Colton Dale Saunders Will Be Buried In His Halloween Costume

Colton Dale will be buried in his favorite Halloween whale costume. His mother will bury her three-year-old son who was killed by his father. She had fought the courts trying to keep her son safe, the courts ordered her to let him visit his father.

Friday Meara McIntosh took her little boy to his father's home like the courts had ordered her to. Less than two days later the mother was mourning little Colton Dale. His father had murdered the child and killed himself with carbon monoxide fumes from a backyard barbecue brought indoors. Ms. McIntosh had wanted to make a fresh start in Ottawa. The courts said no, she needed to stay in Alberta so that her estranged husband could visit the child. McIntosh told the courts that he was threatening her and had irrational behavior. The courts didn't care. Canada.Com reports:

Are you going to wait until one of us is dead before you open an investigation?" she says she asked RCMP.

For eighteen months the couple battled it out in family court disputing the child custody agreement. The couple had to go to the local RCMP detachment to pass their child back and forth for those visitations. Two and a half months ago McIntosh thought she finally had the proof that her husband was dangerous. She has a tape-recorded conversation where he admitted harassing her. The police told her that they could arrest her for making false complaints. The end result is a 27-year-old mother burying her son in his favorite little whale costume. "He loved it; he's been wearing it for weeks," said McIntosh, clutching her son's favourite egg-sized stuffed purple monkey in her hands for comfort during an interview.

"I grabbed this on the way out the door Sunday so he'd have something to play with on the way home," she said. "It's been in my pocket ever since." This week mother and child would have been settling in Ottawa had the judge allowed the move. Instead she buries her son.