A 24-year-old mother in Georgia will spend at least three decades behind bars for killing her 20-month-old son, tossing his body in a dumpster and repeatedly misleading police as to her whereabouts during the time her son went missing.
Chatham County Superior Court Judge Tammy Stokes on Thursday ordered Leilani Simon to serve a sentence of life in a state correctional facility with the possibility of parole for the 2022 slaying of young Quinton Simon. Under Georgia law, Simon must serve at least 30 years before being eligible for parole.
A jury last month deliberated for about seven hours before unanimously finding Simon guilty on one count of malice murder, two counts of felony murder, one count of concealing the death of another, and more than a dozen counts of false reporting.
Prosecutors said the mother of three intentionally killed her son on Oct. 5, 2022, with an unknown object "that when used offensively against a person did result in serious bodily injury," and "cause Quinton's death."
The felony murder charges stem from Simon killing Quinton while also committing felonious acts of aggravated assault and first-degree cruelty to a child by "maliciously" causing Quinton "cruel and excessive physical pain."
Thursday's sentencing hearing
During Thursday's hearing, Stokes allowed the prosecution and defense to present evidence of aggravating and mitigating factors that may affect the final sentence.
Prosecutors called one of the investigators in Simon's case who testified that since her son's initial disappearance, Simon had shown no signs of remorse. During the testimony, the investigators read a letter Simon penned to a local news station just weeks before her trial in which she maintained her innocence.
"They (the state) are attempting to railroad me instead of admitting they have accused the wrong person for the past almost two years," the letter stated as read by the investigator.
A family friend who often watched Quinton provided brief but emotional testimony about what the boy meant to her, telling the court, "Quinton was like a little brother to me."
"My family loved him a lot," she said. "I miss seeing him walking around the house with cheese in his hand saying 'bubbles.' I miss him just lighting up the room. I miss looking at his little bow legs run across the kitchen."
Simon's stepfather of 12 years also addressed the court and said that drugs had ravaged her once-promising life, asking the court for some mercy and to give her "the chance to one day come back into the world."
Before ultimately passing the sentence, Stokes said it was clear that in only a short time, Quinton's life impacted "many individuals." She then sentenced Simon to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
The trial
Quinton's remains were discovered in a landfill in Savannah, Georgia, about six weeks after he initially went missing. An officer with the Chatham County Police Department took the stand during the eight-day trial and provided emotional testimony about the moment she came across a piece of Quinton's skull in the landfill, saying it was "heartbreaking."
Throughout the trial, prosecutors repeatedly emphasized the bizarre array of stories Simon told police who were investigating Quinton's disappearance. Several clips were also shown of her interactions with police.
In one such video, Simon explained that she stopped at a secluded dumpster in the middle of the night shortly after her son's disappearance because she was throwing away "spoiled shrimp pasta."
Prosecutors particularly homed in on Simon's explanation for being at the remote Azalea Mobile Home Plaza dumpster just after 1 a.m. on the morning her son was reported missing.
"The evidence will show that she did not want to admit that [what she threw away] was Quinton's body, so she describes this trash that she threw away as stinky shrimp pasta," Savannah Special Assistant District Attorney Tim Dean said.
He then played a tape of the police interview from Oct. 12, 2022.
"Yeah, I did throw away trash," Simon tells the detective. "There was spoiled food smelling in my car so when I pulled around and seen that (dumpster), yeah, I stopped and threw the trash away. It was spoiled. Spoiled like shrimp pasta. The whole car smelled like shrimp. I was like, what is that smell? I looked, and I threw it away. I didn't think anything of it to be honest, it's just old food."
She added that she simply saw "the opportunity" and threw away the trash.
Prosecutors said that Simon was actually disposing of her son's body, which they say was eventually recovered "in pieces."
"She throws Quinton's body away like a piece of trash about 1:17 in the morning," Dean told jurors. 'The defendant violated that most basic, sacred trust of a parent in the most horrible way. In the middle of the night, she killed him, her own son, got in her car with his body, drove to a dumpster, then threw him away like a piece of trash."
Authorities asserted that after killing her son, Simon repeatedly lied to local and federal investigators searching for Quinton.
She "admitted that she had left her home in the late night hours of October 4, 2022 to meet her drug dealer, falsely stating that the purpose of this meeting was to pay for an existing drug debt," the indictment states.
According to prosecutors, Simon falsely claimed that in the early morning hours of Oct. 5, 2022, she left her home to "meet her friend 'Misty' to obtain Orajel' when she actually traveled to dump her son's body."
Per the indictment, Simon repeated the false claims about her whereabouts and actions on the morning of Oct. 5, 2022, in several subsequent interviews with investigators. Then, on Oct. 31, 2022, she allegedly claimed that it was not her, but her boyfriend, Daniel Youngkin, who left the house on the morning of Oct. 5, 2022.
However, on Nov. 21, 2022, the same day she was arrested, Simon allegedly admitted that she did leave her house on the morning of Oct. 5, 2022, and traveled to the Azalea Mobile Home Plaza but falsely told investigators that "she did not remember what she had done there," per the indictment.
Human remains were discovered in the landfill on Nov. 18, 2022. The FBI subsequently confirmed that the remains were Quinton on Nov. 28.
In closing arguments for the state, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Parker said Simon showed no signs of a mother whose child was missing.
"Leilani Simon is not a mother. She is a monster," the prosecutor said. "What this woman did is horrific. She is a monster."