PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "From their phone calls, Bowie asked her to dig through the trash and retrieve the juice box and Teddy Grahams that Dante Mullinix had that Bowie claimed he had choked on. When Peiffer (owned house Bowie was staying at. HL); offered the evidence to Sgt. Detective Kyle Hower nearly a week after Dante Mullinix died, she said he told her, "We don't need them," and, "He's guilty." She gave the evidence to Holt, (defence lawyer; HL); who held onto them for years until they were introduced in court on Tuesday."0
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Holt questioned Hower over his interview practices with Bowie, asking Hower to affirm that Bowie's story never changed when asked multiple times about the types of injuries around Dante Mullinix's neck. "I cannot answer that question with a yes or no answer," was Hower's response multiple times. Hower and Holt butted heads for the rest of the cross examination, with Holt asking clarifying questions such as what Hower was referring to when he referenced the top of the car door, either the top of the glass or rim of the window. Hower continually avoided giving Holt straight answers, avoiding questions and responding to ones Hold did not ask. At one point, the two argued over a small item seen in a photograph at the foot of the driver side door of Bowie's vehicle. Holt said it looked like cookie and asked if it had been sent to a lab. Hower said it did not look like that to him and it was more of a nacho chip. Eventually, he said it had not been sent to a lab, and later said it looked more like a leaf when zoomed in on."
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STORY: "Forensic experts disagree," by York Daily Record (USA Today Network) Reporter Jack Panyard, published on December 15, 2022.
GIST: “The fifth, sixth and seventh days of the trial for the 2018 murder of 2-year-old Dante Mullinix brought a series of new witnesses, including the lead detective, two forensic experts who disagreed on the injuries, and the defendant's former roommate.
Tyree Bowie, 41, is on trial for the alleged murder of toddler Dante Mullinix.
Dante's mother, Leah, 26, left him in the care of Bowie.
Less than two hours later, Bowie brought the boy to the emergency room limp and covered in previously undocumented bruises.
Dante Mullinix had numerous injuries and a case of herpes he was prescribed antibiotics for. Leah Mullinix failed multiple times to get the prescription for him and, according to testimony, was referred by child services to get her son medical treatment in the first place.
Leah is charged with a felony count of child endangerment. Her next court hearing scheduled for Jan. 18, 2023.
Dante was flown to the Hershey Medical Center that evening before dying just over a week later.
Bowie is charged with murder of the first- and third-degree, along with child endangerment, and he has been in custody since 2018.
The case is before a jury and Common Pleas Judge Gregory M. Snyder.
Assistant District Attorney Tim Barker and Senior Deputy Prosecutor Rachel Sherman are prosecuting and Attorney Farley Holt is Bowie's defense.
The prosecution alleges Bowie attacked the child, causing a traumatic brain injury and ultimately his death.
Holt is building the case that the boy was a victim of abuse and had many of the injuries before his death by choking on a cookie Bowie gave him.
Monday: Dr. David Fowler:
During Monday's proceedings, the defense brought forensic expert Dr. David Fowler, the former chief medical examiner of Maryland, to testify on the wounds Dante Mullinix suffered.
Fowler testified that he believed the bruises, which according to previous witnesses covered most of the toddler's body, were likely incurred before the evening Bowie brought Dante Mullinix to the hospital.
Fowler described how bruising changes color over time, and it may take a day for a bruise to fully show up. Dante's body had numerous bruises of varying severity.
"You have almost every color of the rainbow here," Fowler said during his testimony. "These are bruises that multiple of them are days old."
He said the freshest ones would be some of the ones on his torso from when Bowie said he applied a kind of CPR and one on his chin from when the child hit his face getting out of the car, according to Bowie's text messages and interviews.
Additionally, Fowler questioned the autopsy's suggestion that Dante Mullinix died from the trauma of a brain injury or direct mechanical strangulation. He believes it is much more likely the child died of brain damage resulting from asphyxiation in a choking event.
Fowler said there were none of the signs for smothering, as there were no bruises on the inside of his mouth. He denied strangulation as well, despite the prosecution saying there were bruises and fingernail marks on the child's chin.
"I think there is very little evidence of anything for suffocation," Fowler said. "I would have a grave concern of saying mechanical strangulation."
Fowler ultimately concluded the cause of death was "brain swelling due to a hypoxic event secondary to choking."
He also remarked the alleged bite mark found on Dante Mullinix's right arm seemed small, at four centimeters across, to be from Bowie. He offered no alternate explanation for the wounds.
Monday to Tuesday: Laci Peiffer:
The next witness was Laci Peiffer, who owned the house Bowie was staying at the week of Sept. 6, 2018.
According to Peiffer's testimony, she was not aware Bowie was bringing the Mullinix to her house at any point during the 6th. She only became aware of the situation regarding Dante the next morning.
From there, she had conversations with Bowie, who was taken into custody in Dauphin County over a vehicular warrant.
During one of the phone calls, Bowie recounted to Peiffer that he saw Dante Mullinix start to pass out in his car seat on Sept. 6 while he was driving with Leah and "his eyes were rolling back in the back of his f------ head." He said the boy snapped out of it.
"If you have nothing to do with anything, you are good, especially if you have all those messages and stuff," Peiffer reassured Bowie over the call.
From their phone calls, Bowie asked her to dig through the trash and retrieve the juice box and Teddy Grahams that Dante Mullinix had that Bowie claimed he had choked on.
When Peiffer offered the evidence to Sgt. Detective Kyle Hower nearly a week after Dante Mullinix died, she said he told her, "We don't need them," and, "He's guilty."
She gave the evidence to Holt, who held onto them for years until they were introduced in court on Tuesday.
Tuesday to Wednesday: Sgt. Det. Kyle Hower:
Hower took the stand next, presenting a timeline of his investigation of the death and hours of video footage from two interviews with Bowie.
The first interview, taken the morning of Sept. 7, has Bowie giving his account of the events from the previous day, including all the stops Leah and Dante Mullinix took with him during the day.
Bowie told Hower how every time he saw Dante Mullinix he felt like the toddler had a new bruise or mark on his body. He told him he had planned to call child services on Leah Mullinix if the trend had kept up.
"I was about to adopt him if I could," Bowie said on the recording. "He was in my care, man. I was supposed to protect him. He loves me man, he does. He gives me kisses before he gives mom kisses … He’s seen too much for a 2-year-old."
Bowie said Leah Mullinix told him Dante would bang his head in frustration as a way of channeling his frustration as the child was nonverbal. A video of him hitting his head was presented as evidence in trial.
Eventually, Hower said Bowie's account does not explain all the bruises found on Dante Mullinix.
"If you made that one mistake I need to know about that one mistake, because if I don’t know that one mistake, I don’t want people to think you threw him around or anything," Hower tells Bowie during the interview.
Hower continually asks Bowie if he had hit Dante Mullinix, if the boy had fallen out of the window, if Bowie had smacked him out of the car or even hit the child with the car.
Bowie met the last question with incredulous silence before adamantly denying all of Hower’s questions, eventually breaking into tears while examining the photos.
Bowie testified in his second interview on Sept. 19, 2018, the day after Dante Mullinix's autopsy, that after watching a movie with the child and Leah at his home he went upstairs to use the bathroom and heard a thump and muffled cry.
He saw Leah putting foundation in her pocket when he came back, believing she covered any marks she would have left on Dante with the makeup.
Hower begins asking Bowie to recount the events that led to Dante Mullinix's hospitalization. He eventually breaks down.
"This is the saddest part," Bowie says in tears. "He died in my hands, man."
Hower said Bowie had changed his story over the course of the two interviews, giving different descriptions of how he could have missed the marks he claimed were already on Dante Mullinix's face or how he handled the child in the car when he became unresponsive.
Holt questioned Hower over his interview practices with Bowie, asking Hower to affirm that Bowie's story never changed when asked multiple times about the types of injuries around Dante Mullinix's neck.
"I cannot answer that question with a yes or no answer," was Hower's response multiple times.
Hower and Holt butted heads for the rest of the cross examination, with Holt asking clarifying questions such as what Hower was referring to when he referenced the top of the car door, either the top of the glass or rim of the window.
Hower continually avoided giving Holt straight answers, avoiding questions and responding to ones Hold did not ask.
At one point, the two argued over a small item seen in a photograph at the foot of the driver side door of Bowie's vehicle.
Holt said it looked like cookie and asked if it had been sent to a lab. Hower said it did not look like that to him and it was more of a nacho chip. Eventually, he said it had not been sent to a lab, and later said it looked more like a leaf when zoomed in on.
The police took swabs of different substances in Bowie's car, concluding there was no foundation makeup like the one Bowie described Leah Mullinix putting on Dante to cover bruises and injuries.
Additionally, Pennsylvania State Police Forensic DNA Expert Jillian Scola testified on stains found on Bowie's clothing and on Dante Mullinix's body.
She identified seven different areas she swabbed, including the alleged bite mark on Dante Mullinix, his fingernails, and stains on Bowie's clothing.
She concluded that all the swabs had an extremely high likelihood that they were from both Dante and Bowie, with only one sample taken off the front of Bowie's jeans including Leah Mullinix.
Wednesday: Dr. Wayne Ross:
Dr. Wayne Ross, a forensic pathologist for the Dauphin County Coroner's Office who performed Dante Mullinix's autopsy, testified Wednesday afternoon that he concluded the injuries on Dante's skull, chest, back, genitals and extremities were all caused by blunt force trauma given any and all internal damage found beyond surface bruising.
Regarding the blood found in Dante Mullinix's brain and nerves, he said he suffered a condition called a diffuse axonal injury, where not only are axons damaged but also the blood vessels, through trauma from something at a high velocity.
Ross said it was not possible for the toddler to sustain injuries like this from just falling out of a car.
"There is no way,” Ross said. “The improbability is so high it’s impossible.”
Ross said the injury causes swelling to the brain which he classified as the cause of death.
Ross catalogued the myriad injuries on the body, identifying most of them as so severe the child would not have been able to walk like he did on video at Rutter's with Bowie less than two hours before arriving at York Hospital.
He also identified strangling as one of the factors in Dante Mullinix's death, citing a report from York Hospital of swelling in his throat as he was intubated.
He also said the bruising around his jawline shows a pattern of small circular prints, like fingernails, which would indicate someone grabbed Dante Mullinix multiple times, compressing his jaw.
Holt took issue with the strangulation, saying there was no soft tissue damage in the front of the throat, which would be evidence of throat compression.
Ross said he received Dante Mullinix many days after the incident, as the toddler was admitted the evening of Sept. 6, died on Sept. 15 and was brought to autopsy on Sept. 18.
Ross also ruled out choking, saying there were no remnants of cookies in his lungs.
Holt said the York Hospital staff concluded there was no direct injury to the brain, but just a subdural hematoma, which is damage to the blood vessel between the brain and the skull.
Holt suggested the cause of death was from a lack of oxygen to the brain primarily through a choking event.
Ross insisted a subdural hematoma would be considered brain damage and that blood patterns from the skull would indicate a serious brain injury.
The trial was set to conclude on Friday, but weather issues and an abundance of witness testimony has extended it to run through Tuesday."
The entire story can be read at:
