CINCINNATI — Twenty years ago, a woman told investigators that her 3-year-old foster son, Marcus Fiesel, had gone missing from a Hamilton County park, setting off a massive community search and one of the most shocking child death cases in Cincinnati history.
His foster parents, Liz and David Carroll, told investigators said the boy disappeared from Juilfs Park in August 2006 after she suffered a medical episode. The story drew hundreds of volunteers and dominated local headlines for weeks. But investigators would learn it had been a lie. Marcus never made it to the park. He was already dead.
WATCH the special WCPO 9 News documentary: MARCUS: The Search for the Truth:
The boy and his foster family
Marcus Fiesel was still in diapers and had special needs. Investigators learned he could be lovable but could also be a handful.
"He was, I think, just turned 3. I think he was still in diapers. He was just a handful. I mean he really was," Mark Piepmeier, first assistant prosecutor of the criminal division of the Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office under Joe Deters, said.
"He would have his moments when he was difficult," Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said.
The Carrolls, who lived in Clermont County, became Marcus Fiesel's foster parents. David Carroll described how Fiesel came to be in their care.
"He wandered off. There were news stories about it," Carroll said. "He wandered off from his house. They found him at like 4 o'clock in the morning, something like that. Blocks away, so he got taken away from his biological mother. And then he also fell out of a second story window. And he got taken and put with us."
The couple had four, five, or six foster children at a time and relied on the payments as their primary income.
"They had four or five foster kids," Piepmeier said. "They got so much a day for those kids and that's how Liz and David Carroll made their living. They also found out that if you take a special needs kid, you get more money per day," Piepmeier said. "So, they didn't take Marcus because, as a special needs kid, they felt for him; that was just a dollar sign to them."
The household dynamic was complicated. David Carroll had brought his girlfriend, Amy Baker, to live with the family.
"And then, all of a sudden, David Carroll brings his girlfriend to live with them in the house, and Liz was okay with that," Piepmeier said. "And her deal was, 'I'm okay with Amy Baker living with us. I'm okay with you, David, my husband, having sex with Amy Baker, but only if I am there to participate also.'"
"Amy Baker is just some dumb woman who was just going along for the ride," Deters said.
A child goes missing
On Aug. 15, 2006, Liz Carroll reported to police that Marcus had gone missing from Juilfs Park. She said she had taken Marcus and three other foster children to the park that Tuesday afternoon, suffered a medical emergency, and when she regained consciousness, was told by a park service member that Marcus had been with them — but the child was nowhere to be found.
"I remember the initial — it was in August. The initial report that he was missing. He was supposedly kidnapped from Juilfs Park was the report," Chief Deputy Sheriff Sean Donovan said.
Deputies described the early states of the investigation, saying there was no evidence of foul play. No witnesses had come forward saying the saw the child at any particular place. Because Fiesel had wandered off before, investigators believed he might still be in the area, but could be scared, confused or could be hiding somewhere.
But questions arose almost immediately. Witnesses at the park that day reported seeing only three children with Liz Carroll, not four.
A community mobilizes
Despite growing doubts behind the scenes, the public rallied around the search for Fiesel in an extraordinary way.
"I mean, the whole community, it wasn't a small slice of Anderson Township. It was the whole Tri-State area looking for Marcus. Unbelievable," Donovan said.
"Housewives, people after dinner would go out and start searching Juilfs Park," Deters said. "It's not a gigantic park, but they were everywhere. It's surrounded by suburbs, so I mean, the kid couldn't have gone far."
Search teams combed ravines, gulleys, sewer piping, abandoned areas and swimming pools. Volunteers were given photos of Marcus and split into groups of 10 to 20, loaded onto buses to cover expanded search areas.
"It was front page news. It was the headline news on every news station, probably for a week. They were spotting him. People from all over the county, all over the city, all over the state looking for Marcus," Piepmeier said.
Restaurant owner Jeff Ruby announced a $10,000 reward.
"This reward is $10,000 and if somebody's harmed this child, maybe this will help find the person responsible," Ruby said.
One volunteer described why she felt compelled to help.
"I'm a nurse. I didn't go to 9/11 because of family responsibilities. I didn't get to go to Katrina or 9/11 so I wanted to come here because it's something I can do," she said.
"They start this search and everybody, I mean everybody, they came out of, they came from all over," Donovan said.
Investigators grow suspicious
Behind the scenes, law enforcement was already skeptical of Liz Carroll's account and was developing a very different theory.
"It soon made sense to the police that there's no way. I mean, she passed out 30 seconds, maybe a minute. And in that time period he totally disappeared from this park that is surrounded by residences," Piepmeier said. "There's just no way he could have gotten away or anybody would have snatched him in that quick time frame. So, right away, this isn't making sense. He did not disappear in that park. So where is he?"
A K-9 unit was brought in with clothing belonging to the boy. But the dog showed no indication that it detected him.
"That kid's never been there," Donovan said. "Never been in that park or that dog would have picked up something."
When investigators visited the Carroll home, they found holes in the walls where David Carroll had punched and kicked through them. He admitted he had a temper.
"Dave admits, 'Yeah, I'm a hothead, and if I get upset sometimes I did that kind of damage,'" Piepmeier said. "So, now we're starting to formulate an opinion that you know, this is a kid, Marcus is a handful. David's a hothead."
David Carroll's father, Norell Adkins, pushed back on the scrutiny his son was facing.
"He feels that he's been pretty much badgered and pointed the finger at," Adkins said. "He's had enough of the 10 hour questioning he went through. Plus the next day was four hours in that same day was another four hours and he's just tired of it. All he wants to do is somebody believe that they are innocent."
"We thought this is obviously — it was pure speculation — but there were holes in the wall of their house when David Carroll punched and came through. Not the usual thing you find in somebody's house. Somebody with an anger problem, you would, so we thought maybe he lost it, killed Marcus, you know, by accident, in a beating or something. He didn't intend to kill him," Deters said.
"That's the theory we were working on. Now we have got to find a way to prove that, but no one's saying anything about that. Everybody's still saying he went missing in the park," Piepmeier said.
Liz Carroll makes a public plea
Meanwhile, Liz Carroll held a press conference, wearing the same clothes she said she had on the day Marcus disappeared hoping it would spark someone's memory as she appealed to the public for help.
"I'm asking that anybody that saw me with my kids, or saw me, or saw Marcus, to please contact the authorities," she said. "My family misses him dearly. It's extremely difficult to deal with. Waking up every morning and not having my son run to me because I was closest to him."
Prosecutors watched the press conference live.
"Mark and I and some people in my office — we're watching Liz Carroll's press conference because it was carried live by everybody," Deters said. "And I just thought, 'This woman is just a lying piece of s—-.' I could tell she had memorized the story and she kept it. They just kept repeating the same actual words every time."
"It was amazing. This is a prime suspect in a murder case that held a press conference to basically ridicule the police and say, 'Please help me solve this case,' knowing full well she had committed the murder," Piepmeier said. "It just shows how absolutely ballsy Liz Carroll was at this point. I've never seen anything like it."
"To have that press conference and 'Bring my son back,' and all that. Despicable," Donovan said.
Police also gave Liz and David Carroll lie detector tests. Liz Carroll said her husband did not believe the results were accurate.
"They told him he failed but like my husband said he doesn't believe that was accurate, an accurate test or not a real test because he knows. He knows that he didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. I mean, we're missing our son," Carroll said.
Meanwhile, investigators noted that David Carroll had largely stepped back from public view, and Amy Baker maintained she had not been at the park with Liz that day and knew nothing.
"None of us believe that. There's just no way it could have happened," Piepmeier said. "I mean, it's just not in this park out in Anderson Township surrounded by suburbs. Someone would have seen him. He would have wandered into somebody's house. There's no way somebody would have just snatched this kid at that 30 second, one minute interval where Liz had passed out. It just doesn't make any sense,"
Investigators also took note of an unusual living arrangement at the Carroll home. David Carroll had left Liz for a woman named Amy Baker, then brought Baker back to live in the home with both of them.
Amy Baker, like the Carrolls, maintained she knew nothing about what had happened to Marcus.
The investigation reaches a dead end — then a breakthrough
With no body, no witnesses and no confession, investigators were stuck.
"I get calls from them every day with an update and finally got to the point they called and I said, 'Look, we've questioned them a number of times. They're not budging. We don't have any sighting of Marcus. We don't have any evidence anything happened to him in the house. We're stuck. Do you have any ideas?'" Piepmeier said.
An offhand question to a detective changed everything.
"I said, 'Did they go on vacation or do anything around this time?'" Deters said. "And he said, 'Well, they had a family reunion on the fifth of August and they left, you know, late Friday night, the fourth.' I said, 'Did you guys go down there to see if Marcus was there?' And he kind of looks at me. He goes, 'We didn't go down there, yet.' I said, 'Go down now,'" Deters said.
Investigators traveled to the family reunion location and interviewed witnesses.
"They talked to two people and they said, 'No, Liz was here with her other kids. Dave was here. Marcus was not here.' So we knew then that, okay, something happened to him on the third or fourth of August," Piepmeier said.
"He hadn't made it there. Their story fell apart," Donovan said.
The grand jury gambit
Prosecutors issued a forthwith subpoena, ordering Liz Carroll, David Carroll, and Amy Baker to testify before a grand jury.
Liz Carroll waived her right to an attorney.
"Liz said, 'I don't need an attorney. Seriously, bring it on, big boy,'" Piepmeier said. "You want to question me like the police did? I'm fine. I'll tell you what happened. So she came down without an attorney. David, they couldn't find."
An attorney was appointed for Baker. Prosecutors recognized that Baker, unlike the Carrolls, had no legal duty of care to Marcus as neither an adoptive nor foster parent. They offered her immunity in exchange for the truth.
"I said, ma'am, you don't know me, but one of two things is gonna happen today," Deters said. "Either you're going to tell us the truth or you're going to jail. I can promise you that. Because I will go over that judge right now and get the order for you to talk to us. And if you don't believe me, talk to your lawyer, if you don't think I'll do something like that. So Norm says, 'Can we have a couple of minutes with my client?'" Deters said.
Aubin and Baker conferred privately. Minutes stretched into nearly an hour.
"Finally, Norm comes out of the office and his face is like white. He goes, 'You're not going to believe this.' We said, 'Well, first of all, is Marcus dead?' He goes, 'Yes. Marcus is dead,'" Piepmeier said.
Deters offered Baker immunity in exchange for the truth.
"He turned to me and he said, 'I got to protect my client,'" Deters said. "I said, 'Here's the deal: she didn't have a duty of care to that kid. If she tells us the truth and didn't hurt Marcus, I'll give her immunity.' And so we brought Amy back, and she told us what happened."
What Amy Baker revealed
Baker told prosecutors that the Carroll family had a family reunion to attend and did not want to bring Marcus with them.
"They rolled him in a blanket with his arms at his side. Took packing tape and wrapped the blanket around him, so only his head was sticking out. Put him in a playpen, shut the closet door, and left. Amy said they could hear him screaming upstairs when they left," Deters said.
"They put a box fan on him. 'Goodbye, Marcus. We'll be back soon.'" Piepmeier said. "And they go down to Kentucky to this family reunion. Not sure how long they're gone. There's various stories that, you know, it was like a Friday evening they left. They either got back late Saturday or early Sunday. They find him and he's dead. He's already stiff."
"They go to a family reunion. They took the dog. Left Marcus," Donovan said.
"I can't imagine the suffering that kid went through," Deters said. "He died of hyperthermia. I mean, he was overheated so bad. And that's not a good way to die."
Liz Carroll confesses
Baker's account was presented to the grand jury. Then Liz Carroll was brought in — with no idea what Baker had already told prosecutors.
"So I'm questioning her and she is strutting," Piepmeier said.
Piepmeier walked Carroll back through the timeline, steering toward the family reunion.
"I said, 'OK, let's go back a couple of weeks to Aug. 3," he said. "I think you were going to a family reunion that night, weren't you?'"
"She said — you could see she was getting nervous now. She said, 'Yeah, we went to Kentucky." Deters said. "Mark said, 'Who watched Marcus? Where was Marcus?' Did he go with them?' 'No, he went to my mom's house,'" Deters said.
"OK. Well, Liz, isn't it a fact that you didn't take him to the family reunion because you left him tied up in a closet in the bedroom with a fan on it?" Piepmeier said. "And she's like, 'Just stop.' I said, 'And isn't it a fact that when you got back from the family reunion, he was dead?"
"And oh my God, I mean, I wish we had videotape of this reaction, but then she knew it," Deters said.
"She's stunned and then I knew I had to give her a way out. I said, 'Liz, either this was intentional or it was an accident.' And then Liz said a couple of words that solved the case. She said it was an accident. So by saying that, she admitted Marcus is dead and we accidentally killed him," Piepmeier said.
Carroll then told prosecutors what happened after they returned and found Marcus dead. David Carroll and Amy Baker took the body to an abandoned chimney in Brown County and repeatedly burned it. Investigators said what remained of Marcus was thrown into the Ohio River.
Coroner Odell Owens described what was recovered from the chimney.
"We had to look at 18 bones that I could put in my hand," Owens said.
"In my 35 years in public office involved in law enforcement, this is one of the worst I've seen," Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis said.
"The kid got dealt a bad hand all the way around," Donovan said.
"I really believe that they thought because, because their feelings towards Marcus was like, no one's gonna give a shit, this kid's gonna you know. He's just disappeared. But everybody cared. I mean, it was unbelievable," Deters said.
"It was quite an experience. I mean, I've never had somebody confess to a murder in a grand jury. I don't know if it's ever happened in Hamilton County, but that's how we solved the case," Piepmeier said.
Charges, convictions and sentences
Prosecutors moved quickly after Baker's testimony. The Hamilton County Grand Jury indicted David and Liz Carroll for the involuntary manslaughter of Marcus Feisel. Prosecutors decided the case would ultimately be tried in Clermont County, where the crime occurred, but filed charges in Hamilton County first to ensure the Carrolls could not flee.
When the arrests and the full story were announced publicly, the press conference was unlike anything prosecutors said they had experienced.
"And we announced what happened, the arrest and — it was the press conference like I've never seen before. I mean the reporters were all crying. It was unbelievable," Deters said. "You're asking me to explain evil. I can't explain it."
Liz Carroll was tried in Clermont County approximately six months later and convicted on all counts, receiving a sentence of approximately 45 to 65 years in prison.
"I mean, for all intents and purposes, she's in jail for the rest of her life," Deters said.
Without a confession from David Carroll, prosecutors relied on Baker's testimony in his case. Carroll took a plea deal.
"David, being a great husband, he just saw his wife get hammered, and he took a plea and gets 15 to life," Deters said.
He has already been denied parole once.
"It was a really evil act to do that to a child, and they're paying for it now," Deters said.
The question of Amy Baker
The decision to grant Baker immunity in exchange for her testimony drew criticism, but prosecutors defended it.
"I'd love to see Amy Baker go to jail for the rest of her life too, but, that was what ended it," Donovan said. "How else are you gonna get that? Who's gonna tell you? Had to be, had to be one of those three people. Marcus couldn't tell you, and there was no other witnesses."
"When this first went down, we got a lot of criticism for giving her a deal, and I kept saying to people, 'How are you solving the case without Amy Baker?'" Deters said.
"Amy Baker is not a good person. Without Amy Baker, though, Marcus is still missing and Liz and David are still foster parents," Piepmeier said.
Baker has spent her life in and out of trouble with the law.
Fiesel's death sparked foster care reforms in Ohio
Marcus Fiesel's death exposed critical failures in Ohio's foster care system and sparked sweeping reforms — but two decades later, the case still raises questions about whether enough has been done to protect vulnerable children.
The Carroll family, who fostered Marcus, met all the requirements at the time and had day care experience. His death made clear that meeting minimum standards was not enough.
WATCH: How the death of Marcus Fiesel prompted foster care changes in Ohio:
"Never had we first-hand experience on such an unbelievable tragedy and a failure, really, of our system to protect a child," Pam Lindeman, the director of Out of Home Care for Child Focus Inc., told WCPO 9 News in the aftermath of the case.
A Butler County Children Services board member acknowledged the system's shortcomings even while noting that rules had been followed in the Carrolls' case, acknowledging that Fiesel's death demonstrated that even with touching all the bases and following all the rules, not enough was being done.
Deters pointed to the broader challenge of screening foster parents.
"You know, it just, there's such a need for foster parents and there's a lot of great foster parents out there, but there's gonna be some bad ones too and I don't know that you can screen enough that they're so desperate to place these kids," Deters said.
In the wake of Marcus's death, more stringent policies were put in place, including:
- Mandated face-to-face home visits every 2 weeks
- More training for foster parents
- Better background checks
Holly Schlaack, a child welfare advocate, described one of the most significant changes.
"Every foster parent now is run every single day with a criminal background check so had that been in place when Marcus was living with Liz and David Carroll, that would have been flagged and then he would have probably been moved from that home," Schlaack said.
Beyond policy changes, officials focused on ensuring prospective foster parents are fully committed before placement. In 2009, the Ohio Legislature created the Guardian ad Litem system, giving every child in the foster care system a dedicated advocate. At the end of 2025, more than 14,000 children were served by that system.
Where the Carrolls are now
Twenty years after Marcus's unnecessary death, David Carroll has already been up for parole once. Liz Carroll won't have a chance at parole for 34 more years.
"Dave has been a bad boy in prison. He's now in a gang in prison, and because of what he did, again, I don't see the parole board ever letting him out," Piepmeier said. "And when Liz finally does come up, I mean, 20 years from now, she would have done 40 years. I don't know, maybe they would. I won't be around."
Baker has spent much of the last two decades in and out of jail.
"In some small way we brought Marcus justice. But it's never enough. We never can bring him back, and it's a very sad chapter in Cincinnati's history," Deters said.
What was left of Marcus Fiesel was laid to rest at a cemetery in Middletown, surrounded by the toys he loved best.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
