Content Warning: This article includes mentions of child abuse resulting in death.
On the morning of Oct. 5, 2022, twenty-month-old Quinton Simon was reported missing by his mother, Leilani Maree Simon, in Savannah, GA. The mother, who was not the child’s custodian, quickly became the police’s sole suspect in the toddler’s disappearance and, as it would turn out, heartbreaking demise.
It takes a special kind of monster to hurt a baby, let alone cut their life short. But even this horrifying situation is made that much worse when the person who gravely injures the child is the one who’s most responsible for loving and protecting them, the same adult the baby should be able to trust unconditionally. When that trust is viciously broken, we know we have the most unconscionable of human beings on our hands.
Callously discarded in the trash
Twenty-four-year-old Leilani Simon and her partner, Daniel Youngkin, called 911 on the morning of Oct. 5 to report that her 1-year-old son had disappeared. The seemingly distressed mother of three told the operator that, when she woke up, the front door was open, and her son was missing from his playpen. Oddly enough, the boyfriend stated he had seen Quinton when he left for work at 6 am. During the trial, the prosecutor wrote off Youngkin’s words as him misremembering, wrongly assuming he had seen Quinton at a time when the baby was known to have already been killed and disposed of.
Wasting no time, the search for the 1-year-old was on. The mother, however, was not aiding in these efforts. A week after the toddler’s disappearance, the Chatham County Police Department announced that Quinton was believed to be deceased, and Simon was the prime suspect.
Days later, the police indicated that they were fairly certain Quinton had been disposed of in a dumpster. After 30 days of valiant search efforts in a massive landfill, skeletal remains, later identified by an FBI pathologist as Quinton’s, were found. Simon was arrested on November 21 and indicted by a grand jury on Dec. 14, 2022.
State of Georgia v. Leilani Simon
Before this terrible incident, Leilani Simon had already been charged with felony larceny by the state of North Carolina. Her mother, Quinton’s grandmother, had custody of her children, although they all lived in the same house. On Sept. 28, 2022, Simon was ordered by the court to start paying child support. The day the crime took place, Leilani’s mother, Billie Jo Howell, was out of town.
In reading Simon’s indictment, we learn that she had gone to meet with a drug dealer in the late night hours of Oct. 4. During trial it was revealed that Leilani maintained a sexual relationship with her drug dealer but that, on that fateful night, wasn’t able to see him as she intended. One of Leilani’s many false statements pertained to the purpose of the meeting. She told investigators she had gone to meet him to pay an existing debt and that the only controlled substance she regularly used was cannabis, which she claimed she had consumed in the 24 hours before her son’s disappearance.
In court, it came out that Leilani also regularly used cocaine and had done so the night Quinton died. Moreover, it became clear that Leilani suffered from anger issues and that her cocaine use exacerbated these. During trial, prosecutors also highlighted Leilani’s unhealthy obsession with receiving male attention.
The bill of indictment accused Simon of having taken Quinton’s life “with malice of forethought,” assaulting him with an unknown object that caused “cruel and excessive pain” and resulted “in serious bodily injury.” Due to the state of Quinton’s body, it was never possible to tell exactly how the toddler died.
Guilty on all counts
The overwhelming majority of Leilani’s 19 counts pertained to lies she told several law enforcement officers. Another of these repeated lies attempted to create an alibi for why she had gone to the Azalea Mobile Home Plaza in the early hours of Oct. 5, where she discarded her son’s body in a dumpster. Later, the convicted killer would admit she had indeed left something in a dumpster at the Plaza but lied about it being normal household trash.
Another of Leilani’s lies, one she wasn’t indicted for because it was told to the media, claimed that, if it were proven that she had been at fault for her son’s disappearance she would turn herself in, which, if she had any conscience, she should have. Her mother, Billie Jo, while pleading with the court not to sentence her daughter to life without parole, blamed her own drug use for having contributed to Leilani ending up on a similar path. But, upon being questioned by the prosecution, Billie Jo also admitted that Quinton’s mother and killer never once took responsibility for her actions only “for her drug use.”
The murder trial started with jury selection on Oct. 9, 2024. After eight days of testimony and 34 witnesses, on Oct. 25, the jury found Leilani Simon guilty on all counts. In November, the judge heard aggravating and mitigating circumstances before deciding on the verdict: life with the possibility of parole plus 10 years. This means, if she does not appeal or her appeal is not accepted, Leilani will be eligible for parole after serving 40 years in prison. If she gets out once she’s eligible, which is not an absolute guarantee, Leilani will be over 60 years old.
Published: Nov 25, 2024 05:48 am