The Death Of NOAH MCINTHOSH: We Learned Nothing From Gabriel Fernandez

Gabriel Fernandez was an eight-year-old boy from Palmdale, California, who was brutally beaten, tortured, and murdered by his mother and his mother’s boyfriend. Child Protective Services (otherwise known as CPS) had been called on various occasions to perform welfare checks on the boy and his home life, only to be quickly dismissed by the boy’s mother and ultimately their mistakes cost little Gabriel his life.

The death of Gabriel ignited well-deserved outrage and demands of how this obviously abused child fell through the hands of those who were meant to protect him. Since then, CPS in California has claimed to have created action items laid out for the departments of Children and Family Services, Public Health, Mental Health, Sheriff, and every other agency involving children.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough. Since then, 10-year-old Anthony Avalos, 4-year-old Noah Cuatro have died in similar circumstances reminiscent of Gabriel's. The most disturbing case though, for me at least, is the case of eight-year-old Noah McIntosh.

To be transparent, Noah’s case hits harder for me as this happened in my own home town. I personally remember seeing missing child signs, the community put up “Blue Ribbons For Noah” throughout the city, search parties were created to help find this boy, and it was all done in vain.

It was suspected that his father, Bryce McIntosh, had been involved early in the investigation of the missing boy. Noah was originally living in Anaheim with his mother, Jillian Godfrey, and maternal grandparents but for reasons I was unable to find, his mother found that it was best he move in with his father in Corona to attend the schools there. I would like to include that the boy and his sister lived inside his father’s Corona apartment, while his mother began living out of her car. Like Gabriel, Noah had a heart of gold and was often described as a happy child who wanted to make other people around him feel good, wishing his neighbors a good morning every morning. This outward joy was hiding what he was secretly enduring inside his father’s apartment. You see, Noah had a birth defect that resulted in his bladder being located on the outside of his body. Although he had it surgically corrected, he still had trouble controlling his bladder, which often caused Bryce to beat the boy. He felt that his son was just “lazy,” and did not take the boy’s medical condition into account.

From a civil suit I located, it’s claimed that Riverside County social workers were aware of allegations of abuse of a then 8-year-old Noah for nearly two years before his death, but failed to properly investigate and intervene to protect him.

The date that Noah officially went missing isn’t known, but it’s believed to be early March of 2019. During that time, Noah’s 11-year-old sister had gone to stay the week with her paternal grandfather, Stephen McIntosh, and when she returned March 10th Bryce informed him that Noah was missing, but refused to go to the police to file a missing person report. This is obviously not right, and Stephen recalls feeling uneasy and was quite unusual since he recalled having a conversation with Bryce on the 5th of March, where Bryce mentioned to him that both he and Noah were struggling with food poisoning.

On March 12th, Jillian contacted the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) after Bryce’s sister begged her to. She requested a welfare check on her son and had advised she hadn’t seen him since she had dropped him off at Bryce’s apartment on March 4. She also mentioned that Bryce had informed her on the 8th that Noah was missing, but that he would “handle it”. Police officers were dispatched to check on the “at-risk” child but were unable to contact Bryce in-person or over the phone.

They returned the following day with a search warrant for Bryce’s apartment unit and his car. They had requested the assistance of a SWAT team, as they believed him to possibly be in possession of weapons and weren’t aware of his mindset during this time. This resulted in a standoff that lasted until Bryce finally exited the apartment with his daughter. Noah wasn’t inside.

Image: Horro

This is where things get really disturbing.

When the SWAT team and Corona PD executed the warrant, they seized Bryce’s electronic devices, such as a cellphone and computer. They also found handcuffs, zip ties, purple latex gloves, and stained yellow towels. They also located the owner’s manual for a Ninja-brand blender, but the appliance itself was not in the apartment. Bryce immediately invoked his right to remain silent and requested a lawyer.

FBI conducted a thorough analysis of Bryce’s online search history on the confiscated devices. On his computer, they found searches for “What exactly is sulphuric acid?”, “What does sulphuric acid do to aluminum?”, “What kind of plastic can stand muriatic acid?”, “Can you buy sulphuric acid?” and “Clean shot drain opener sulphuric acid MSDS”, while his cellphone showed searches for “Normal heart rate for 8-year-old when they are running”, “Normal heart rate for 8-year-old”, “How exactly sodium hydroxide works” and “Sodium hydroxide to water”. Jillian and Bryce were both arrested and later charged with willful child cruelty. They both pleaded not guilty.

Jillian spoke with the investigators and had changed her initial story. She explained that she’d lied about the last time she’d seen Noah and that she actually saw him on March 2. From March 1 to 3, she had been staying with Bryce at his apartment. On March 2, Bryce had taken Noah into the bathroom, where Jillian recalled hearing her son ask why his father was hurting him. She states that she doesn’t recall ever seeing Noah leave the bathroom, and she left the apartment on March 3, after Bryce told her he needed to go to Home Depot. This lead authorities to review the surveillance footage from the store.

Like Bryce, the police confiscated Jillian’s cellphone, where they found she had been keeping notes regarding the abuse Noah had been facing. Some of the examples included him being placed in hot water, being placed in cold water for approximately 2 1/2 hours, being placed in a bathtub filled with cold water for over six hours, and being left in the bathroom with his feet tied up. When questioned by police, Noah’s extended relatives stated they hadn’t seen him since early March 2019, and that they couldn’t give any helpful information of his current whereabouts other than they last saw him around the apartment complex. This is around the time that the search parties started, which were conducted around the brush alongside the 15 FWY, Lee Lake, and the area around the locally famous Tom’s Farms.

After reviewing the surveillance tapes, authorities were able to confirm Bryce purchased various items of interest that could be connected to Noah’s disappearance. They noted he purchased two long-cuffed gloves, 24″ bolt cutters, muriatic acid, one 128-ounce bottle of drain opener from a nearby Home Depot store, and a 32-gallon Brute trashcan. They also found a 32-ounce bottle of sulphuric acid drain opener purchased at Lowe’s Home Improvement and two bottles of drain opener from Target.

The data from Bryce’s cellphone shows that the night of March 4th, he made a trip to Squaw Mountain Road in Temescal Valley before heading to Target. The following day, his phone was pinged on Wilson Valley Road in Aguanga (a remote and unincorporated area more than 50 miles from his apartment) between the hours of 9:29 pm and 9:50 pm. The pings led police to search the Aguanga area on March 16. With the help of the K9 unit, they found a trashcan matching the one Bryce had purchased with traces of human blood on the inside. They also found homework with “Noah M” written on it alongside various purple latex gloves. They also discovered a single blue long-cuffed glove, parts of the Ninja-brand blender that was missing from the apartment, many blankets and yellow towels, a plastic bag with human blood residue, and empty drain cleaner bottles. When Squaw Mountain Road was searched, more items of interest were found, including one purple latex glove, a stained yellow towel, used cleaning wipes, and part of a wooden spoon.

When they searched his car, they found purple gloves that matched the ones found at the Aguanga site.

Back at the apartment, investigators requested the help of a local plumber to assist the forensics team with finding out what exactly was flushed down the drains. The plumber brought in camera equipment and removed P-traps from the apartment’s bathtubs, bathroom sinks, and the kitchen sink (P-traps are the U-shaped pipes you usually find in toilets and underneath sinks). When he examined the P traps, he found the ones that he removed from the bathtubs were unusually cleaner than the others, considering how old the apartment building was.

The investigators also discovered there were multiple complaints made to CPS. Social workers received at least 10 reports that Bryce was abusing Noah and his sister, and noted that Jillian was failing to protect her children. The first report noted Noah told a police officer and the responding social worker that Bryce had zip-tied his wrists and ankles, blindfolded him, and dunked him into freezing cold water because he’d accidentally urinated in his pants. He also stated that he was handcuffed to the bathtub and forced to sit in cold water for hours at a time, and he described one event where Bryce force-fed him laxatives and was ordered to sit in his feces all day before having to clean it up himself. According to the report, Bryce admitted to the abuse but said he only did it with the intention of teaching Noah how to properly use the toilet. The CPS reports were made between August 2017 and ending in March 2019, which all but two of the reports were closed stating reasons as “unfounded” or “inconclusive”, while some were left open with no final determination provided.

Bryce was charged with first-degree murder with a special circumstance of torture on March 28, 2019.

Given the charges, the case moved from a missing child investigation to a “no-body” homicide. In April 2019, Bryce plead not guilty to both the murder and child abuse charges. His mother Jillian ultimately pleaded guilty to two felony counts of child endangerment.

This leads us to today.

On December 11, 2020, a grand jury has finally indicted Bryce for the murder of Noah. His charges would make him eligible for the death penalty, according to a DA’s news release. DA Mike Hestrin has not decided yet whether to seek a death sentence in the case.

Noah’s body has never been located.

If you know a child who is in need of assistance, please contact your state’s CPS system to help save a life.