He Murdered A Child. Now He’s Walking Free. This Case Should Be A Wake Up Call For The Country.

Today we’re going to talk about a case that is — without resorting to hyperbole — the worst miscarriage of justice I have ever heard about in my life. We have spent a lot of time on the epidemic of soft-on-crime policies in this country. We’ve talked about how woke DAs and judges and, in some cases, juries have conspired to release the most violent and dangerous criminals back onto the streets. Today, we have the worst example of this trend. It’s so bad that, if you haven’t heard about this case, you’re going to find it very hard to believe. You’re going to want to Google it and check my facts, which you should. And after you do, you’ll see that not only is this case as bad as I say, but the more you look into it, the worse it gets.

The details are horrific, but here’s the headline: a man who broke into a home and stabbed a six-year-old child to death is currently out of prison, walking the streets, as a free man. He spent less than ten years in prison for the intentional, brutal, savage killing of a six-year-old child.

Now, let’s back up. It’s long been understood, even in the most depraved cultures, that violence against children is the single worst crime that a man can commit. There’s a reason pedophiles don’t last very long in prison. They’re at the very bottom of the moral totem pole, and everyone — even hardened felons and gangbangers — understands exactly why. It’s the same reason why, when liberals defend abortion, they do so by denying the humanity of the child they’re killing. They know it’s a fallacious argument. They know they’re taking a human life. But they recognize, at some level, how horrifying and unjustifiable those killings are. They don’t want to admit, publicly, that they’re murdering children. So rather than confront the fact that they’re justifying the slaughter of innocents, they pretend it’s not happening at all. 

A moral rot this profound can’t be obscured by sleights of hand or non-arguments for very long. Sooner rather than later, any society that tolerates the murder of children in one context will inevitably tolerate it in others. And as Leftist prosecutors and government officials have made it their mission to unleash as many felons as possible on American citizens, it was only a matter of time before they’d go out of their way to free a murderer who, deliberately and with premeditation, executed a child long after his birth. We’ve been headed towards a moment like this for many years — a moment when literal child murder is punished less severely than many white-collar crimes. And earlier this month in Kentucky, that moment arrived.

On October 1, a convicted child killer named 42-year-old Ronald Exantus walked out of prison. He’s a free man — even though, less than 10 years ago, he brutally murdered a young child as he slept. In the middle of the night of December 7, 2015, Ronald Exantus drove from Indiana to Versailles, Kentucky. He pulled onto “Gray Street”, he says, because it reminded him of the show “Grey’s Anatomy.” And then he spotted the home of the Tipton family, which attracted him because it had its Christmas lights on. He entered the home using an unlocked door.

Keep in mind, this is a family he’d never met before in his life. Inside the home were five children and their father, Dean (their mother, Heather, was working late). Shortly before 4:00 AM, Exantus walked upstairs, where all the children were sleeping. He proceeded to stab six-year-old Logan Tipton eight times in the back of the head with a butcher knife, with such force that the blade bent out of shape.

As Logan bled to death, his 11-year-old sister yelled at Exantus to stop and began kicking him. Exantus attacked her next and stabbed her in the face. He also stabbed another 7-year-old child in the home. Soon afterwards, the father, Dean, confronted Exantus at the top of the stairs. After a struggle that left him severely injured, Dean was able to overcome the man and hold him down until police arrived.

In the country our Founders created, for this crime, Exantus would have been tried, convicted, and publicly hanged — and the whole process would have taken about 24 hours. There is no question about his guilt. He never even left the scene of the crime. His guilt is 100% certain. What is also nearly certain is that he will commit more violent crimes if given the opportunity. But even if we could have some kind of assurance that he wouldn’t do it again, it doesn’t matter. Once you slaughter a child, your life is forfeit. A functioning country can’t tolerate any other outcome. You lose your moral right to continue breathing after you stab a six-year-old child in the head. Of all the statements I have ever made, that should be, by far, the least controversial.

And indeed, in this case, prosecutors sought the death penalty. But they didn’t get the death penalty. They didn’t even get a lengthy jail sentence. In the end, Ronald Exantus would have gotten a lengthier sentence and harsher penalty if he’d committed something like mail fraud. In fact, Exantus wasn’t even held liable — at all — for killing six-year-old Logan Tipton. Instead, the jury convicted him of “assault.” Watch:

Credit: WHAS11/ABC/YouTube.com

To recap the jury’s verdict: They found Exantus “not guilty by reason of insanity” for the first-degree murder of Logan, and “not guilty by reason of insanity” for first-degree burglary. At the same time, they found Exantus “guilty but mentally ill” of the second-degree assaults of two children in the home (not including Logan), and “guilty but mentally ill” of the fourth-degree assault of Dean.

Just to be clear about the terms here, because they’re obviously confusing — In Kentucky, if you’re not guilty by reason of insanity, then you can be released after some time in the hospital. It basically means you won’t suffer any criminal penalties at all. But if you’re “guilty but mentally ill,” you get sentenced in the same way as any other defendant, except that you also get some therapy in prison. So basically, for all intents and purposes, Ronald Exantus was found not guilty by reason of insanity on the murder charge, but guilty on the assault charge.

Right away, this should raise a lot of questions in your mind. If Exantus was too insane to be held liable for breaking into the house and committing murder, then how could he be sane enough to assault three people? The assaults happened within seconds of the burglary and the murder. It’s not like someone can be insane one second and perfectly sane the next. And certainly, no evidence in this case suggested otherwise. So how exactly does this verdict make sense? How could it have been allowed? They are claiming that Exantus was both insane and not insane during the course of committing the crime. He was liable and not liable. How is that possible? How does it make sense?

The answer is that it doesn’t make any sense. When the Supreme Court of Kentucky took a look at this case on appeal, they admitted as much:

This Court strongly suspects that the verdicts in this case were reached because the jury could not reach either of the all-or-nothing verdicts advocated for by the parties. The defense urged the jury to find Exantus not guilty by reason of insanity on all counts, while the Commonwealth argued that the jury had to find him guilty on all counts. Neither party directly advocated for a verdict of guilty but mentally ill on any count. It is therefore possible that the jury reached its verdicts through compromise.

Despite this finding — which is obvious — the Supreme Court upheld the verdicts. Their reasoning was that, yes, the jury wasn’t following the law. They’re either morons or they were compromising with each other. But either way, they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. Nevertheless, according to the Supreme Court, we have no way of knowing whether the jury’s screw-up helped or hurt the defendant. Maybe, if there had been no compromise, the defendant would have been guilty on all counts. Or maybe he’d be acquitted on all counts. There’s no way to tell. Therefore, the court decides to just stay out of it, instead of ordering a new trial.

The word “farce” is far too generous for what happened here. Imagine being the family of this murdered child, and reading this. The highest court in the state of Kentucky is admitting that the jury completely failed to do its job. And as a result, the man who killed your child isn’t going to suffer any kind of criminal penalty whatsoever for doing so. He’ll go down for assault, and that’s it. This is what passes for “justice” in our court system at the moment.

To be clear, there was more than enough evidence to find Exantus guilty on all counts. This isn’t the most important point, because even if he were mentally insane, it still wouldn’t justify releasing him from prison, as I’ve argued many times; mental insanity should — if anything — be an aggravating factor, not a mitigating factor. If it’s actually true that this guy is too insane to understand that he shouldn’t stab six-year-olds in the head, that is all the more reason to remove him from human society permanently and immediately. 

But as it happens, the claim is not true. So let’s go through this. It is true that, before he drove to Kentucky, his ex-fiance, Lauren Burgess, testified that he was acting erratically. Shortly before the murders, he had proposed to Burgess out of the blue. He also began crying hysterically and rambling at some points, according to her testimony. At the same time, she said, he showed “no unusual behavior when they went to a jewelry store to shop for an engagement ring” later that day. Then he drove to Kentucky.

At that point, as the Supreme Court of Kentucky states in its opinion, Exantus began demonstrating several signs that he was lucid:

While Dean and Exantus were fighting, Dean told Exantus he was going to kill him and Exantus begged him not to kill him. … Officer Cottingham also testified that Officer Johnathan Guiler began doing first aid on Logan before the paramedics arrived. Officer Cottingham heard Exantus ask if Officer Guiler was doing chest compressions and also heard Exantus say ‘he’s not doing the right number he should be doing 30 compressions.’ All of the officers that responded to the scene testified to hearing Exantus say he was sorry several times.’

The Supreme Court’s decision continues:

Less than an hour after Exantus was arrested, he was interviewed by Detective Keith Ford and Officer Guiler. Detective Ford testified that Exantus did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs during the interview and was ‘lucid and candid’ when answering questions. Exantus accurately told the officers information such as his name, date of birth, social security number, home address, phone number, and occupation, and gave them an accurate description of his vehicle and where he left it. Exantus knew that he was in Versailles, Kentucky, and that he originally intended to drive to Florida to see family members that lived there. He told the officers he entered the home through an unlocked door and his description of the home was consistent with the photographic evidence. Exantus told the officers he walked to the kitchen and got a knife. He knew that he stabbed a child in the head with the knife, and that he killed that child. Exantus also knew that the father of that child put him in a chokehold, and he understood why the father was angry with him. .. Finally, when Detective Ford asked Exantus what his fiancé would think about what he did, he replied ‘she’s not going to like it, sir.’

Additionally, during his interrogation, Exantus states that he should be put to death by firing squad, if not the electric chair, for killing a child. Watch:

Credit: Lexington Herald-Leader

So we have the killer himself telling us, within hours of the murder, that he should be put to death. He can obviously distinguish between right and wrong. He’s not acting insane in any way. And yet, the jury decided that he was just too insane to suffer any consequences whatsoever.

At trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Exantus may have been high on synthetic cannabis, which he was known to use all the time. This is from the Lexington Herald Leader’s coverage of the trial:

On the fifth day of testimony in the Exantus trial, Dr. Kenneth Benedict, who was hired by the defense, could not specify what type of illness Exantus has. But he said it could be schizophrenia. … During questioning by public defender Kim Green, Benedict acknowledged that substance-induced psychotic disorder needs to be considered as a possibility. … In his cross-examination, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Lee Greenup noted that the [Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center] reported the psychosis was most likely substance-induced.

To restate: The drug tests weren’t able to conclusively determine, one way or the other, whether this habitual drug user had caused his own psychosis by taking synthetic drugs. But the psychiatric center, which assessed Exantus on two occasions, said that it probably was.

When the parole board in Kentucky reviewed this case a few weeks ago, they had all of this information. They knew that Exantus was taking drugs. They knew that, according to the state’s experts, those drugs contributed to this murder. They knew that no one could possibly ensure the safety of the public if he were released from prison. And most importantly, they knew that Exantus murdered a child in cold blood. And they let him out of prison anyway. They released him from prison for “good behavior.” I would think that stabbing a child is the kind of bad behavior that would, at an absolute minimum, keep you locked in prison until you die. But instead, because he managed to sit like a good little boy in his jail cell without getting into too many fights or whatever, they are going to reward him by releasing him from prison. Here are the members of Kentucky’s parole board, who made that decision.

Their names are Ladeidra Jones, Leigh Wiggins, Chris Deglow, Krissie Coe Fields, Cyndi Heddleston, Shawn Helbig, Michael James, Sherri Lathan, and Gregory Leist. Every single one of these people, to the extent they had a role in this decision, should be removed from office immediately. In a just society, they would also be held personally, legally, and financially liable for whatever crimes Exantus goes on to commit — and he almost certainly will commit more crimes. But at the very least, they should be fired. The governor of Kentucky has that authority. But because he’s a Democrat, he obviously won’t do that. Democrats are the party of murder, including child murder.

This is an untenable and intolerable state of affairs. If the court system will not penalize child murder, then other people will. That’s not the ideal system, obviously. You’d rather have the justice system be the one that administers justice. But if they won’t do it, eventually their role is going to be filled in other ways. The slain boy’s father has made that point as clearly as he possibly can. He’s vowed to kill Exantus the moment he sees him. Watch:

BREAKING: Father says he ‘WILL K*LL’ the man who broke into his Kentucky home and st*bbed his six-year-old boy to death after he was released from prison having served just half his sentence

The boy’s father says, “I’ve had my talks with God… I told the court if I ever cross… pic.twitter.com/QSSVwsmJ9y

— Unlimited L’s (@unlimited_ls) October 3, 2025

Credit: @unlimited_ls/X.com

I’d like to say that if this father carries out the threat he just made, there’s not a jury in the country that would ever convict him. I’d like to say that he’d be guaranteed to walk free. But that’s not the case, sadly. Indeed, the likely outcome is that this father would spend more time in prison for killing the man who killed his son than the man who killed his son spent for killing his son.

Meanwhile, the government of Kentucky has gone out of its way to alienate this man and his family. The boy’s mother, Heather, told the local media that no one even alerted them that her son’s killer is now free:

Nobody from the state has contacted us to ask us if we thought about needing security, extra protection, anything like that,” she said. “If you’re a victim and there’s something like a violent criminal that’s going to be released that is in connection to you or your case, or whatever, I think you should be offered some sort of security or protection, or at least just a phone call.

In Kentucky, and many other states run by Democrats, that’s not the way things work anymore. “Protection” for law-abiding citizens doesn’t interest the people in charge. They are focused entirely on freeing as many criminals as possible — including child killers. They will terrorize the public, as a matter of policy, until the moment the public decides to fight back. I am not calling for that or encouraging it. I’m just telling you what will happen, what is inevitable. Any state that allows a six-year-old boy to be slaughtered in his own bed, without imposing any significant consequences on the killer, has already embraced lawlessness. The justice system exists, again, to administer justice. Justice is a need — one of the deepest, most profound needs — of any civilized society. When a society is deprived of that need, when the system will not provide it, the public will inevitably find other ways to get it. That’s the way these things have always worked. It is a fundamental fact of human nature.

The White House seems to realize the stakes here.

When I drew attention to this case on Twitter, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, replied to me:

I can confirm the White House is looking into this. It’s wholly unacceptable for a child killer to walk free after just several years in prison.

Right now, we don’t know what the response from the White House will look like, in practice — whether they’ll bring federal charges, or investigate the state, or something else. But for the sake of our justice system — both the criminals and their victims — they need to come up with something before more children are executed like Logan Tipton.

If it is not obvious by now, you should know that you are not insulated from this madness. It could be you next. It could be your child. Logan Tipton’s family thought they lived in a safe community. And they did. But one night, Ronald Exantus happened to be driving through. He happened to pick their house. It happened to be them. It could be you. It could be your child. I don’t say that to scare you. I say it because it’s true. And when law and order are extinguished, when justice is dead in a country — as it is in ours — the impact can and will be felt by everyone. I tell you this so that you will be vigilant. So that you will be aware. And so that you will understand that there is no issue more important than bringing law and order back to America. This should be at the top of everyone’s priority list. Your family’s safety and our country’s existence depend on it.