Disturbing footage has captured the moment an Ohio mother calmly lied to police about finding her infant daughter dead in her crib – after secretly leaving the child behind to go on a tropical holiday.

Kristel Candelario, 32, was confronted after her 16-month-old daughter Jailyn was found starving in her own filth after being stranded for 10 days.

The mother, sentenced this week to life in prison, was seen on police bodycam footage in which officers said her daughter had been vomiting throughout the week of June 2023.

Candelario was actually frolicking on a Puerto Rican beach.

In the shocking clip, she coldly told officers: “She had no food, she refused.”

While her daughter was starving, Candelario shared vacation photos of her smiling on a beach, with the caption, “The time enjoyed is the time truly lived.”

A medical examiner ruled the child had died of starvation and severe dehydration, and a prosecutor said the sight “will stay with me for many years to come.”

Although she later pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and child endangerment, the new bodycam footage shows that she initially lied to police when they questioned her about her daughter’s sudden death.

While she claimed the toddler was “refusing food” before she died, an officer asks her, “And how was she Wednesday and Thursday?”

“She refused, perhaps because she hadn’t eaten two days earlier,” she replied, before shrugging her shoulders to feign confusion in the chilling clip.

“But that’s why I was scared, because I’m like, oh my God, we have to go to the hospital because she’s not eating anything.”

Candelario, who did not appear angry or emotional about her daughter’s death, said the child looked “small” and was “losing weight,” and continued to make up a story about being home all the time.

“When I woke up this morning, she was asleep,” she said. “She sleeps every day, twelve hours.”

“She sleeps from 9 p.m. to 9 or 10 a.m., 12 hours, so this morning I slept too, she never wakes up.”

An officer interrupted her to ask what happened the night before, to which the killer said, “She cried a lot last night.

“And I see one moment, when I was taking a shower, she screamed like, ‘Aaah,’ I don’t know, she probably got hurt, maybe.”

“I pick her up this morning and she looks really dry,” she continued, before saying a few sentences in Spanish.

At her sentencing this week, a judge condemned her actions in the strongest terms as the mother was sent behind bars for life with no chance of parole.

County Common Pleas Court Judge Brendan Sheehan told Candelario she had committed “the ultimate betrayal” by leaving her daughter alone without food.

“Just as you failed to release Jailyn from her captivity, you should also spend the rest of your life in a cell without freedom,” Judge Sheehan said.

“The only difference will be that at least the prison will feed you and give you fluids that you denied it.”

Candelario, who struggles with depression and related mental health issues, said she has prayed daily for forgiveness.

“I’m in so much pain over the loss of my baby, Jailyn,” she said. ‘I am very hurt by everything that has happened.

“I don’t try to justify my actions, but no one knew how much I suffered and what I went through… God and my daughter have forgiven me.”

Curiously, she made the trips with her eldest daughter, and it is unclear why Candelario asked no one to help her care for her child while she was traveling.

After ten days of sunbathing on the beach and enjoying the local sights, she returned to her home on June 16 to find her daughter not breathing.

Paramedics and Cleveland police tragically pronounced the one-year-old dead at the scene, and prosecutors said the child was discovered “on a liner soiled with urine and feces with soiled blankets.”

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley announced the plea in February, saying, “This case is one of those truly unimaginable cases that will stay with me for many years to come.

“As prosecutors, it is our job to represent the victims and today we spoke on behalf of 16-month-old Jailyn – who is no longer with us – because of the selfish decisions her mother made.”

After news of the gruesome death made headlines, a neighbor also revealed that this wasn’t the first time Candelario left her daughter home alone.

An acquaintance told News5 Cleveland, “We keep telling her not to leave her alone, not just me, my girlfriend across the street, but she always leaves her alone.”

Another female neighbor, who was not identified, told CNN that Jailyn was “always a happy baby” and “always smiling.”

The neighbor’s daughter said there were “plenty of people” around who could have looked at the baby. She said, “She could have knocked on one of our doors and asked us to take care of Jailyn, and we would have.”

“When they told us the condition they found her in, I was just heartbroken,” the teenage neighbor told CNN.

By Victoria Bischoff for Sunday’s post

Published: 04:44 EST, January 12, 2024 | Updated: 04:44 EST, January 12, 2024

The British millionaire who was kidnapped in Ecuador is pictured in Lake Como with his Colombian girlfriend last year, as the police reveal the bomb vest she was made to wear by the crooks was fake.

Former honorary British Consul Colin Armstrong OBE was snatched by 15 men dressed in fake police uniforms when he was kidnapped a week ago, along with his ‘romantic partner,’ Katherine Paolo Santos.

While the 78-year-old has now been released safely, Ms Santos is said to have been quizzed by police about her alleged involvement in the millionaire’s kidnapping.

Photos taken in July last year show Mr Armstrong and Ms Santos at Lake Como in Italy at the luxury ‘historical and romantic’ Villa d’Este.

In the photos, the pair are shown smiling and laughing together light-heartedly, with Mr Armstrong dressed in black and white shorts.

His glamorous girlfriend is seen dressed in a purple bikini and gold earrings, drinking what seems to be a cocktail by the pool.

The duo are seen taking it in turns to take photos of each other, before drying off with matching blue towels and holding hands as they walk. 

The Villa d’Este is a five star ‘opulent hotel’ which overlooks Lake Como – boasting of a pool, tennis court and world-famous Italian Renaissance gardens.

Bundled into his own black BMW at gunpoint, the millionaire businessman – formerly known as ‘Our Man in Guayaquil’ – was kidnapped last Saturday, along with Ms Santos, a Colombian model and pole dancer.

Just hours later, Ms Santos reappeared at a gated property – believed to belong to Mr Armstrong’s son Nick – wearing what she claimed was a bomb vest which would blow up if a ransom wasn’t paid for Mr Armstrong to the gang behind his kidnapping.

But when bomb disposal officers in protective gear removed the vest, they later revealed it to be a fake.

On Tuesday evening at around 11pm, three days after Ms Santos’ release, Mr Armstrong was picked up by police who found him wandering along a main road in the coastal province of Manabi, about 150 miles southwest of the capital, Quito.

But while the Policia Nacional del Ecuador have already made nine arrests and confiscated a huge haul of guns, grenades, detonators and drugs, serious questions remain for investigating officers including whether or not Mr Armstrong’s kidnappers had help from someone with insider knowledge.

And who is the mysterious Ms Santos who has been at Mr Armstrong’s side in recent years given that, just 18 months ago, Mr Armstrong was publicly paying tribute to his wife Cecilia, whom he married 49 years ago, at an event attended by hundreds of his employees?

With an ex-local MP publicly implicating Santos in the crime, she is said to have been quizzed by police about her alleged involvement in the kidnapping plot.

Father-of-three Mr Armstrong, meanwhile, is said to be ‘safe and healthy’ after police released a photograph of him, smiling for the camera in a police-issue baseball cap and long-sleeved t-shirt – remarkable, given everything he has been through in the past week.

Extortion is one of the charges which police have made against those arrested for his kidnap.

According to police sources, evidence found during raids this week suggest that last weekend’s kidnapping was planned in meticulous detail.

Gang members arrived at Rodeo Grande, where the Armstrong family crest hangs next to the gate along with the family motto ‘Trans Mare Video’ – ‘I see beyond the sea’ – in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Staff members who tried to stop them were beaten as they made their way to the room where ‘Mr Colin’, as he is known by his employees, was sleeping.

A short video made by a member of staff in the aftermath of the raid, showed blood stains on sheets and on the floor of one room.

Mr Armstrong was forced at gunpoint, along with Ms Santos, into his own black BMW which has diplomatic licence plates. After activating satellite tracking, police later found the car abandoned.

Within hours, news of the kidnapping was all over Ecuadorian media along with several photographs taken from Ms Santos’ social media accounts which suggest a close relationship between him and Ms Santos. In one they appear to be on safari in Africa; in another, visiting Egypt.

There are photographs of them in beachwear, with a delighted-looking and moustachioed Mr Armstrong in a Panama hat and shorts and bearing more than a passing similarity to the British actor Terry-Thomas as he wraps his arms around a seemingly devoted Ms Santos.

There is also video footage of Mr Armstrong at what appears to be Ms Santos’ 30th birthday on board a luxury yacht with dozens of other scantily-clad young women.

On her LinkedIn page, Ms Santos, who is listed on the books of Ecuadorian modelling agency Studio Moda, says she has worked for Agripac since 2013.

The company, which sells everything from seeds, fertilisers to pet food, uses models, often dressed as cowgirls, for promotional work and Ms Santos appears in photographs with Mr Armstrong taken at Rodeo Grande as far back as 2014.

Given his high profile, it is perhaps not surprising that vast amounts of Ecuadorian police resources were devoted to ensuring Mr Armstrong’s safe return this week.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office confirmed that it had also supported the Ecuadorian authorities. British intelligence services are also said to have assisted the police operation.

So far, nine people, one foreign national and eight Ecuadorians have been arrested. It is not known if any ransom was paid.

But with the kidnapping shining a spotlight on the deteriorating security situation in the country, police authorities say that are still investigating this extraordinarily audacious kidnapping plot and following up several leads.

Speaking to the Mail this week, General Freddy Sarzosa Guerra, the police’s director of investigations, said: ‘This is being investigated as a kidnap for money and the motive was an economic one.’

For now the Armstrong family have asked for privacy to recover from the shocking events of the past week.

‘All of the UK family, staff and friends are delighted with the outcome and look forward to a happier Christmas,’ said Leo Morris, who is director of Tupgill Park Estate where he grew up and is regarded as an ‘adopted son’ by Mr Armstrong.

The Manchester-born businessman, as the Mail can reveal, is no stranger to danger.

Having travelled the globe as a young man working for what was then British chemical company, ICI, he set up his own agricultural distribution company, Agripac, in Ecuador where he has lived for half a century.

Over the decades, his extraordinary life has been punctuated with more moments of high drama than most would people would expect to experience in their careers.

From devastating floods and military coups, to the murder of one of his former managers who died while trying to fend off armed robbers, Mr Armstrong has certainly seen more than his fair share of trouble over the past five decades.

Barely a year into his role as honorary consul and in the midst of the Falklands War, he was forced to fend off pro-Argentine sympathisers who turned up at the British Consulate in Guayaquil demanding a Union Jack to burn.

While rubbing shoulders with the likes of Princess Anne and entertaining former Tory Minister John Gummer and ex Tory MP David Mellor in his consular role, Mr Armstrong has also had to confront cattle rustlers and hired armed guards to patrol his ranch and sleep in the house when the property was unoccupied.

Reports from Ecuador this week claimed that Mr Armstrong had been abducted after he refused to pay monthly protection money.

His son, Nick, who took over his father’s consular role in 2016, has previously led the British-Ecuadorian chamber of industries and commerce.

He also works as a director of Ripon Race Company in North Yorkshire and helps his father run Agripac.

When I was five, my parents deposited my younger sister and me at Badminton House in Gloucestershire, and returned to their lives in London. It was 1957, and for the following six years, we usually saw them only at weekends.

Our new home had 116 rooms, though for most of the time we lived with our nanny in the nursery wing. Ruling over the entire domain was the 10th Duke of Beaufort — universally known as Master because he was master of the Beaufort Hunt — and his wife Mary, a niece of Queen Mary.

Many decades later, I would become the unlikely 12th Duke. Unlikely because my father — the unlikely 11th — was only distantly related to the 10th, who was my grandfather’s first cousin once removed. The reason we were Master’s heirs, of course, is because he and his wife Mary were childless. They’d lived alone (with many servants) in Badminton since 1924, so it must have been strange for them suddenly to have two small children there.

The 10th Duke, it’s fair to say, was one of the most extraordinary characters I’ve ever known. No doubt like many of his ancestors, Master was convinced his title made him a superior being and he was so obsessed with hunting that he indulged in it six times a week. He was also frequently unfaithful to his wife — more on that later.

Mary treated me as an informal grandson, and suggested I come down to dinner every evening in my dressing-gown. This was not exactly the treat it was intended to be. Master and Mary always sat in the huge formal dining room, which was dark and often very cold. As conversation at dinner inevitably revolved around dogs or hunting, the alternative — television in the nursery — was considerably more attractive.

The food was disgusting, and menus were ruled by the calendar: in the shooting season, we constantly ate very dry pheasant, or when the deer were being culled, repulsive slabs of venison that weighed heavy on the plates.

Master was totally uninterested in food and, although he had a wine cellar, didn’t appear to drink anything other than orange squash, always in a jug by his place at every meal.

Still, eating unappetising dinners with Master and Mary was possibly a better alternative than dealing with Master’s father, the 9th Duke. In his old age, he used to be strapped into his chair by the fire in the great hall every day after dinner. He’d then immediately fall asleep, leaving the assembled servants with the unenviable task of waking him up when it was time to go to his bed. At that point, he’d thrash out at the nearest person as hard as he could with a stick.

The move to Badminton wasn’t as traumatic as you might expect. I missed my London friends, but I was well used to the cosy world of the nursery. Back in London, at our house in Eaton Terrace, my parents had done their best to recreate a bygone era, perhaps clinging on to everything they knew in the wake of all the unsettling changes that took place after the war. This meant handing over a huge degree of responsibility for the children to a nanny.

With hindsight, our daily routine of seeing our mother for only an hour — at the most — after breakfast, and then after tea, seems quite strange, not least because she spent much of her time downstairs, playing Patience and compiling rather bizarre lists.

When she showed us these lists, her full eccentricity was revealed. One was headed ‘People Who Might Be Murderers’, and included Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos, whose wife died mysteriously, and Claus von Bulow, who was tried but eventually acquitted of trying to murder his wife.

She also listed people she knew who had been murdered. This group tended to comprise obscure characters such as Mrs Muriel Mckay, who used to exchange greetings with my mother when they were seated next to each other at the hairdresser. Poor Muriel had been kidnapped in 1969 in the mistaken belief that she was Rupert Murdoch’s wife; her body was never found.

Even if she had wanted to be more present in our lives, it would have been difficult: the slightest intrusion on to Nanny Nelson’s territory resulted in an immediate threat to leave, a misery my mother was reluctant to impose. Yet I’m sure she’d have preferred not to have her relationship with her children dictated by the nanny.

At our new home, Master was seldom indoors, spending much of each winter in pursuit of foxes. In summer, he liked nothing more than spending hours watching young fox cubs through his binoculars as they frolicked around.

On one occasion, a huge dog appeared and scared the cubs away — in Master’s mind a very serious offence indeed. He became even more angry when he discovered the dog belonged to the architectural historian and writer James Lees-Milne, and his wife Alvilde, who had recently become tenants of one of the houses in the village.

Master had been a bit doubtful about their arrival as Lees-Milne, although one of the great diarists of the age, was not exactly the rugged sort of man with whom he normally associated. He now felt his suspicions had been confirmed.

Still furious, he stormed round to the Lees-Milne house, shotgun in the crook of his arm. Lees-Milne made some sort of apology about the dog, but Master couldn’t resist a parting word: ‘You don’t hunt, you don’t shoot. What do you do?’

He showed a similar lack of understanding when he went to stay with his friend the Duke of Northumberland, whose son and heir Harry Percy was suffering from serious mental health issues. Master could see there was a problem but couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. On his return to Badminton, he commented, ‘Poor Hughie Northumberland has terrible problems with his boy. He’s given up hunting.’

The 10th Duke came from a long line of huntsmen, and his father was similarly obsessed. On the day Master was born, there was a meet at Badminton and a huntsman suggested marking the occasion with ‘three cheers’. But Master’s father said no — on account of not wanting to upset the hounds. At Eton, great things were predicted for Master but, after a short stint in the Army, he decided to devote his life to a traditional aristocratic country existence.

At the retirement dinner for Charlie, the head forester, who was his contemporary, Master made a speech. He described how, when they were children, he’d stand at the end of the wood while poor Charlie clawed his way through the brambles, rousting up the birds so Master could shoot them.

He concluded the speech by saying: ‘And by God we had fun, didn’t we Charlie?’

After the war, the Beaufort Hunt was looking for a new joint master and an application came through from India, in slightly illegible handwriting, from a Major Gundry, serving in the Army there.

Delighted by this letter, Master urgently contacted the hunt committee with news that Mahatma Gandhi had applied for the job. He was in no way surprised that the great visionary was considering such a drastic career change.

He had been brought up in an era when, at least within the square miles around the Badminton estate, he could believe in some sort of ‘divine right of dukes’. One day, my father was out riding with him when they reached a gate that was jammed. Neither of them could open it without dismounting.

Then Master noticed a man up a telegraph pole, carrying out some maintenance work, and politely asked him if he’d oblige. The man either didn’t hear this request or didn’t see why he should agree.

This prompted a total change of mood in Master. He bellowed at full volume: ‘Open the bloody gate, damn you!’ The shocked man shimmied down the telegraph pole like a fireman summoned to an urgent call and carried out the task, after which Master carried on with the ride, seeing nothing unusual in the exchange.

His wife Mary also had her moments. Inflexible on the political front, she was horrified when my parents introduced her to a friend of theirs, the very soft-Left Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt (who later became a confidant of Margaret Thatcher). The mere fact of his being affiliated to Labour made him persona non grata.

On another occasion, during an election campaign, she was riding home (side-saddle, of course) from hunting when she saw a Labour sticker in the cottage window of one of her junior housemaids. The audacity!

Mary leapt off her horse, rang the doorbell and furiously insisted that the maid tear it off immediately. This dictatorial behaviour did not cause any lasting disaffection, and the maid rose to become the Badminton housekeeper.

Master devoted much of his zeal to extramarital affairs. Some of his girlfriends were also married, so to keep their husbands happy with the arrangement, he often asked them to come shooting at Badminton.

Gloria Cottesloe was not only Master’s girlfriend but also the ghost writer of his autobiography, which he famously neither wrote nor read. I was once present at a shoot where we were all told that her husband, Lord Cottesloe, should be given the best position in the line-up on every drive.

Master’s cunning was not always so successful. One day, his chauffeur was driving him and Lady Cottesloe to the Great West Show in his very recognisable Bentley. Master instructed him to stop the car as he wanted Lady Cottesloe to enjoy the beautiful summer weather and go for a short ‘walk’ with him. When they returned, he instructed the chauffeur to resume the journey. Unfortunately, as they rounded the first corner, they found a tractor blocking the road — and no amount of hooting the horn could persuade the occupant to move on.

Eventually, the chauffeur got out and approached the farmer, but was quite surprised by his response: ‘You can tell that dirty bugger that I know exactly what he’s been doing and I ain’t movin’ until he gives me a fiver.’ There was no choice but to pay up.

The only girlfriend who really threatened Master’s marriage was the Duchess of Norfolk. Lavinia Norfolk was the wife of Bernard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, whose family are the prime lay Roman Catholics in Britain. She wasn’t Catholic herself, which possibly made her less perturbed by the moral aspect of her antics than she might have been. The affair with Master resulted in Mary moving out of Badminton for a short time and there was much talk of scandal.

However, Mary was very popular with all the farm tenants, and they combined to say they wouldn’t allow the hunt on their land unless Master welcomed her back. This nuclear threat caused a swift termination of the affair.

In my family, Master and Mary’s marriage was by no means unique. My mother’s parents, Henry and Daphne, the sixth Marquess and Marchioness of Bath, were part of the ‘bright young things’ set, who danced through the 1920s in fairly outrageous style.

Daphne chronicled these years in an autobiography, written in her 50s. When her friend Evelyn Waugh was asked what he thought of it, he was complimentary but added that Daphne never mentioned any of her affairs. He felt this was like Field Marshal Montgomery writing his life story and not mentioning that he joined the Army.

Then there was my uncle — my mother’s brother, the Marquess of Bath — who announced he had no interest in conventional marriage but wanted rather to enjoy a harem he dubbed ‘wifelets’. Even so, he was keen to have a son and heir to whom he could pass on Longleat, so he eventually married Anna Gael, a Hungarian actress, on the understanding that fidelity would not form part of their vows.

My father, a successful art dealer, also never had any intention of adhering to the rules of fidelity. He and my mother were only 22 when they married. The moral climate was different in those days.

A girl’s reputation would be damaged by indulging in sex before marriage, while affairs within marriage were in many ways more acceptable than they are now.

My father’s affairs were recurring disappointments for my mother, who faced them stoically. She told me later: ‘You either marry a man or a mouse.’

When I was 11, my parents moved into The Cottage, a fairly substantial house in Badminton village. My mother spent most of her time there, while my father came down for weekends and some of the school holidays. This gave her more time to be with my youngest brother, but her husband’s endless stream of affairs may also have affected her decision.

She dealt with his infidelities by throwing herself into fundraising for charity. She became much loved for her daring, including abseiling down a building, where she got stuck upside down.

In 1994, she was diagnosed with cancer, which she declared to be ‘a bloody bore’. In typical style, she made a list of the advantages of having cancer, the first entry being ‘Lose weight’. Ominously, I received a call from her doctor asking me to ‘Keep an eye on your dad’, as he’d been hit quite hard by her illness. Indeed, the cancer brought my parents closer together.

That Christmas, I witnessed the rare sight of my father holding my mother’s hand at the dining-room table. Nobody could say they’d had a perfect marriage, but her illness had somehow made him realise how deeply fond of her he was.

In her last months, a sort of love affair developed between them, which was a great comfort to her. He took her to Barbados for a winter break; the travelling was a real struggle but I think she found it worthwhile for all the attention my father lavished upon her.

She died in April the following year, and I was touched by how people of all ages and backgrounds took the trouble to come to her funeral. She’d have enjoyed seeing Master’s old girlfriend Peggy De L’Isle standing among the guests after the service. Peggy was sipping tea, when suddenly there was a very audible twang. I noticed her lifting her feet in a rather dignified way and then walking away.

It turned out the elastic on her rather large bloomers had snapped, causing them to fall to the floor, and she had sensibly elected to step out of them discreetly and abandon them there.

Adapted from The Unlikely Duke by Harry Beaufort (Hodder & Stoughton, £25) to be published on November 16. © Harry Beaufort 2023. 

To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid until November 13, 2023, UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.