Alabama Father Arrested Hours After Making Bizarre TV Appeal for Missing Newborn Son

An Alabama father who made a TV appeal for the return of his missing newborn son was arrested for killing him just hours later.

In the bizarre press conference, 32-year-old Caleb Michael Whisnand appeared to suggest he lost the 5-week-old, and no idea what had happened to him.

On Monday night, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office received a call about a missing child, Caleb "C.J." Whisnand Jr; but investigators were told that the baby had actually been missing since Saturday night.

Early Tuesday morning, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency issued a missing child alert as multiple agencies joined in the search.

But things took a weird turn on Wednesday when, standing before news cameras in front of the police station, Whisnand opened his appeal by asking for information on his own whereabouts at the time of the disappearance:

"I don't remember a lot, but I did remember I was breaking up, ya know, with the cops," he said, while comforting the boy's sobbing mother, 28-year-old Angela Nicole Gardner.

"If anybody's got anything, any places that I could have gone, anybody, you know who you are."

Following questions from reporters, the couple claimed they were in bed with the child, with another child, two-year-old Otis, in another room.

"I don't remember much..." the agitated father trailed off, before Gardner revealed: "He went to go pay gas at the gas station and realized he was gone. And he let the police know, and me know, that he was missing."

Asked if they knew where he could be, they said no, with Whisnand insisting: "If we already knew we would be there."

Neither of them explained how they last remembered seeing the baby on Saturday night, yet Whisnand called to report having lost him on Monday.

Just hours after the press conference, the baby was found in a nearby wooded area, dead.

Police then arrested Whisnand for manslaughter, on a $100,000 bond.

Margaret Hope, C.J.'s grandmother and Gardner's mother, told police that the couple lived with Whisnand's parents, and that her daughter was about to leave him, "and I think that's the reason he took the baby," AL.com reported.

Hope said Whisnand took C.J. while Gardner was asleep, and that the family had been looking for him since. "She didn't get to have her son on Mother's Day or Monday," she said. "Angela is a great mother, and she is overprotective of her kids. She was so happy when she gave birth. I was there when she gave birth to the baby."

"He had to come up with some excuse as he had killed that baby. He took the baby while Ms Gardner was asleep," she claimed. "I can't believe the SOB killed her baby."

At a subsequent press conference on Wednesday, Sheriff's Captain Leigh Persky said that following an autopsy on the baby, the manslaughter charges would be upgraded.

"There is evidence to indicate that the proper charge will be capital murder," he said.

Police have not yet revealed the cause of the baby's death.

Gardner has not been charged with any crime.

At the time of his arrest, Whisnand was already under indictment in an unrelated case on charges of meth and heroin possession, reckless endangerment and possession of drug paraphernalia.

According to court documents, he was pulled over in a Chevy pickup truck June 15, 2020, having been observed veering into oncoming traffic, narrowly avoiding a collision by swerving at the last moment.

He told the officers he was on methamphetamine and had not slept in two to three days.

"Subject was showing the signs of still being under the influence of the drug with profuse sweating, twitching and constant movement, and he stated he was dehydrated," the officer wrote, per AL.com.