The trial of a 24-year-old Georgia woman accused of killing her 20-month-old son and tossing his body in a dumpster began on Monday, with prosecutors telling jurors that in the days leading up to the toddler’s death, the victim’s mother was having relationship problems, taking a lot of narcotic drugs, and later telling police a bizarre series of stories.
During an interview with authorities, Simon revealed that immediately after her son’s disappearance, she stopped at an isolated trash in the middle of the night to dispose of “spoiled shrimp pasta.”
As previously reported, Leilani Simon was indicted in December 2022 on 19 criminal charges, including malice murder, felony murder, hiding the death of another, and providing false statements to authorities in connection with the death of baby Quinton Simon.
According to authorities, Simon purposely killed her son on October 5, 2022, using an unknown object “that when used offensively against a person did result in serious bodily injury,” and “caused Quinton’s death.”
The felony murder charges come from allegations that Simon murdered Quinton while also committing felonious acts of aggravated assault and first-degree cruelty to a child by “maliciously” causing Quinton “cruel and excessive physical pain” in a manner unknown to the grand jury at the time of the indictment.
In an almost two-hour opening statement, Savannah, Georgia, Special Assistant District Attorney Tim Dean highlighted Simon’s rationale for being in the distant Azalea Mobile Home Plaza dumpster shortly after 1 a.m. on the morning her son was reported missing.
“The evidence will show that she did not want to admit that [what she threw away] was Quinton’s body, so she describes this trash that she threw away as stinky shrimp pasta,” Dean said.
Prosecutors then aired a recording of the police interrogation from October 12, 2022.
Also Read: Lisa Marie Presley kept dead son’s body at home for 2 months after his death
“Yeah, I did throw away trash,” Simon tells the detective. “There was spoiled food smelling in my car so when I pulled around and seen that (dumpster), yeah, I stopped and threw the trash away. It was spoiled. Spoiled like shrimp pasta. The whole car smelled like shrimp. I was like, what is that smell? I looked, and I threw it away. I didn’t think anything of it to be honest, it’s just old food.”
She added that she simply saw “the opportunity” and threw away the trash.
Prosecutors said that Simon was actually disposing of her son’s body, which they say was eventually recovered “in pieces.”
“She throws Quinton’s body away like a piece of trash about 1:17 in the morning,’ Dean told jurors. ‘The defendant violated that most basic, sacred trust of a parent in the most horrible way. In the middle of the night, she killed him, her own son, got in her car with his body, drove to a dumpster, then threw him away like a piece of trash.”
In the indictment, authorities alleged that after killing her son, Simon repeatedly lied to local and federal investigators searching for Quinton.
Also Read: Sara Sharif trial: Dad left note beside 10-year-old’s body saying ‘I lost it,’ court hears
She “admitted that she had left her home in the late night hours of October 4, 2022, to meet her drug dealer, falsely stating that the purpose of this meeting was to pay for an existing drug debt,” the document states. According to prosecutors, Simon falsely claimed that in the early morning hours of Oct. 5, 2022, she left her home to “meet her friend ‘Misty’ to obtain Orajel’ when she actually traveled to dump her son’s body.
According to the indictment, Simon reaffirmed the allegedly fraudulent allegations regarding her locations and conduct on the morning of October 5, 2022, throughout numerous subsequent conversations with investigators. Then, on October 31, 2022, she allegedly claimed that her boyfriend, Daniel Youngkin, had left the house on the morning of October 5, 2022, rather than her.
However, on Nov. 21, 2022, the same day she was arrested, Simon reportedly acknowledged to leaving her residence on the morning of Oct. 5, 2022, and traveling to the Azalea Mobile Home Plaza, but falsely told investigators that “she did not remember what she had done there,” according to the indictment.
Human remains were found in the dump on November 18, 2022. The FBI later verified that the remains were Quinton on Nov. 28.
