The Ultimate Act of Betrayal: the Murder of Jailyn Candelario | True Crime

Jailyn’s cries echoed through the streets of Cleveland night and day. The 16-month old toddler was helpless, but no one came to her rescue. 

Her mother, Kristel Candelario, was away on a 10-day vacation and had left little Jailyn a prisoner in her own playpen, with only a few bottles of milk and some crackers, prosecutors said. A neighbor’s door camera captured the 16-month old’s frequent screams, including one around 1AM, two days after her mother left.

Candelario was hundreds of miles away; first in Detroit, Michigan with one guy, and then with another guy for her Puerto Rico getaway, authorities said. 

She finally returned home on June 16, 2023 to find her daughter dead. 

She was sentenced Monday, March 18, 2024 to life in prison without parole.

Candelario pleaded guilty last month to one count of aggravated murder and one count of child endangering. 

At her sentencing Monday, forensic pathologist Dr. Elizabeth Mooney told a Cleveland courtroom that children experience the most extreme separation anxiety between 9 and 18 months. She recounted Jailyn’s excruciating final days. “The pain and suffering she endured lasted not only hours, not days, but possibly even a week,” Mooney said, fighting back tears. “This feeling of abandonment for days on end, coupled with the pain of starvation and extreme thirst is a type of suffering I don’t think any of us could ever fully fathom.”

The toddler was found dehydrated and emaciated. 

Cleveland Police Sgt. Teresa Gomez fought back tears as she described the baby’s condition in court. “This is a case that… we’ll have branded in our minds and in our hearts forever,” Gomez said at the sentencing.

Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Anna Faraglia played security video of the mother hauling her suitcase to a car on June 6, 2023 and returning home on June 16. Minutes after she returned, Candelario called 911. “Please, I need help!” she wailed in a 911 call played during the sentencing. “Please, please, help me! My daughter is dying!”

However, Candelario had changed Jailyn's soiled clothes and cleaned her up before emergency responders arrived, the prosecutor said. The change of clothes did not hide the horrors the girl had gone through though, and Candelario’s sob story started unraveling when questioned. Faraglia said Jailyn was found lying on a mattress covered in urine and feces. “Animals take care of their infants better,” she said.

The little girl was emaciated, with sunken eyes, dry lips and fecal matter in her mouth and fingernails. She weighed seven pounds less than she had at her last doctor’s visit two months earlier, Mooney said. 

Investigators said Candelario had left Jailyn alone again for two days just before she went on vacation.

Her parents blamed her actions on mental health struggles. Candelario’s parents pleaded with the judge for mercy. In a prepared statement, her mother, Ketty Torres, said her daughter had battled mental health illness and fainting spells. When her daughter stopped taking medication, it worsened her depression and anxiety, and contributed to her inability to make sound decisions, she added. Torres said the family was not aware of what was happening.

Candelario told the court she prays daily for forgiveness, adding that she believes God and Jailyn have forgiven her. “I am not trying to justify my actions, but nobody knew how much I was suffering and what I was going through,” she said.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Brendan Sheehan admonished her as he handed down the sentence. Speaking sternly, he said Candelario left her child “trapped in a tiny prison” for days while she was out having a good time. “The bond between a mother and a child is one of the most purest and most sacred bonds. It’s a relationship built on love, trust, and unwavering protection ... You committed the ultimate act of betrayal,” Sheehan said.

“That little baby persevered, waiting for someone to save her. And you could have done that with a simple phone call. Instead, I see photos of you on a beach while your child was eating her own feces in an attempt to survive.”

“Just as you didn’t let Jailyn out of her confinement until she died, so too you should spend the rest of your life in a cell without freedom,” Sheehan said. “The only difference is that prison will at least feed you."

Her attorney says it was the toughest case he has worked on.

Defense attorney, Derek Smith, expressed the profound difficulty he and his colleague Patrick Milligan faced while dealing with the evidence and images presented during the trial. “We gotta do our job at the end of the day. Defend the Constitution, defend our client the best we can,” Smith said.

Authorities described the case as one of the most horrific cases they’ve ever seen. During the trial, the defense presented Candelario’s anxiety and depression to make sense of the case. “Part of the job of defense attorneys is to… get all the facts, try to understand the situation,” Smith said. “Yes, anxiety, depression, I struggle from that myself… and it is not an excuse for what happened.” Smith revealed Candelario had stopped taking her medication, exacerbating her condition and possibly contributing to her decision-making.

“She [couldn’t] articulate her own state of mind during that time, which is alarming. Not only was she on a couple of different of these antidepressants, but she stopped taking them. So that in amongst itself is an issue,” Smith said.

Regarding a potential appeal, Smith confirmed that Candelario intends to pursue one, with appellate counsel already assigned to her case by the trial judge that had sentenced her. 

Candelario also has a 7-year-old daughter. Many were wondering where this daughter was when the mom was on her vacay, as well as why didn't the mom leave little Jailyn with her grandparents.

Kristel Candelario, who was sentenced to life in prison for the death of her toddler — whom she left alone for more than a week while she went on vacation — blamed her mental problems for the decision to abandon her daughter.

Candelario’s trial attorneys said they’re aiming for the court to take her mental state into account in a future appeal of her case. The trial judge who sentenced her has already submitted a request for an appellate counsel be assigned to her by the court since she can't afford one, during the same hearing as her sentencing (the appeal is on the sentencing of life without parole, which is basically a death sentence since Ohio does not have an actual death sentence).

When asked how it’s possible for a mother to abandon a 16-month-old baby in a house, unattended, for 10 days to go on vacation, Candelario said, “The answer is a bit difficult for the rest of the world to understand and in particular for the people who question and point out that I have committed a diabolical act, as was mentioned in court.”

“I gave my testimony. I took the blame for my actions. I was experiencing emotional stress,” she said, adding she had been experiencing relationship issues with Jailyn's father. (Was he one of the men that she saw in Detroit or in Puerto Rico? According to her lawyer's statement in court to the judge, she met Jailyn’s father in Ecuador and he was abusive and wasn't present in Jailyn’s life.)

However, Candelario insisted that, “My daughters have always been everything, my whole world to me,” and assured that Jailyn “is always in my heart and is with me wherever I go.”

Asked about the reasons for her trip to Detroit and Puerto Rico that resulted in her leaving her daughter alone, Candelario said, “It was a decision that was actually made many months before,” when she was leaving a two-month hospitalization for mental health issues.

"I was in the hospital in January and February 2023 because I had emotional and mental problems. [On] one of those two occasions, I wanted to make an attempt on my own life. For that reason, I was in the hospital without being able to walk for exactly almost two weeks. And in the month of March, I mean, my [now] ex-boyfriend and I wanted to take a vacation." Candelario stated.

Candelario stated that she had told her ex-partner she was going to leave the girl with her mother for the trip (but why didn't she though?). She also denied that she had purchased the tickets to travel already having made the decision to leave her daughter unattended, but rather that the event occurred as a result of her mental state.

"Actually, I left for the trip as a result of an impulse that I had, that I took, grabbed my four things and ran out of the house like when someone is being chased,” she said. Yet, according to video footage, she was not running and she had a getaway suitcase packed and ready to go. She also had, previous to that, already left Jailyn unattended for 2 days.

“It’s not that at that moment I thought that, ‘Ah, I was going to Puerto Rico... I was going to be super comfortable.’ No, I never thought that. I simply wanted to get away from a life of stress, depression and anxiety,” Candelario said. “I didn’t want to continue living, because I had, had a lot of problems in my life.”

During the trip, Candelario said, she thought about her daughter and the fact that she was alone, ​​“The people who accompanied me [on the trip] could see that I was very distracted, I was very angry. They told me, ‘Kristel, what’s happening? You’re not yourself.’ I never mentioned anything [about my daughter].”

Candelario said her (ex) boyfriend asked her about Jailyn one day during the trip. “When he mentioned [Jailyn] to me, it was like when someone reminds you of someone who’s not with you at that moment,” but she said that she simply responded that her daughter was fine.

She confessed that for a few seconds she thought about calling a family member or neighbor to check on her daughter’s well-being, but, “I didn’t do it. No, I never did it. And it was my mistake.” Candelario said her parents never knew that she had gone on a trip and had abandoned the little girl to her fate. “They never knew that I had gone to Puerto Rico,” she said. “They thought that I was at home or that I was with Jailyn, maybe somewhere else, in another city.”

Candelario’s parents had been traveling with her other daughter, who was 7 years old at the time. “The only thing I told them [was], go at ease, I’m going to stay here with Jailyn.” She told them she wasn’t up to doing anything during the vacation time with her parents. “That was all I told them,” she said. Upon her return, Candelario found her daughter unresponsive and called the police.

She said, “That’s when my world fell apart. Not because maybe I was thinking about going to prison. That’s the least important thing, because one is an adult and one can accept one’s mistakes. [I was in] despair. I felt she could be saved, things didn’t have to happen that way because my daughter was doing well, I always took care of her.”

Authorities declared Jailyn dead after finding her in a playpen surrounded by feces and urine, wrapped in dirty blankets and “extremely dehydrated,” according to the sheriff’s office. The child had lost a third of her weight during her mother’s absence.