Investigations
John Hannon buried his 11-month-old son in a ditch near Flora Vista
San Juan County deputies found John Teigue Hannon partially covered in dirt after his mother reported him missing.
John Hannon buried his 11-month-old son in a rural ditch near Flora Vista, New Mexico, after a Saturday walk to Dollar General with the boy and a four-year-old daughter in a stroller. Dr. Insanity stitched San Juan County Sheriff's Office body-camera footage into a chronology of the search that ended when an officer uncovered John Teigue Hannon's head and left arm in the soil.
Hannon returned to the couple's camper with only the girl and told his fiancée, Krystal Phillips, that his mother Susan had picked the baby up as a surprise. Phillips called 911 at 9:38 p.m. on Feb. 8, 2026, after a day of trying to reach Susan and watching Hannon refuse to call her.
Phillips was not at the camper when deputies arrived. She had left with 66-year-old Don Vernon after a fight with Hannon, a detail dispatch noted when her emotional tone seemed muted for a missing infant. Hannon already carried an active felony warrant for battery, resisting an officer, and probation violations.
Deputies ordered Hannon out of the trailer at gunpoint. He claimed he had no son, gave rambling aliases, and said a friend called Gypsy might have the boy. A search of the camper turned up nothing. Investigators later found Hannon's phone smashed beside the abandoned stroller and children's clothing on a hillside path officers had followed overnight.
At the Dollar General, deputies pulled two small pillows from a dumpster, one stained with what they treated as blood, and matched surveillance video to neighbors' descriptions of Hannon pushing the stroller. Susan Hannon called dispatch from Colorado to say the infant had never been with her.
Detective Gabriel Salazar interviewed Phillips and Vernon at the station while a tracking team worked the ditch after sunrise. Shortly before 10 a.m. on Feb. 9, an officer on the search line reported finding black track pants turned inside out and then the baby in the same area crews had canvassed in darkness.
Salazar told Hannon the boy was dead and showed him a photograph from the scene. Hannon said Junior had taken his own shirt off, then admitted the injured child was his and Phillips's son and that he ran rather than call for help. He would not say outright that he had struck the boy.
Court affidavits described a skull fracture, a forehead abrasion, and dirt in the airway, and a doctor told detectives the infant was likely alive when his face went into the ground. The San Juan County Sheriff's Office filed first-degree child abuse resulting in death and second-degree tampering with evidence against Hannon on Feb. 11, 2026, while he sat in jail on the unrelated warrant.
Source video: Mother Realizes Her Boyfriend Just Buried Their Son Alive