Investigators are once again facing a fight in their efforts to get to the bottom of the tragic death of an 15-month-old boy.
The person putting up the fight is the child's own mother.
Now, 14 years after the mother of Jeffry Kelton Skaggs successfully blocked another effort to get a second autopsy, Brandy Elizabeth Eddlemon now says prosecutors have waited 14 years too long.
"If the State ever had a real belief that foul play was a factor ... then the State would not have waited 14 years to re-open this cause and to disrupt the grave and body of this child," Eddlemon's attorney, Jason Whatley, wrote in opposition to the DA's petition to exhume the body.
The legal battle once again focuses on the child's grave in rural Hickman County -- a grave that, prosecutors argue, could yield new clues about whether the blow to the head that killed the 15-month-old boy was really an accident.
As NewsChannel 5 Investigates first reported, Jeffry lived inside a Maury County trailer with his mother and her boyfriend when, according to the family, he fell off the bed and hit his head.
EMS crews rushed him to Maury Regional Hospital. Then he was flown to Huntsville, where he died.
The medical examiner, Dr. Charles Harlan -- who later lost his license for incompetence -- declared the death an accident.
It was an opinion that was questioned by then-State Medical Examiner Bruce Levy.
"We had injuries that did not match the stories, the multiple stories provided, the stories that changed over time," Levy told NewsChannel 5 Investigates back in 2006.
That opinion was echoed by former TBI director Larry Wallace.
"We felt it was never fully investigated," Wallace said.
But when the state tried to exhume Jeffry's body back in 2001, his mother convinced a judge that such a request was illegal because it did not have the backing of then-DA Mike Bottoms.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates tried to question Bottoms in 2006 about his decision not to support a second autopsy.
"So what about this little boy?" we asked. "What if you're wrong, sir?"
Bottoms just shrugged.
Instead, he stood beside his friend Charles Harlan despite the findings of Tennessee's Medical Board.
Wallace read the Medical Board's opinion, "The child's actual manner of death was the result of non-accidental trauma."
"Meaning?" we asked.
"Meaning that in the judgment of the authors of this article it was homicide."
"Murder?"
"It was murder."
After Brent Cooper replaced Bottoms last fall, he re-opened the investigation.
The new DA now wants a second autopsy.
"I'm just the type of person that I just don't believe in letting a person walk away from a crime if I believe they have committed a crime," Cooper told NewsChannel 5 Investigates back in 2006.
Still, the attorney for Jeffry's mother tells the court that he "prays that this child be permitted to rest in peace and that this mother be left alone to continue to grieve for the loss of her son."
Prosecutors argue in their petition that the mother and her boyfriend told inconsistent stories about what really happened to Jeffry.
But her lawyer tells the court that she "absolutely denies" that she did anything to cause harm to her child.
The next step: a hearing before a judge, who will make the decision about what will happen.
Read the State's petition and the mother's response
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