5-year-old boy found dead near Albany; Caretaker charged

NEW YORK (WABC) -- A 19-year old New York woman is accused of killing a 5-year-old cousin in her care and then calling in a false report that two masked intruders took the boy from their Albany-area home.

Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple says Tiffany VanAlstyne is being arraigned on a second-degree murder charge in the killing of Kenneth White.

He says VanAlstyne strangled the boy and tossed his body "like a piece of trash" into a culvert across the street sometime before making the bogus 911 call Thursday afternoon in the town of Berne.

VanAlstyne's parents have been the legal guardians of Kenneth, his twin sister and a 4-year-old sister since September.

Apple told local media at about 3 a.m. Friday that White's body was found by a sheriff's K-9 unit conducting a search in the rural hamlet of Clarksville, 10 miles southwest of the capital.

The tragic end came just hours after authorities received a call from the home detailing the abduction, which prompted an Amber Alert.

The two other young children were also in the house at the time, but neither was targeted by the alleged intruders, according to the original story.

"At approximately 1:20, we received a 911 call from this residence indicating that two intruders forcibly entered the residence, held down a 19-year-old female and one intruder went and retrieved a 5-year-old from the residence," a police spokesperson said. "He got into a large full-size black pickup truck, possibly an extended cab, and took off toward Thatcher Park.

The Amber Alert was issued in three states as police tried to track the boy down. Eventually, though, the initial kidnapping story crumbled, and now White's death is being investigated as a murder.

Authorities say White's mother lives elsewhere in New York state and that his dad lives in Massachusetts. Both parents are talking to police, and there is speculation that some kind of custody dispute could have played a role in the boy's death. Still, Apple declined to comment on a motive.

News of the boy's death shocked residents in the rural hill towns west of Albany, described by Apple as a close-knit area where everyone knows everyone.

"It's horrific, it's heart-wrenching," Apple said. "It's certainly not the ending we were praying for."

Kenneth lived in a red-and-white striped mobile home on a rural road in Berne. Police vehicles were parked outside the home Friday morning, blocking access to the road.