The Daddy Dearest Club

By David Pietras

Daryl Holton, Garrett Wilson, John Battaglia, Brian Stewart and John List.
Five fathers who will be remembered for the unspeakable crimes that they committed against the very people that they were supposed to protect: Their own children.
Ripped from the headlines and police files, we take a look at each case from beginning to end. We review the crime scene, the evidence, the investigation, the trial and the sentencing. Ripped from the headlines and police files
Warning some of the pictures in this book contain graphic crime scene images of murdered people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Pietras
• Release date: Jan 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311791863

Book preview

Prologue

Too often the news reports coming to us through television, newspapers, and the internet are only about mothers who have killed their children. No matter how many times we hear about these cases, we are still shocked to our very core. After all, it’s so… unnatural … for a woman who carried life in her womb to murder the very child to whom she gave life.

But society is also plagued with what I call Daddy Dearest-es. Although the cases of fathers who murder their children happen with less frequency, when they do occur, they not only shock and appall society but leave a residue of fear on our souls because, unlike Mom’s crime, they cannot be explained away by postpartum depression or fear or abuse.

No, Daddies who kill do not get a pass – ever. Maybe it’s because their crimes are more direct and often more brutal. Or maybe it’s because the murder-by-father case is doing so with the intent to hurt an adult, say an ex-wife or their baby’s mama, and the children are just pawns in a wicked game?

Who really knows? But the following five true crime short stories of men who killed their children may get us one step closer to the answer.

DARYL KEITH HOLTON

When Daryl Keith Holton met and married his wife Crystal while stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in 1984, it was a relationship full of ups and downs from the very beginning. Some would later say that the family was a regular everyday family when you looked at them. One former neighbor commented that he admired Daryl as a father of 4 small children.

In 1991, after serving two years in Germany where they had two sons, Holton was sent to Saudi Arabia while his wife remained in the states. During this time, Crystal began neglecting her duties as a mother. One night while she was out with friends at a country music bar, one of the children went to a neighbor’s home searching for his mother. Police and the Georgia Department of Children’s Service (GDOC) were called but, after Crystal returned home the next morning, police declined to press criminal charges and the GDOC allowed the wayward mother to retain custody.

A few days later, Holton learned of the incident and secured an emergency leave of absence and returned home where he subsequently moved his family to his father’s home in Bedford County, Tennessee. Believing his children were now in good care with the assistance of his father, Holton returned to the Middle East. Shortly thereafter, however, Crystal left the children behind with her father-in-law to visit a cousin in Indiana then moved back to South Carolina but without her children.

The Holton children, Stephen Edward Holton (12), Brent Holton (10), Eric Holton (6), and Kayla Marie Holton (4)

Learning of his wife abandonment of their children, he obtained a hardship discharge and returned to Tennessee in June 1992, where he also filed for divorce and was awarded custody of the couples’ three sons.

In the latter part of 1992, Crystal Holton reconciled with Holton after she became pregnant after a one night stand. When her daughter was born, Holton signed the birth certificate as the father; even giving the new baby the same middle name as his mother’s first name. For the next two years, the couple lived together until Crystal’s heavy drinking led to several bouts of domestic violence. Taking the children, Crystal moved to Murfreesboro, Tennessee where, she later testified, Holton visited them on a daily basis. Eventually, Holton was awarded weekend visitation with the children despite his request for custody because of Crystal’s alcoholism and lack of housekeeping skills.

These visits went without incident until 1995 when Crystal claimed that Holton refused