Florida deputies searching for a missing nine-week-old baby

– The parents of a missing North Port baby boy are behind bars in South Carolina, but deputies are still scrambling to figure out just what happened to the 9-week-old.

Chance Walsh, a 9-week-old baby boy from North Port, Florida, was reported missing by his grandparents on Sunday, October 4 – but authorities now desperately searching for the newborn say that the baby may have been missing for much longer than that. The couple are now behind bars on child neglect charges.

His parents, Kristen Bury and Joseph Walsh, are longtime drug users, deputies said, and family hadn’t been able to check on his wellbeing as a result.

She said that the couple had told relatives about a auto accident in South Carolina, but had offered several different stories – that the child was unharmed, that he died in the crash, and that they had given him to a woman at a motel in Georgia.

Bailey Christensen, a woman staying at the hotel, told law enforcement officers that Bury attempted to sell her baby items.

The FBI is assisting in the investigation, as is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Walsh, 36, and Bury, 32, have now been charged with child neglect.

According to law enforcement, the parents called family to say they were in a vehicle crash in South Carolina. Bury said it was better that Chance wasn’t around because she was liable to hurt him.

But investigators in Florida clearly suspect something much worse.

A search warrant was issued, and investigators found small amounts of blood on bed pillows, a comforter and a mattress.

The Richmond County sheriff’s office confirms the parents stayed at the Red Carpet Inn on Gordon Highway in Augusta.

It’s at the home where they were all last seen together that two days ago the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office showed up with cadaver dogs, which indicated that inside there might be human remains. She said that Bury told her that her baby, to whom the clothes supposedly belonged, had passed away three weeks earlier, according to a press release from the Sarasota County Sheriff. Blood was also found high on the walls, door, mirror and light fixture in the bathroom.

Walsh and Bury are each being held on $150,000 bond in Jasper County, SC, awaiting extradition to the Sarasota County Jail.