BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — Orrin and Orson West, whose disappearances led to convictions of their adoptive parents Friday, were boys making their way from one home to another through foster care and adoption.
The boys were not born Orrin and Orson West. They were born Cinsere and Classic Pettus.
Trezell and Jacqueline West changed Cinsere’s name to Orrin and changed Classic’s name to Orson.
Cinsere was born Aug. 4, 2016 and Classic was born June 11, 2017, 10 months apart to Ryan Dean and Charles Pettus.
According to court documents, when Cinsere was 3 months old he was taken to Memorial Hospital because he was crying uncontrollably. He had a broken leg.
“I was at work. I noticed my baby’s cry wasn’t normal,” Dean told 17 News. “When I got home I took him straight to the hospital and they said his femur bone was broken and twisted forwards.”
The Kern County Department of Human Services suspected abuse and placed Cinsere in emergency foster care.
A month later, he was placed in an established Bakersfield foster home operated by LaToya Spry.
Dean, Cinsere’s biological mother, visited him multiple times a week as she fought to get him back according to court documents. Six months later, Dean gave birth to her second child, Classic.
Classic went home with Dean, but 11 days later he was removed from the home based on suspicions about what had happened to his brother.
The brothers were reunited in Spry’s foster home.
During the trial, Spry testified that Orrin and Orson were removed from her home in 2018 after her daughter went to school with a scrape on her leg. Abuse was feared.
There never were criminal charges against Spry, but the boys, then about 1 or 2 years old were removed from her home and placed with Trezell and Jacqueline West.
“They got taken from an abusive home and were put into an abusive home,” prosecutor Eric Smith said during closing statements.
In 2019 the brothers were formally adopted by the West family. The next year in December 2020, both Orrin, 3, and Orson, 4, were reported missing by Trezell and Jacqueline West.
They were never seen again.
