South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Cops: Mother of drowned boy admits to leading him to canal
Patricia Ripley, the West Kendall mother who initially claimed her severely autistic 9-year-old son had been kidnapped, ultimately admitted she was to blame for the child’s death at a canal and said “he’s going to be in a better place,” police said.
The shocking details of her confession emerged Saturday as Miami-Dade homicide detectives booked Ripley, 47, into jail on a charge of first-degree murder.
The arrest came a little more than a day after she reported that Alejandro Ripley had been kidnapped by two robbers who ran her car off the road Thursday night — a report that sparked a frantic statewide manhunt and ended early
Friday when his body was found in a pond at the Miccosukee Golf & Country Club.
Authorities said the murder was well-planned — she actually tried drowning Alejando earlier Thursday night, but was thwarted when a good Samaritan stepped in and rescued the boy from the water
“An hour later, she brought the boy to a different canal ... this time, there was no one there to save him,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said at a Saturday morning news conference. Alejandro was non-verbal and in the past had attended Greater Heights Academy, a West Kendall school for special-needs children. The boy received tutoring at home, and investigators believe the task may have overwhelmed Ripley in recent months.
His body was found wearing a wearing a blue Captain America T-shirt and diapers.
Ripley, a married mother of two, appeared during a brief court hearing on Saturday, via closedcircuit television wearing a special gown for inmates under suicide watch. A judge ordered she be held with no bond on a count of first-degree murder. She is also charged with attempted first-degree murder.
Her husband, Aldo Ripley, and other relatives appeared at the brief court hearing.
“We love Alejandro and we don’t agree about whatever they said about my wife,” Aldo Ripley said tearfully. “It’s not real.”
Her defense attorney, Nelson Rodriguez-Varela, declined to speak about the allegations. “We’re going to leave that to another day to discuss.,” he said. “There is obviously a great deal of support for her. By all accounts, she has been an excellent mother, an excellent person.”
Investigators were immediately suspicious of the kidnapping as Ripley gave conflicting details about the kidnapping, according to a police report obtained by the Miami Herald.
She continued giving conflicting statements. But Miami-Dade homicide detectives confronted her with evidence that her story didn’t check out.
Video
surveillance footage showed her pushing the boy “into the canal” during the first attempt to kill the boy, about 7:20 p.m. according to the police report.
During questioning, Ripley eventually recanted her kidnapping story, police said. She admitted that about 8:30 p.m., in her second attempt, she “led the victim to the canal where he drowned. She states he’s going to be in a better place.”