A father will be charged with murdering his five-week-old son whose body was found in woodland shortly after he made a public plea for the baby’s safe return.

Caleb Whisnand Sr, 32, was arrested on Wednesday accused of killing his baby son, Caleb ‘CJ’ Whisnand Jr. He was initially charged with reckless manslaughter, but on Thursday morning authorities said the charge will be upgraded to capital murder based on evidence obtained during an autopsy of the body.

Just a matter of hours before Whisnand Sr’s arrest, he appeared at a press conference seemingly bereaved with his son’s innocent mother, Angela Gardner, and joined her in pleading to the public for information about baby Caleb’s whereabouts.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said investigators recovered the remains of baby Caleb in Lowndes County, Alabama, late on Wednesday, two days after his parents reported him missing. Police have not revealed how the infant died.

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At the eyebrow-raising press conference on Wednesday, Whisnand Sr said that he didn’t remember much and asked the public for information, including where he had been before Caleb’s disappearance.

‘I don’t remember a lot. But I did remember I was breaking up with the cops. If anybody’s got anything, any place I could have gone’, he said. 

Gardner, 28, who is not facing any charges over the death of her son, said her Caleb was with Whisnand before disappearing. The suspect is then said to have told Gardner that he realized the infant was missing when he went to pay for gas at a station on Monday.

‘Please, find him, please,’ Gardner told members of the press during the press conference.

Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office captain, Trent Beasley, recalled how police received a 911 call Monday night from a convenience store about the missing child. 

However, a contrasting report from a missing child alert issued by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said the baby was last seen at around 9pm, on Saturday.

Yet during Wednesday’s press conference, Whisnand Sr claimed the last time the family was together, including baby Caleb, was on Saturday night when ‘we were all together sleeping.’ 

Moments later, Gardner said she was home with her two-year-old on Monday and CJ was with Whisnand Sr who was visiting the gas station. 

Police have yet to clarify or provided an explanation for the discrepancies in the timeline, nor have authorities addressed the confusion over the infant’s whereabouts between Saturday and Monday. It was Whisnand Sr who reported Caleb missing from the Circle K gas station, on Wetumpka Highway.

According to the affidavit that was filed in the case on Thursday, CJ was killed sometime between 3.45pm and 5.30pm on Monday, hours before Whisnand Sr called police. 

The alleged killer is said to have buried his son’s in a remote area about 30 miles southwest of the gas station in Montgomery, according to the affidavit. 

At the time of his arrest, Whisnand Sr was already under indictment on unrelated charges of meth and heroin possession, reckless endangerment and possession of drug paraphernalia stemming from a June 2020 arrest.

CJ’s maternal grandmother, Margaret Hope, told Al.com that her daughter, Gardner, was about to break up with Whisnand Sr at the time of their child’s disappearance and death. 

Whisnand Sr was initially booked into the county jail on one count of reckless manslaughter punishable by up to 20 years in prison. His bond was set at $100,000.  

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