Charlette James Dawkins was born on December 11, 2013 in Voorhees, New Jersey to young parents Kaitlin Roysdon and Anthony Dawkins. By the age of three, she was the embodiment of an angel on Earth with her cherubic cheeks, her long, glowing blond curls, her big blue eyes, and her radiant smile. She was, as her grandmother Renay Rodriguez described her on Facebook, “tiny but she was mighty and so lovable!” Renay affectionately called her “NeNe’s Baby,” and her husband, Javier, called Charlette “Abuelo’s Baby.” Her godmother, Keirstyn, called her “Little Babe.” Her vast extended family doted on her. She adored both princesses and superheroes. “She liked tiaras,” Renay told NJ.com, “but she liked to dress up like Batman. Everyone who met her loved her.”
Unfortunately, one person — her mother’s then-21-year-old boyfriend, Travis Graham — lacked the love and caring for Charlette that everyone else in her life possessed. Instead of spoiling her, adoring her, teaching her, and helping to raise her, he put a violent end to her short life. According to Travis when he first spoke to police, on March 13, 2017, he was watching Charlette alone at the house he shared on Bittersweet Drive in Gloucester Township, New Jersey with Kaitlin, to whom he had proposed marriage just two months before. He claimed that after Charlette cracked the screen of her iPad, he told her to go to bed. As she headed upstairs toward her bedroom, he overheard her fall down the stairs but was able to catch her before she hit the bottom. Travis told police that Charlette was upset for about 30 minutes afterward and then fell asleep. When he tried to awaken her from her nap, he said, he noticed traces of blood on her mouth; he claimed he attempted to perform CPR on the child before he drove her to Jefferson Stratford Hospital.
Charlette was airlifted to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where doctors in the pediatric intensive care unit found her pupils fixed and dilated, indicating a brain injury. They also discovered multiple healing rib fractures and bruises on her forehead, chest, abdomen, and legs. Several times, Charlette went into cardiac arrest, and she was diagnosed with a severe traumatic brain injury. A physician’s evaluation concluded that “the history, physical examination, and diagnostic studies are diagnostic of child physical abuse to a medical degree of certainty.”
Charlette’s family allowed her organs to be donated. At least one small bit of good came out of this precious baby’s death. Despite the dubious circumstances surrounding Charlette’s death and Travis’s suspected involvement, Kaitlin continued to defend him, at times butting heads with her mother and other family members over her support of the man her family felt had murdered her daughter. On October 10, 2017, about seven months after Charlette died, Kaitlin gave birth to another daughter, who, not long after, was removed from the young couple’s custody and placed with a relative. In February of 2018, Kaitlin and Travis Graham married.
Travis then said that Charlette, standing at the top of the staircase while refusing to take a nap, pinched him. In retaliation, he backhanded her in the forehead with so much force that she spun around and fell face-first down the stairs, where she lay, unresponsive. He claimed she had wet herself, so he changed her soiled clothing and took her to the hospital five minutes after the incident. However, text messages he sent to Kaitlin indicate he actually waited three hours before he walked into the emergency room carrying Charlette’s “lifeless body,” according to the probable cause statement for his arrest.
Unfortunately, one person — her mother’s then-21-year-old boyfriend, Travis Graham — lacked the love and caring for Charlette that everyone else in her life possessed. Instead of spoiling her, adoring her, teaching her, and helping to raise her, he put a violent end to her short life. According to Travis when he first spoke to police, on March 13, 2017, he was watching Charlette alone at the house he shared on Bittersweet Drive in Gloucester Township, New Jersey with Kaitlin, to whom he had proposed marriage just two months before. He claimed that after Charlette cracked the screen of her iPad, he told her to go to bed. As she headed upstairs toward her bedroom, he overheard her fall down the stairs but was able to catch her before she hit the bottom. Travis told police that Charlette was upset for about 30 minutes afterward and then fell asleep. When he tried to awaken her from her nap, he said, he noticed traces of blood on her mouth; he claimed he attempted to perform CPR on the child before he drove her to Jefferson Stratford Hospital.
Charlette was airlifted to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where doctors in the pediatric intensive care unit found her pupils fixed and dilated, indicating a brain injury. They also discovered multiple healing rib fractures and bruises on her forehead, chest, abdomen, and legs. Several times, Charlette went into cardiac arrest, and she was diagnosed with a severe traumatic brain injury. A physician’s evaluation concluded that “the history, physical examination, and diagnostic studies are diagnostic of child physical abuse to a medical degree of certainty.”
Charlette’s family allowed her organs to be donated. At least one small bit of good came out of this precious baby’s death. Despite the dubious circumstances surrounding Charlette’s death and Travis’s suspected involvement, Kaitlin continued to defend him, at times butting heads with her mother and other family members over her support of the man her family felt had murdered her daughter. On October 10, 2017, about seven months after Charlette died, Kaitlin gave birth to another daughter, who, not long after, was removed from the young couple’s custody and placed with a relative. In February of 2018, Kaitlin and Travis Graham married.
Travis then said that Charlette, standing at the top of the staircase while refusing to take a nap, pinched him. In retaliation, he backhanded her in the forehead with so much force that she spun around and fell face-first down the stairs, where she lay, unresponsive. He claimed she had wet herself, so he changed her soiled clothing and took her to the hospital five minutes after the incident. However, text messages he sent to Kaitlin indicate he actually waited three hours before he walked into the emergency room carrying Charlette’s “lifeless body,” according to the probable cause statement for his arrest.
Charlette James Dawkins was born on December 11, 2013 in Voorhees, New Jersey to young parents Kaitlin Roysdon and Anthony Dawkins. By the age of three, she was the embodiment of an angel on Earth with her cherubic cheeks, her long, glowing blond curls, her big blue eyes, and her radiant smile. She was, as her grandmother Renay Rodriguez described her on Facebook, “tiny but she was mighty and so lovable!” Renay affectionately called her “NeNe’s Baby,” and her husband, Javier, called Charlette “Abuelo’s Baby.” Her godmother, Keirstyn, called her “Little Babe.” Her vast extended family doted on her. She adored both princesses and superheroes. “She liked tiaras,” Renay told NJ.com, “but she liked to dress up like Batman. Everyone who met her loved her.”
Unfortunately, one person — her mother’s then-21-year-old boyfriend, Travis Graham — lacked the love and caring for Charlette that everyone else in her life possessed. Instead of spoiling her, adoring her, teaching her, and helping to raise her, he put a violent end to her short life. According to Travis when he first spoke to police, on March 13, 2017, he was watching Charlette alone at the house he shared on Bittersweet Drive in Gloucester Township, New Jersey with Kaitlin, to whom he had proposed marriage just two months before. He claimed that after Charlette cracked the screen of her iPad, he told her to go to bed. As she headed upstairs toward her bedroom, he overheard her fall down the stairs but was able to catch her before she hit the bottom. Travis told police that Charlette was upset for about 30 minutes afterward and then fell asleep. When he tried to awaken her from her nap, he said, he noticed traces of blood on her mouth; he claimed he attempted to perform CPR on the child before he drove her to Jefferson Stratford Hospital.
Charlette was airlifted to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where doctors in the pediatric intensive care unit found her pupils fixed and dilated, indicating a brain injury. They also discovered multiple healing rib fractures and bruises on her forehead, chest, abdomen, and legs. Several times, Charlette went into cardiac arrest, and she was diagnosed with a severe traumatic brain injury. A physician’s evaluation concluded that “the history, physical examination, and diagnostic studies are diagnostic of child physical abuse to a medical degree of certainty.”
Charlette’s family allowed her organs to be donated. At least one small bit of good came out of this precious baby’s death. Despite the dubious circumstances surrounding Charlette’s death and Travis’s suspected involvement, Kaitlin continued to defend him, at times butting heads with her mother and other family members over her support of the man her family felt had murdered her daughter. On October 10, 2017, about seven months after Charlette died, Kaitlin gave birth to another daughter, who, not long after, was removed from the young couple’s custody and placed with a relative. In February of 2018, Kaitlin and Travis Graham married.
Travis then said that Charlette, standing at the top of the staircase while refusing to take a nap, pinched him. In retaliation, he backhanded her in the forehead with so much force that she spun around and fell face-first down the stairs, where she lay, unresponsive. He claimed she had wet herself, so he changed her soiled clothing and took her to the hospital five minutes after the incident. However, text messages he sent to Kaitlin indicate he actually waited three hours before he walked into the emergency room carrying Charlette’s “lifeless body,” according to the probable cause statement for his arrest.
Unfortunately, one person — her mother’s then-21-year-old boyfriend, Travis Graham — lacked the love and caring for Charlette that everyone else in her life possessed. Instead of spoiling her, adoring her, teaching her, and helping to raise her, he put a violent end to her short life. According to Travis when he first spoke to police, on March 13, 2017, he was watching Charlette alone at the house he shared on Bittersweet Drive in Gloucester Township, New Jersey with Kaitlin, to whom he had proposed marriage just two months before. He claimed that after Charlette cracked the screen of her iPad, he told her to go to bed. As she headed upstairs toward her bedroom, he overheard her fall down the stairs but was able to catch her before she hit the bottom. Travis told police that Charlette was upset for about 30 minutes afterward and then fell asleep. When he tried to awaken her from her nap, he said, he noticed traces of blood on her mouth; he claimed he attempted to perform CPR on the child before he drove her to Jefferson Stratford Hospital.
Charlette was airlifted to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where doctors in the pediatric intensive care unit found her pupils fixed and dilated, indicating a brain injury. They also discovered multiple healing rib fractures and bruises on her forehead, chest, abdomen, and legs. Several times, Charlette went into cardiac arrest, and she was diagnosed with a severe traumatic brain injury. A physician’s evaluation concluded that “the history, physical examination, and diagnostic studies are diagnostic of child physical abuse to a medical degree of certainty.”
Charlette’s family allowed her organs to be donated. At least one small bit of good came out of this precious baby’s death. Despite the dubious circumstances surrounding Charlette’s death and Travis’s suspected involvement, Kaitlin continued to defend him, at times butting heads with her mother and other family members over her support of the man her family felt had murdered her daughter. On October 10, 2017, about seven months after Charlette died, Kaitlin gave birth to another daughter, who, not long after, was removed from the young couple’s custody and placed with a relative. In February of 2018, Kaitlin and Travis Graham married.
Travis then said that Charlette, standing at the top of the staircase while refusing to take a nap, pinched him. In retaliation, he backhanded her in the forehead with so much force that she spun around and fell face-first down the stairs, where she lay, unresponsive. He claimed she had wet herself, so he changed her soiled clothing and took her to the hospital five minutes after the incident. However, text messages he sent to Kaitlin indicate he actually waited three hours before he walked into the emergency room carrying Charlette’s “lifeless body,” according to the probable cause statement for his arrest.
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