COVINGTON, Ga. — LIVE | Watch day 3 of testimony, here
An aunt's tears, details of an infant's autopsy and stiff questions about the moment Cortney Bell and Chris McNabb learned of their daughter's death highlighted an emotionally charged second day of the murder trial against the two Wednesday.
A jury also got a detailed look at the evidence as a Newton County Sheriff's Office investigator took the stand for much of the morning. And late in the afternoon, the jury left the courtroom to go to the place where Caliyah’s body was discovered.
Bell and McNabb are facing multiple charges, including murder, in connection with the 2017 death of two-week-old daughter Caliyah McNabb.
Bell's aunt, Kim Weatherford, punctuated her tearful testimony by saying it was her "feeling from the get go" that McNabb had killed Caliyah.
And Bell's mother, Pamela Hamby, struggled under the prosecution's questioning to explain why McNabb fled a car they were riding in when Bell found out through a phone call that their baby had been found dead.
"He jumps out of the car, leaving the mother of his child to go by herself to where the baby is found?" prosecutors asked Hamby. "Are you saying he was a coward, he was afraid?"
"I'm not saying either," Hamby said.
"Why did he jump out of the car?"
"I have no idea."
Hamby later read a statement she originally gave to investigators.
"He said that if they found it anywhere near the house they are going to blame us."
Both McNabb and Bell broke down, wept and attempted to bury their heads in their hands when a medical examiner from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation described the baby's autopsy.
Dr. Lora Darrisaw described the heavy trauma that was inflicted on Caliyah's head, saying it was consistent with a "severe crushing" incident.
Weatherford began to cry as she delivered her testimony, recounting how Bell and her father, Tim Bell, had argued days before Caliyah's death when he took the infant and two-year-old Clarissa out of concern for their well-being.
The aunt indicated there had been some talk of Bell exchanging at least temporary custody of the children to her father for a car.
In a somewhat perplexing scene, Weatherford was twice pressed by defense attorneys to clarify that she didn't think Bell would literally, permanently trade her children for a car, but on both occasions she paused for a while and wouldn't explicitly say that.
She also described how she was on the phone with Bell when the mother received the news - through a separate text, Weatherford thought - that her baby had been found dead.
"I was on the phone with Cortney and my husband called and said - I wanna say he told me that they had found her (Caliyah)," Weatherford said.
EARLIER
► 'Some things were overlooked': Attorneys spar over evidence on Day 2 in trial of 2-week-old's murder
DAY 1
She said she believed someone - she thought her son, Craig - then texted Bell and told her the baby was found.
"After that, the phone Cortney was on talking to me, it went dead," Weatherford said. "But before it went dead I could hear people in the car and I heard someone tell Chris to run."
That turned out to be Hamby, Bell's biological mother who Tim Bell said a day earlier didn't have much of a role in raising her. Hamby is also the sister of Michael McNabb, Chris McNabb's father.
Hamby was in a car with Bell, McNabb, her grandson and the mother of her grandson when Bell received the news about Caliyah's death.
She said they were driving to a news interview Bell was supposed to give. She also said they had "smoked a blunt" that day.
"Everybody freaked out, kinda started screaming this and that, can't remember exactly what was said," Hamby said of the moment.
Hamby testified that she told McNabb to get out of the car. It was revealed on the first day of the trial that the father did in fact get out of the car and run when he heard the news.
She said she told him to get out because she was concerned that "guns were gonna be put on the car," meaning police would come to arrest McNabb, and that she "didn't want my grandbaby in the middle of that."
Prosecutors pressed her on this point in a contentious exchange, asking why she originally never told police about her motivation to protect her grandson and asking her why she thought of guns.
"I didn't know who was responsible for what happened, you know, just thinking somebody might had done something wrong - one of them maybe had done something wrong - and the guns were gonna be drawn," Hamby said. "I was just thinking about my grandbaby, I didn't want my grandbaby to be in the middle of that."
Prosecutors then asked her: "Your first thought when baby died was either that Cortney or Chris killed their baby?"
The day also took an emotional turn with the difficult testimony of medical examiner Dr. Darrisaw.
Both Bell and McNabb wept and turned away when the court was shown photos from the autopsy performed on Caliyah.
Dr. Darrisaw explained the number of bruises and cuts the child had that suggested significant blunt trauma to her head and described in sometimes explicit detail the effects the trauma would have had on the infant girl.
"It represents a very, very significant force," Dr. Darrisaw said.
Throughout, it appeared to be the most distressful moment of the trial so far for Bell and McNabb.
Earlier, prosecutors questioned the usefulness of DNA and fingerprint evidence, given the activity inside the trailer where the child went missing on the day she disappeared, while defense attorneys challenged the investigation process and an apparent lack of analysis of much of the key evidence, prompting an investigator to admit that "some things were overlooked."
Cpl. Mickey Kitchens, a crime scene investigator in the sheriff's office, testified for much of the morning.
Little Caliyah McNabb was born prematurely in late September 2017 and weighed only 5 pounds at birth.
Two weeks later, her mother, Cortney Bell frantically called 911 to report her daughter missing. Bell said she had fed the infant at about 5 a.m., but by 10:30 a.m., the baby was gone.
After a massive search by law enforcement across Newton County, searchers discovered the body of the infant. She was wrapped in a blue cloth and placed underneath a log in a wooded area about a quarter-mile from the trailer where Bell and the baby's father, Christopher McNabb lived.
Other crime stories:
- Sophie's Nightmare: How a Georgia mother allowed her boyfriend to impregnate her 10-year-old
- Gang members sentenced in 'the most horrific death' in recent county history
- He said he'd kill her if she left him. He did. She was pregnant.
- Police: He took a cupcake. They beat him to death with a baseball bat.
- A body, a burning truck and the Ghostface Gangsters: 4 convicted in Mableton murder