Krystal Scurry

 

 

 

 

 

 

In January 1990 a relative of Therea Tyler called the Aiken County Department of Social Services for help because the Tyler home was without heat. When child protective services workers arrived, they found the children sick with colds and their mother sick with the flu. The social workers took 11 month old Krystal Scurry and her three year old half-brother Debarge Staley and placed them into a foster home of Clarissa Bell Bates. While in her care, Clarissa Bell Bates violently shook Debarge, slapped him, yanked him, stuffed food in his mouth and forced him to sleep on the floor. According to Debarge, she did all of that, and much more, to Krystal. 19 year old Stacy Brown, one of the six foster children in the home with Krystal, said Bates would often jam food into Krystal’s mouth. Brown described like this: "She'd get mad when Krystal wouldn't eat. Sometimes she'd do it until Krystal would vomit. It was bad, she was so tiny." This was far from the worst of what Krystal would endure at the hands of her foster mother.

 

On February 15, 1991, Bates took Krystal, along with Debarge and two other children, to the Aiken Community Hospital. A hospital social worker reported to the Department that Bates had pinched one of the children on the buttocks, grabbed another by the throat, and left without getting treatment for Krystal. She then took Krystal to the Medical College of Georgia. There Krystal was admitted and keep for nearly two weeks. Dr. Rebecca Jean Atha explained that the main reason she kept Krystal hospitalized for so long was because she was afraid to send her back to Bell`s home. Krystal seemed unusually depressed for a two year old, she had an unexplained paralysis on her right side and a broken arm. She also had two healing leg fractures. Dr. Atha said she telephoned the Department several times, talking with caseworker Bill Perkins. "I told him that I was very afraid for this child, that I did not think she should go back to this foster home. “According to Dr. Atha, the caseworker said that he understood what the doctor was saying, that he accepted full responsibility for the child and that he was going to put her back in the best foster home that he knew of that of Clarissa Bell Bates.

 

Bates 44 year old son John Bell, described as a transient and an ex- convict, moved into the home where Bates cared for Krystal and Debarge. Debarge described the horrors he and his sister suffered to social workers. Debarge said he didn`t like John Bell. He said Bell hurt him. He kicked him, hit him in the belly and hit him on the back with a belt, hit him in the head with a hammer. Debarge also said that John Bell kicked Krystal and two other children living in the house, and that they had told Clarissa Bell Bates about it.

 

On the afternoon of November 2, 1991, John Bell left with Krystal in the car. Four days later, workers gathering pine straw for baling found her naked and bruised body discarded in woods outside Aiken. Bell later testified that he had smoked crack cocaine the day of the murder. He is serving life plus 30 years for raping and killing Krystal. But it was only after her death that the true extent of the injuries she had endured at the hands of her foster mother were revealed. Clarissa Bell Bates was arrested in November of 1993, and charged with multiple offenses including assault and battery, physical and medical neglect. The postmortem X-rays indicated fractures to the right shoulder, both knees and right pubic bone. At the time of her death, Krystal was already partially paralyzed and could not walk.

 

In December of 1993, Ruby Chambliss and Louise Blount, the two workers who removed Krystal and Debarge, were arrested. Chambliss, who was supervisor of the county child protective services unit at the time of Krystal's death, was charged with unlawfully exerting DSS control over Krystal and Debarge. She also was charged with failing to investigate the neglect allegations against Krystal's parents, ill treatment of a child, unlawful neglect of a child, and failure to perform her state mandated child protective duties. Louise Blount, the supervisor of the county treatment unit, was also charged with unlawfully taking possession of the children by coercing the parents to voluntarily place the children in DSS custody. The two were also charged with illegally accepting $50 from Krystal's father. They allegedly obtained the money under the pretense of paying for the children's medical care, converting it instead to their personal use.