BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — An FBI agent on Tuesday testified he received a report Orrin and Orson West had been spotted in Arlington, Texas months after their adoptive parents reported them missing.
Later Tuesday, the birth mother of the boys testified via Zoom. She said she has an apartment in Arlington.
Ryan Dean answered “no” when prosecutor Eric Smith asked if she took the boys or had someone take them for her. She said she provided a DNA swab to investigators and gave them her cellphone number.
The adoptive parents, Trezell and Jacqueline West, are charged with murder and other crimes in the deaths of Orrin, 4, and Orson, 3, whose bodies have not been found after they were reported missing the evening of Dec. 21, 2020. A grand jury indicted the Wests in March 2022.
Smith alleges the boys died sometime in September 2020. He has called multiple witnesses who testified to not seeing the boys after the family moved from Bakersfield to California City that month. The Wests’ four other children will also be called to testify.
Click here to read live tweets from Tuesday’s morning session, and here for the afternoon session’s tweets.
The defense says the couple told the truth to authorities and that the boys disappeared while playing in the backyard after Trezell West, who said he was gathering firewood, briefly went inside. Defense counsel has argued authorities honed in on their clients instead of looking into other potential suspects.
On Tuesday, the 12th day of trial, Dean testified Orrin — whose birth name was Cinsere — suffered a broken leg in 2016 while she wasn’t home. He was removed from her care by the Department of Human Services. Orson — who had been named Classic — was taken from her about a week after she gave birth to him in 2017.
The Wests eventually fostered the children.
Dean did not get along with the Wests but denied getting into an altercation with Jacqueline West during a visitation. Alekxia Torres Stallings, lead attorney for Jacqueline West, noted Child Protective Services said she became “confrontational” and “aggressive” with her client. Dean admitted to previously lying to law enforcement when Orrin was injured.
Dean said she learned the boys had been adopted when called by someone who told her they had been reported missing. She watched the news and recognized Orrin and Orson as her children.
David Hunter, an FBI agent who took part in the excavation of the Wests’ backyard, said “nothing that appeared to be a human remain to the visual eye” was found.
He recalled receiving the report of the Arlington sighting and passing that and a license plate number to the Bakersfield Police Department, which had become the lead agency on the case. The FBI at that point was involved in a secondary role, he said.
Joke about missing children
On Thursday afternoon, several Bakersfield police officers were called to the stand to testify about their roles in the case.
Senior Officer Jaime Orozco said he listened in on a wiretapped phone call between Jacqueline West and her mother, Maria Martinez. In it, one of the women mentions they’re missing socks.
The other woman says, “Maybe they will pop up like the missing children,” Orozco said. He said both women laughed.
The call was in Spanish and audience members were not provided with a transcript. It was unclear which woman made the joke.
Detective Jesse Perez testified he reviewed Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging to Jacqueline West.
On Dec. 23, 2020, after learning police had interviewed her other children, who were in protective custody, Jacqueline West sent the following message to her mother: “Please tell them we love and miss them. The boys need to ask for a lawyer if they want to talk to them again i don’t want them twisting whatever they are saying.”
Perez reviewed a number of messages from the account. He said he found it odd Jacqueline West did not refer to Orrin and Orson by name.
In a message sent June 8, 2020, she referred to the “little one’s” birthday, an apparent reference to Orson West.
“He is a little weird one,” she wrote, according to Perez and a screenshot of the message displayed for the jury. In another message she says she believes Orrin and Orson retained some characteristics from their biological parents.
Perez testified one of his goals was to find the most recent photographs and video footage of the boys. He said he found photos and video of them on July 25, 2020, which were apparently taken by the Wests’ eldest son at the apartment on Lotus Lane where they lived before moving to California City.
Another video taken the next day showed the children in the van as it drove along a field, Perez said. He did not mention finding images of the boys after that date.
On Sept. 12, 2020, Jacqueline West sent a photo of herself with four children — Orrin and Orson aren’t pictured, Perez said. The trial resumes 9 a.m. Wednesday.
