Alice Rollinson Idlett: Woman arrested for murder of her infant son 50 years ago
A young mother allegedly spiraled and snapped in 1969 while her husband is overseas in the U.S. Army.
In 1983, Earl Bunch Jr. thought he put out of his mind the old letters his ex-wife had sent him 13 years before. They were getting divorced and in the midst of a custody battle over their daughter. The marriage was over. The time had come to move on with their lives.
But when his soon-to-be ex-wife, Alice, began inquiring as to the whereabouts of those letters, Bunch decided to take another look at them. In 1969, Bunch had been overseas in the Vietnam War, while Alice stayed at home with their new baby boy, Earl Dwayne Bunch III. It proved to be a challenging year. Bunch endured living through an unpopular and notorious war, while his wife wrote letters detailing her frustration and emotional distress.
Their marriage would crumble in the decade to follow.
Idlett was only 18 when she became a mother for the first time in September 1968, according to Law & Crime, citing court documents. She had just graduated high school that June. The U.S. Army transferred her husband to Thailand that year and stayed behind in Sulphur, Louisiana. While there, Bunch received a seres of disturbing letters from his wife, testifying that he began receiving them in March or April 1969. When he tried to take emergency leave to go home, his request was denied. All he could do was keep trudging through his life in Thailand and wait for the next letter to arrive.
On Nov. 4, 1969, she allegedly wrote:
“I just got through whipping that little basdard (sic). I hate him. That’s the honest truth. I can’t stand this life. God had to punish me by letting me have that little brat. I wish I would have died when he was born. I hate myself. Now I know how those people feel that get rid of their kids. I believe I could do it. I’m serious.”
KDFM outlines the content of the other others.
From Nov. 19, 1969:
“... I don’t want to be a mother. I never did and that is why I said God punished me....”
She allegedly wrote on Nov. 21, 1969:
“... If he (Earl Dwayne) starts crying when I put him down to play, I’m going to whip him until his darn seat is red. I can’t put up with this mess ... I hate your son. I wish he was dead ...”
According to Law & Crime, she wrote in Dec. 1969 in separate letters:
“I feel like if he would die tomorrow I wouldn’t care. He is the one who ruint (sic) my life.”
“I got to the point where I hate him. I can’t help it. I wish I had never had him.”
Bunch never alerted authorities to these letters. On Jan. 19, 1970, Alice brought baby Earl to the emergency room at West Calcasieu-Cameron Hospital in Sulphur. According to court documents, Earl was “limp and gasping for breath.”
Alice’s story at the time was that the infant had fallen out of bed at his grandparents’ house.
According to KDFM, baby Earl was transferred to Lake Charles Memorial Hospital, where X-rays found “multiple fractures of the skull and right shoulder,” which Alice allegedly attributed to the fall. Another transfer took him to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Beaumont, Texas.
Baby Earl died the next morning, succumbing to the injuries that were simply too much for his little body to handle as doctors performed emergency craniotomy surgery.
When her husband came home for their son’s funeral, Alice allegedly fed him the same story about the fall out of bed. At the time, Bunch believed he had no reason to suspect the death was “anything but accidental,” according to court documents.
The years would pass by after the death of baby Earl. Alice and Bunch had another child, this time a daughter, who was seven when they split up in 1983. He agreed to give Alice full custody of the daughter in April of that year. Law & Crime cites the documents once more:
“Shortly thereafter, [Idlett] began questioning [her husband] as to the whereabouts of the letters she had written to him while he was overseas. These questions aroused [his] suspicions. He found the letters and reread them for the first time in thirteen years. [His] concern for the welfare of his daughter prompted him to further investigate the incidents surrounding his son’s death.”
A father’s search for the truth
The story of baby Earl accidentally falling out of bed likely would have stood the test of time, and Alice would have slipped into obscurity, free of consequence, had Bunch not reread those letters. But doing so allowed suspicion to brew with him, causing him to worry for the safety of his daughter.
He returned to his son’s doctor to learn more about what transpired that day. Bunch learned that aside from the fractures, baby Earl had bruises and bite marks all over his body, as well as “a burn mark on his buttocks,” according to Law & Crime.
When the doctor, Dr. J.M. Thorkelson, testified in 1985 regarding the infant’s injuries, he said even he suspected something more than the mother’s story.
“These were not the type of injuries I would have expected to see from a fall from a crib, for example, or a porch, or something like that where you get a fairly severe injury. It looked more like a child that had been beaten; that perhaps somebody had taken it by the feet, and swung it against a piece of furniture or the wall.”
He recalled that Alice had been “stoic” when she got the hospital, not hysterical as many mothers would have been in that situation.
Bunch’s dreaded realization upon learning of the details must have been mortifying; to know he had been overseas at a time when his wife had been spiraling — and it may have cost his son his life.
He amended his petition for separation from Alice so he could seek sole custody of his daughter. But mental health professionals at the time said Alice and the daughter were in good physical and mental condition.
Alice also claimed, under sworn testimony, to not recall writing and sending those damning letters.
In the end, the couple was granted joint custody of their daughter. It left the matter of baby Earl unresolved, but at least Bunch could keep an eye on his daughter.
The truth about Earl Dwayne Bunch III would remain in the dark for decades, the reality of what he suffered at his mother’s hands, unknown. Despite his suspicions, Earl Bunch Jr. remained quiet about it.
The case was eventually closed due to a lack of evidence. Dr. J.M. Thorkelson died in Louisiana in 1988.
Bringing the truth to light
For years, Bunch sat with the content of those letters. He had never alerted authorities to anything amiss when he received the letters in 1969. In fact, he didn’t mention them until divorce proceedings in the eighties. According to the 1985 court ruling:
“He testified that he accepted his son’s death as accidental, because he could not believe that the woman he loved could have harmed her own son.”
Alice appeared to move on with her life as though it never happened. According to KDFM, she grew up as Alice Rollinson in Bridge City, Louisiana, close to New Orleans. She graduated from West Jefferson High School in 1968, but wouldn’t fly out into the world. She got married, had her first child, and then watched her husband get sent off to war.
KDFM reporters snooped on her Facebook, discovering that she had attending nursing school at Southwest Mississippi Community College in Summit. She posted photos of her trips to Europe over the years. KDFM notes that her profile had no public updates since 2019.
But the words of malice and indignation she wrote in those letters would creep back into her life in 2022, when Bunch’s family requested that the Sulphur Police Department (SPD) reopen the case and exhume the infant’s body. According to Law & Crime, the additional evidence the FBI discovered during a forensic autopsy led them to deeming the manner of death a homicide. KDFM notes that Gulf Coast Forensic Solutions assisted with the exhumation of Earl’s remains.
Alice Rollinson Idlett, now 75-years-old, has been arrested for the second-degree murder of Earl Bunch III, a stunning 50 years later. She is currently incarcerated at the Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center on a $950,000 bond. \
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