adult themes, and content of a violent and disturbing nature and may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Today on Crime Beat, I'm going to share a case that will leave you shaking your head. A case so senseless and preventable that you'll likely feel frustrated and angry. I know because that's how I've felt covering it. It's just that awful. Even the scene in the courtroom during the trial stood out to me.
All the regular players were there, the prosecutors and defense lawyers, and of course, the two people who were charged in this case. But with the exception of the police and a few other reporters, the gallery of the courtroom was pretty much empty. What was noticeably missing were the loved ones of the victim.
It was heartbreaking to see this teenager had no family there to fight for justice. I'm Nancy Hixt, a crime reporter for Global News. Today on Crime Beat, I want to give that young boy a voice. I mean, this is a case that will haunt me forever. I mean, it's, how can it not? This is the story of Alex Redita.
On a warm spring evening in May of 2013, police and paramedics were called to a home in a quiet suburb in northwest Calgary. 911 for the city. Yes, I need an ambulance. Tell me exactly what happened. Well, I came from work and I found my son in bed and he's not breathing. Your son is not breathing? No. Are you with him right now?
The 911 operator asked the father to go to his son. He wanted to guide him through administering CPR.
Okay, I want you to lay him flat on his back on the ground and remove any pillows. Okay? Okay, he's got lots of pillows here. Okay, and I want you to kneel next to him. Look into the mouth for food or vomit. Okay.
The father said his son wasn't responding. But the operator persisted. He wanted the father to keep trying. Okay.
The operator went on to tell the father how to do chest compressions. Okay, so go ahead. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
Paramedics arrived within minutes of calling 911. Nothing could have prepared them for what they found. I've never seen anything like it.
That's Calgary Police Detective Matt DeMarino. He was called to investigate. I'll tell you more about him later on. He said veteran officers were shaken to their core. In this case, there was one detective who lived near the scene. And instead of, you know, coming into the office, he just phoned in and said, I live near there. I'll stop at the scene and I'll hook up with you guys later. And he did that.
And this is a 25-year guy with five years experience in homicide. And he showed up a couple of hours later and he was stuttering. He wasn't speaking in complete sentences. And it was weird for such a seasoned guy. And then he put that picture of Alex up in the TV in the boardroom and my jaw dropped. Like I had never seen anything like that before. I've looked at that photo.
It's one of the worst things I've ever seen. I need to warn you, this case is disturbing, and I'll be sharing some really awful details, evidence of severe child neglect. Alex Redita was found lying in a bed in the upstairs of his home. The 15-year-old was wearing a yellow t-shirt with blue sleeves.
There was a cool beachy vibe on the front of it with palm trees, but the t-shirt was the only thing normal about Alex's appearance. His brown hair was thin. His skin was pale. His eyes sunken. His jawbone was sharp. Alex had no usable teeth and he was covered in dozens of ulcers and sores.
The teenager was wearing a diaper. His hip bones stuck out. His legs were skin and bones. Alex weighed just 37 pounds. 37 pounds! To put that into perspective, the average weight of a healthy 15-year-old boy is 125 pounds.
Most boys hit 37 pounds by the time they're four or five years old. Despite all efforts by paramedics to resuscitate Alex, it was too late. Alex Radita was dead. Emil and Ronica Radita are originally from Romania. As adults, they decided to move to Canada, leaving behind an oppressive government regime.
Canada would give them every opportunity Romania didn't. They had eight kids, five boys and three girls. All were born in Windsor, Ontario. Alex was the third youngest. The family moved around a bit. They lived in Kitchener, Ontario, as well as Winnipeg, Manitoba, and eventually moved to Surrey, B.C.
Emil worked in construction as a handyman. Radhika was a stay-at-home mom. In December of 2000, when Alex was just shy of his third birthday, he was taken to the Surrey Memorial Hospital. Alex was a very sick little boy. He was on the brink of death. He suffered from abdominal pain, a fever, he had dark circles under his eyes,
He was vomiting a lot. He was constantly thirsty. And his breath smelled fruity, or like ketones. Ketones are chemicals that build up when your body starts to burn fat for energy. The most common cause is insulin deficiency in diabetics.
So even before Alex's lab work came back, doctors were able to say with confidence what was causing his health problems. Alex was diagnosed with untreated type 1 diabetes and he was transferred to the intensive care unit at the British Columbia Children's Hospital. His parents were given special training on how to treat Alex.
He needed to have his diet and blood sugar levels monitored, and he would need insulin. That meant he would need his finger poked several times a day to test his blood, and he would need several insulin injections a day. Just over a week after he was hospitalized, Alex was well enough to be discharged.
Back at the Rodita home, a nurse stopped in twice a day for several weeks to make sure Alex's parents were properly treating his condition. A lot of effort was spent in training them on how to give him his shots and how to monitor his insulin levels and extensive training. That's Charlene Beck.
She's now retired from the RCMP, but she was an officer for 25 years. Alex was five years old when she became involved in his case. That was back in 2003, nearly three years after he was diagnosed with diabetes. She met him during his second brush with death.
I had received a phone call from dispatch letting me know that there was a young male in the Surrey Memorial Hospital who they believe may have been abused by their parents. And I didn't have a lot of information on him, but I was told that he was in severe condition and that I needed to head to the hospital. And that was in October of 2003.
As a veteran officer, Corporal Beck had pretty much seen it all. But that day will haunt her forever. She still remembers when she walked into his hospital room and saw Alex for the first time.
He was, for a five-year-old boy, he weighed about, I think at the time, he was close to maybe 15, 16 pounds. He wasn't, didn't weigh much. He looked like a child that you would find in a third world country dying of starvation. He had the extended belly. He was extremely, extremely skinny. You can tell he was malnourished. He was sluggish.
so weak he couldn't lift any parts of his body. I tried to speak with him. The little he did say was in very, very low whispers. And it was just horrifying to see him in that condition. I had never seen a child that weak in that week of state before in my life.
Most people will try and imagine what he would have looked like. I guarantee you, you can't. But I've seen some children in some pretty severe states of stress and to see that was just a complete shock. Alex was in rough shape. Doctors didn't know if he would make it. His first night in the hospital was literally trying to keep him alive.
Well, at that point in time, I learned that he is insulin dependent. He's a type 1 insulin dependent diabetic. And I have been told, or I get told by the physician and by the staff that's there and the social workers that there is a past involving the Raditas, that this has occurred with Alex in the past where he's been brought into the hospital because he wasn't receiving his medication properly.
or his insulin, and I was told that he was in a severe state of malnutrition. His organs were shutting down. Some had been shutting down. And he was literally probably hours from death at that point in time. So we weren't even sure that he was actually going to make it through the night. It was quite a tense night to see if he would actually survive the entire night.
Alex's mom, Radhika Redita, told the doctor she hadn't taken her son for medical care for more than two years. One of the intensive care physicians estimated Alex was within just one day of death. Corporal Beck had never seen anyone as starved as Alex was.
If someone had have told me and I didn't know that he was five, there's no way because I still see the pictures and I still have the pictures that were taken of him. And he was just so thin. He was literally skin and bones except for an extended, hugely extended stomach. And it was just, he was so, so tiny.
Alex was basically a skeleton. He was transferred to the BC Children's Hospital ICU, where he was once again treated by an expert in pediatric emergency medicine. That doctor said he had never seen a child as malnourished as Alex, and he ran all sorts of tests.
The physician concluded that Alex had been denied proper nutrition and insulin by his parents. Apparently, Emil and Radhika Radita still didn't believe the diagnosis their son had been given a few years earlier.
There was one point where they found out that the mother had been falsifying his blood when he would get his blood tested, had been falsifying by using, I can't remember if it was one of his siblings' blood,
but the records were being falsified. There was case, they had found out that the mother was just giving, the mother and father were just giving him enough insulin to basically just keep him alive. Doctors recommended Alex be removed from the care of his parents. They were also under investigation for child abuse. For what Alex had endured, Corporal Beck interviewed both parents.
Yes, yes. I interviewed them and what's the easiest way to put this? There was, the interviews were difficult. They were difficult to talk to. There was no, they felt no responsibility for what had happened. They couldn't even give me a clear answer.
reason for why it was happening. They were avoidant in most of my questions. Yeah, it was more hostility. It was more, how dare you? It was more...
Alex was placed in foster care. His foster mother, Vera Boyko, knew exactly how to treat him. She was also a type 1 diabetic.
That's Tracy Brady, Vera's daughter. Vera sadly passed away a few years ago.
So her daughter agreed to do an interview with me to talk about Alex. My mom had fostered children for as long as I can remember, working specifically with special needs children as either a weekend respite or full-time foster. When Alex moved in with Vera, Tracy had a daughter about his age.
So she has a lot of fond memories of time spent with Alex. Mom first got Alex when he was taken from his parents. So he came from the hospital to mom's house and then she worked with the doctors on getting his insulin right, getting his diabetes under control. Tracy said it took a while for Alex to get better.
But once he was, his entire personality lit up. But then, as he started to, you know, they got it under control, he was anything but a sickly little boy. He was extremely, him and my daughter, a lot of activity. They were, I've got pictures of them at the park together on swings and monkey bars.
It didn't take long before Alex felt like he was a part of Vera's family. He got more comfortable being with the family and everybody kind of took him in as, you know, one of us. And my daughter has, you know, seven cousins and around her age and they were constantly doing things together and Alex was part of it. He loved, I know he had the car set and the Legos. Legos was huge with him.
Him and Aaron, they used to do dress-up all the time. I had a little girl who had Disney princess stuff, so dress-up was part of it as well. Most of it was a lot of outdoor. The pictures I've got are at parks and swings and monkey bars, doing things like that. But when he was just with Mom, it was mostly Legos and toy cars.
Tracy sent me some of her favorite photos of Alex with her daughter, including one of them playing dress-up. On this particular day, her daughter was snow white and Alex was a pumpkin. The photo shows a bright-eyed, round-faced, rosy-cheeked little boy, and he had the biggest smile. You could tell he was having a lot of fun.
Another photo shows the two kids sitting on Santa's lap. Alex looks really happy. There's also one that shows the two of them playing in a kiddie pool in the backyard, and another of them celebrating Canada Day. Alex was doing really well. One of his teachers wrote on a report card at the time that Alex was imaginative with a positive attitude.
Vera grew very attached to that little boy.
She loved him like a child. She was very, of the foster kids she'd had, she had a, I want to say with Alex, there was definitely more of an attachment because she had him for longer. Some of them would be maybe for three months or she only had some for weekends, but because she'd had him for so long and she'd nursed him back to health from when she first got him to where he was now.
Alex stayed with Vera all of 2004. But during that year, he also spent time with his parents. Tracy said that created some real challenges with his health. Absolutely. And I'll be the first one to say, mom tried to fight giving Alex back to his parents, saying this was not going to be good for him.
Because when she would get him back on the Mondays, it was obvious that he wasn't being taken care of with his diabetes because his sugars would be off or he'd be back to lethargic or he was off. And she'd say, they're not doing it. You know, who's checking on them on the weekends? But she'd get him right for the week and then off he'd go back for the weekends. Mom would have to work with him to get him back on track. So she always had to keep him active to burn the sugar.
In the meantime, the child abuse investigation by the RCMP continued. Six months after he was released from hospital, Alex was interviewed by Corporal Beck.
In my interview with Alex, and I think it must have been over an hour I was in with Alex, which is fairly long for, he would have been six at the time, for a six-year-old child. Even Alex knew that his situation at home wasn't a good one.
I asked Alex, would you like to go home to your mom and dad, which is always a question I will ask the majority of the time. And his answer was, only if they learn how to give me my insulin. And I mean, even he as a six-year-old knew how dependent his life was on insulin.
The interview between Corporal Beck and Alex Rodita was recorded. It has never been played in court and has never been made public until now. This is audio from that interview with Alex, recorded June 1st, 2004. The sound quality isn't great, so you really need to listen carefully.
Do you know what these animals are that are on the wall? Let's start here. Let's start there, okay. Those are elephant birds, tigers, and giraffes. Giraffes? How many giraffes? Two. How many elephants? Two. How many pink birds? Two.
For the first few minutes, they talked about the animal pictures in the room. And what else do you see? Monkey. How many monkeys? Two. Two, that's right. And what's this thing? An elephant. An elephant. It runs away. It runs away from its mom and dad. See, mom and dad are over there and it runs over here. What else is hiding in the water? Crocodile. A crocodile.
Corporal Beck has interviewed a lot of children, and Alex felt at ease with her.
Alice, remember I told you my name is Charlene? Yeah. And I'm a police lady. Even though I don't have a uniform, I'm still a police lady. I used to have a uniform. What is it? It's hanging in my closet where it should be because it's just too itchy. It's so nice to wear my own clothes. And what my job is, I talk to kids all the time. And I talk to kids about all sorts of stuff.
Before she started her interview, Corporal Beck stressed the importance of telling the truth.
She told Alex that all conversations in that room had to be truthful. No lies. What color is your sweater? Red. If I said your sweater was yellow, is that the truth or a lie? Lie. A lie. And what color are my pants? Black. If I said my pants were black, am I telling the truth or am I telling a lie? You're telling the truth.
This is where I find the interview difficult to listen to. Here you have a six-year-old little boy who almost died twice.
And he knew exactly what had made him sick. Can you tell me, where did you live before you lived in Beirut? I lived in, I was in a hospital. You were in a hospital? And why were you in a hospital? Because I was, I got too sick. And how did you get too sick? What were you sick with, do you know?
Alex also knew what made him feel better. And just so you understand this next part, Alex sometimes called Vera, his foster mother, Grandma.
You told me, Alex, that you went into the hospital because you were sick? Yeah. Because you weren't getting the right kind of medicine? Well, I have what kind of medicine? Do you get medicine now?
Yes. What kind of, what medicine do you get? Insulin. Insulin. And who gives you insulin? My grandma. Your grandma? And how many times do you get insulin? Twice? A lot. A lot? And how do you get the insulin?
Did you catch that?
Alex said his mother didn't take his blood sugar when he was at home with her. Your mom doesn't do your blood sugar? No, someone said don't take Alex's sugars anymore at home. And how do you know that? He told me. Who told you? My mom. Your mom told you that someone told her not to take your blood sugar at home? No.
Alex was only a child.
But he knew what he needed to feel well. And he knew his mom wasn't doing it. Who took you to the hospital the first time? The ambulance. The ambulance? And the other time I was in Children's Hospital. And how did you get to Children's Hospital? It's a long drive. It is. And how did you drive there?
The ambulance? The ambulance? And how did the ambulance know you were sick? Because one of my dad's friends took Alex to the hospital. I said to my mom, don't let that ugly, don't let that snap in our house again.
But it was also clear Alex loved his parents and missed his brothers and sisters. Alex, do you like mom and dad? Yes. You do because they're mom and dad, don't you? And do you like your brothers and sisters? Yes. The interview ended with Alex feeling hopeful about his parents understanding he needed their help to keep him from getting sick.
What do you think is going to happen with your insulin when you go home? If you go home to mom and dad? Well, I'm just going to tell them to give me the right food. You're going to tell them to give you the right foods? And what about the insulin?
"Insulin and blood." "Insulin and blood? Okay. Well, thank you very much, Alex. Have you got any questions for me?" "No." "No." Emil and Radhika Redita were charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life for Alex. Most people think it's necessities.
But the charge is failing to provide the necessaries of life in the Criminal Code of Canada. Basically, it means parents or guardians have a duty to ensure their children are properly cared for. That includes food, shelter, and medical assistance. The Roditas were accused of failing to do that for Alex.
It was also right about that time that Corporal Beck was transferred to a different RCMP detachment. When I left, I thought, you know, I didn't even really think anything of this because I thought he's in a home. I've now seen him. He's healthy. He's happy. You know, I've never seen or I've never seen a change like that. But I saw for my own eyes, he's different.
But the Roditas weren't about to stop fighting to get Alex back.
It was only later that Corporal Beck learned a hearing had been held to determine Alex's future. I learned that they had, I think, both doctors, both the doctor from Children's Hospital, the pediatrician from Surrey Memorial Hospital, social workers,
But the judge didn't listen to the doctors or the social workers who testified.
In December 2004, Alex was just shy of his seventh birthday. And that's when a B.C. judge ordered he be returned to his parents. There was also an order to have the parents monitored for six months. Alex was taken away from his foster mother, Vera, and placed back into the care of his parents, Emil and Radhika Redita. The case was closed.
Tracy Brady said her mother was devastated and tried to maintain contact with Alex,
But that wasn't allowed. She tried to, but there was just, it was absolutely no contact. I know on his birthday and Christmas, she's big on sending cards and recognizing. They were returned. They got sent back. So she was concerned on where they might be. Like, why are we not hearing anything? But government, you know, again, back with the family, she was out of it, couldn't say anything as to what had happened with him.
When Vera made inquiries with the BC government about how Alex was doing, she was told privacy laws prevented that information from being shared. Alex returned to life with his parents, and as the court mandated, they were monitored for six months. Alex started grade four at a school in BC, but he never finished.
His parents moved the family to Alberta. And that's when Alex Redita went completely off the radar. He was never taken to another hospital. He was never treated by another doctor. For about a year, he was registered for homeschooling, but he never submitted any homework and was eventually removed from the program. He was never enrolled in public school.
For the most part, Alex was kept at home. He had no social life outside of his immediate family members. It was nearly a decade later before anyone realized just how bad things got for Alex. And by that time, it was too late. Alex was dead.
Calgary Police Homicide Detective Matt DeMarino became the primary investigator assigned to Alex's case. You heard from him earlier in this episode. Detective DeMarino has been a police officer for more than 20 years. Other officers describe him as decisive, thorough, and meticulous. He's not easily rattled, but what he saw that day
May 7th, 2013 still haunts him. I guess, I mean the first words or the first word that popped into my head was Auschwitz. Like that's what it looked like. It looked like the victim of a concentration camp, you know, just so thin and frail and laying in a bed and gaunt and it just, it was a horrific photo.
Detective DeMarino is also a family guy. So he found himself thinking about his own children as he investigated Alex's death. This was a sad one. This was a sad case. And, you know, like I said, I have a son who's kind of around that age and
My son comes home and talks about who's got a crush on who at school and the great goal he scored in hockey and the fact that he's looking forward to, you know, whatever, going camping this weekend. And Alex should have been doing all of those things. Police learned Alex's father, Emil Redita, noticed his son was cold to the touch four hours before he called 911.
An autopsy was completed the day after he died. Alex's body was filled with infection and had bacteria everywhere from his kidneys to his adrenal glands, his spleen, and in his bloodstream. The expert forensic pathologist found Alex died from bacterial sepsis brought on from extreme starvation and neglect.
The 15-year-old's condition was horrific. He had no usable teeth. All were rotted to the gum line. He had over 40 bed sores. And this was all compounded by the fact Alex had type 1 diabetes that had gone untreated. Police interviewed Emil and Radhika Redita along with their other kids. I found when I did...
the interviews of some of the family members, I felt the interviews were almost scripted. The answers were almost scripted. Just that Alex had been sick for a long time and, you know, mom and dad take care of him and he's been very sick and all is good. When Emil Redita finally called 911, it was at the urging of several members of his church.
The Redidas said there had been a miracle. Church members were told Alex had died, but then he was raised up, resurrected. They were called to the Redida home to pray. And they wanted to see the miracle for themselves. Emil Redida had previously told them Alex had cancer, but was doing better.
Most of the church members had not met Alex. It was usually Mr. Redita who attended services. Those who had met Alex said he looked good when they saw him months earlier. So on May 7, 2013, the pastor and some elders went into the bedroom to see Alex, and they were shocked by what they saw.
They told Emil Radita he needed to call an ambulance immediately. And then when we spoke with the folks from the church, they had explained that they were in church at a service and a couple of the family members from the Raditas came and explained that Alex had gone up to heaven, received a message from God and then come back down.
And so the members of the church went to the house to see this. And when they arrived, they were just as shocked as we were when we initially saw Alex. Calgary police began digging into Alex's past. Our forensic analysts will start to dig into, you know, backgrounds and histories and stuff like that. And in this case in Alberta, there wasn't any for Alex.
It didn't take police long to uncover Alex's history from B.C. Detective DeMarino reached out to Corporal Beck. Yeah, it was definitely a day I remember exactly where I was sitting and what I was doing. So it's a day I'm never going to forget, that's for sure.
He said to me, he said, I just wanted to call you because before you found out, he said, I know you were heavily involved in the Alex Redita case. And as soon as he said his name, I thought, he's dead. I just thought, he's dead. And he said, he's died and I wanted you to know that straight before it hit the press. And he said, and we're looking at possible first degree murder charges and can you help us?
And I said, absolutely. And I was just shocked. I was dumbfounded. I thought, how could that ever have happened? And I was floored. And then when I found out the circumstances, I was even more floored. And I still, to this day, I'm thinking, this should never, ever, ever have happened. And, um...
So that's the first time I found out what and when Detective DeMarino had explained the circumstances in which Alex had ended up dying and how he suffered for his entire life. I just, I was angry, but I was so sad for him. And I took blame on myself, too, to a certain extent. I go, is there anything else I could have done? And I thought...
I thought everything had been done for this boy.
That was when Corporal Beck first learned of that judge's ruling from back in 2004, when Alex was returned to his parents. To allow him to go back to this family with everything that he was told, just because they're his parents and they love him, is absolutely ludicrous to me, and I just...
That was also when Corporal Beck found out the original criminal charges the Reditas faced in B.C.
The charges she had pushed so hard for to hold the Rudidas accountable had been stayed.
You had a judge here saying basically the parents, they were worthy to have this boy who almost died put back into their life. Crown is going, there's no way we're going to get a conviction on this charge because we already have a court decision saying basically the parents did nothing wrong intentionally. So we're giving the child back. So Crown says no.
Crown said there's no sense to even try this because there's already a court decision out there so they're battling that right away. But this time, nearly 10 years later, the Redidas were being looked at for murder. Just weeks after Alex died, as homicide detectives continued to investigate his death, I decided to go to the Redida home and try to get some answers.
I rang the doorbell and waited. Alex's mother answered the door, but I barely got my name out before she slammed the door and turned the lock. Hi there. Hi. My name is Nancy. I'm from Global News. Okay, goodbye. Nine months later, Alex's parents were arrested. Detective DeMarino first escorted Radhika Redita to arrest processing, and then Emil Redita.
You're watching Global Calgary. Good evening. A stunning development in the death of a 15-year-old Calgary boy. Detectives say the teen's parents will be charged with first-degree murder. The boy was found dead in their Citadel home last May. The NewsHour's Nancy Hicks is at police headquarters tonight. And Nancy, police believe the boy, who had type 1 diabetes, had been neglected and starved.
Gord, police say that this was a slow death and completely preventable. To give you an idea of just how bad the scene was, first responders and homicide detectives who responded to the home and saw the teen back in May were all offered counselling.
The teen's health declined to the extent that he was confined to his room and subsequently died. When you care for a child or a loved one and they're sick, you need to take them to the doctor. Home medicines and home thoughts don't substitute for modern medicine. It was shocking to learn a child with such an extensive history could simply fall through the cracks.
Alex didn't even have a health care number.
At that time, I interviewed a professor of medicine at the University of Calgary, Dr. David Lau. He's also a diabetes specialist. I'm very saddened and very shocked to hear that this actually could happen in our community in this day and age. It's totally unconscionable that a person with diabetes, be it type 1 or type 2 diabetes, that would die from not receiving the proper treatment.
Police poured through 17,000 documents to try to get a complete picture of Alex's history in B.C. From the training and the, you know, numerous, I think Alex wound up, we spoke with five different doctors who treated him over a long period of time in B.C., not to mention, you know, the diabetes clinics and the education component of it. They knew what to do.
to manage his diabetes. Everyone over there had bent over backwards to make sure that they knew what to do. Emil and Radhika Redita would stand trial for first-degree murder. Shocking photos of Alex's 15th birthday party, taken four months before he died, were shown in court. At that time, Alex was so thin. It was clear he was already in a state of starvation. I remember seeing photos
The photos of his birthday and the presents that he received didn't even seem age appropriate. I mean, he's 15, right? So, you know, I have kids near that age and they're into, I don't know, video games and cool clothes and talking about crushes at school. And, you know, Alex is getting presents that are kind of fit more for a six-year-old.
There's a video of Alex opening up his presents. It's a stark contrast to the pictures of Alex I described earlier when he was in Vera's care. In this video, he looked so weak. He had trouble opening his card. His face was pale and he was gaunt. It looked like it took all his strength to pull a brown teddy bear out of a gift bag.
He cradled that bear in one arm as he struggled to unwrap the other gifts. Alex looked too weak to be having any fun. He just looked like a sick little boy, a shell of what he was years earlier. The trial revealed the pain and suffering he would have endured. Alex's death would have been excruciating.
On February 24th, 2017, nearly five years after Alex's death, his parents were held accountable. They were convicted of first-degree murder.
When Alex Redita died, he was just 37 pounds, his body filled with infection. He was found dead in his parents' northwest Calgary home in May of 2013. Now his parents have been held responsible, a judge finding the couple guilty of first-degree murder. Emile and Radhika Redita showed no emotion as the decision was handed down. Justice Karen Horner said his death was unnecessary and completely avoidable.
Horner said Alex's death was planned and deliberate, and that they kept him in the home away from anyone who could help him, including any doctors, noting the Redidas knew he could die if he didn't get proper treatment for his type 1 diabetes. She said Alex's confinement did not only arrive from his illness, which was directly caused by the Redidas' decision to withhold life-saving insulin and medical treatment,
It is also as a result of their intentional isolation of Alex from anyone who could intervene on his behalf. I think it really highlights the degree of isolation that Alex lived in. He had no friends or teachers or support people or doctors or really anyone. And he was, he lived and he died very much alone.
That's Susan Pepper. She's a judge now, but at the time, she was one of the Crown prosecutors who successfully argued Alex's death should be first-degree murder. It was heartbreaking to hear how awful Alex's final moments would have been. This verdict reflects the magnitude of that suffering and reflects the magnitude of the crime that was committed.
Certainly the evidence that was presented in court does show that the system, the social safety net in our province and in our country did fail Alex. Both Emil and Radhika Redita declined to speak as they were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Alex's case spurred calls for change and highlighted the need for a national alert system to prevent at-risk children from disappearing if their families relocate to different jurisdictions. And I wish I could tell you that this couldn't happen again. But despite his history in BC, Alex wasn't flagged for follow-up.
The Union for Social Workers in BC told Global News Alex's file had been closed prior to the family leaving the province, absolving BC of any responsibility to flag his case to other jurisdictions. There are protocols in place for sharing of information between provinces, and those protocols are updated every five years.
But the protocols don't apply to files that have been closed. So if the same set of circumstances would unfold again today, that child could once again fall off the radar. That infuriates Charlene Beck.
the officer who fought so hard to keep Alex safe. It could have and should have been prevented. It is a death that should never have happened, ever. This was something that was so blatantly obvious
where everyone should have had control of this. They knew what was happening. They knew what would happen. And he still suffered and died because of it. I mean, this is a case that will haunt me forever. I mean, how can it not? And I will say that until my last breath, this could have been prevented.
And if I ever need to talk to you again, would that be okay? Thank you. Thanks, dude. Let's go. Thank you for joining me and letting me share Alex's story with you. If you suspect a case of child abuse or neglect, call police or call 911. Crime Beat is written and produced by me, Nancy Hixt, with producer Dela Velasquez.
Our audio producer is Rob Johnston. Special thanks to photographer-editor Danny Lantella for his work on this episode. And thanks to Chris Bassett, the National Director of Content and Editorial Standards for Global News.
I would love to have you tell a friend about this podcast and you can help me share these important stories by rating and reviewing Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you have a question about one of the episodes or about crime reporting in general, send me a message on Twitter at Nancy Hixt, on Facebook at Nancy Hixt Crime Beat, or I'd love to have you join me for added content on Instagram at nancy.hixt.
You can also email me at nancy.hixt at globalnews.ca. Thanks again for listening. Please join me next time.
