Emily Kelly invented therapists, hospitalizations and school incidents to hide Jor'Dynn Duncan's alleged abuse, DA says

Jor'Dynn Duncan was in the bathtub of her Bayport home seemingly moaning in pain the day before the 7-year-old died, a cellphone camera pointing at her.

As Jor'Dynn lay in agony, her eyes swelled shut, the girl's legal guardian, Emily Kelly, the woman charged with torturing and killing the second grader, allegedly recorded the scene — one of several videos investigators say they found on Kelly's phone depicting the alleged abuse of the girl over nearly a year.

In jailhouse calls that day with Jor’Dynn’s father, Derrick Dixon, who is serving a prison sentence, Kelly described the girl as “having some sort of mental health breakdown,” telling him Jor’Dynn was “sitting in a pile of [expletive] and not talking.”

Dixon told Kelly to take his daughter to the hospital, but Kelly "made up an excuse not to go," prosecutors said.

"The defendant even brought up having Jor'Dynn's therapist weigh in," prosecutors said, adding: "a therapist determined not to exist."

Prosecutors say Kelly did more than abuse Jor’Dynn. They allege she spent months constructing a false narrative that the girl was mentally ill, violent and prone to self-harm, inventing therapists, psychiatric hospitalizations, school incidents and meetings with educators that investigators later determined never occurred.

Those disturbing details, the end of what prosecutors have called the "prolonged torture" of Jor'Dynn, were contained in a newly released bail letter to state Supreme Court Justice John B. Collins that outlined some of the prosecution's key evidence — videos and text messages that memorialized the alleged abuse — and advocated for Kelly to be held in custody without bail.

'Massive infection'

The bail letter sheds light on Jor'Dynn's life and how Kelly allegedly covered up the abuse by keeping the girl home from school and creating elaborate stories that prosecutors say were unmoored from the truth, while apparently avoiding intervention from Suffolk County Child Protective Services, according to prosecutors.

"The evidence described here is just a sampling of the brutal, heinous and despicable acts uncovered by this investigation, but it serves to demonstrate the defendant's repeated efforts to portray Jor'Dynn as mentally ill and self-harming while simultaneously failing to obtain legitimate medical or psychological intervention," Assistant District Attorney Dena Rizopoulos wrote to the judge.

Jor'Dynn died on Dec. 29 from what prosecutors said was a "massive infection." An autopsy revealed she had suffered nine sharp force injuries to her anus and another three internal injuries to her colon, which resulted in a tear that caused the deadly infection, prosecutors said.

Jor’Dynn had 90 recent injuries throughout her body, many of which prosecutors said appeared to have been inflicted within 48 hours of her death. She had 20 scars on her body, including "loop marks" consistent with being whipped with a folded cord, prosecutors said.

Kelly, 50, who is facing second-degree murder and other charges connected to Jor'Dynn's torture and killing, has denied the allegations. Kelly's mother, Barbara Renner, 75, and her daughter, Elyssa Seymore, 24, who both face lesser charges connected to Jor'Dynn's killing, have also denied the allegations.

Presumed innocent

Kelly’s attorney, John LoTurco, reiterated Wednesday his contention that some of Jor’Dynn’s injuries may have been self-inflicted — a claim prosecutors dispute — and said the alleged self-harm “is related to the abuses from prior placements with family and foster care.”

In a statement to Newsday earlier this week, LoTurco defended his client, saying, "The allegations against our client are just that  —allegations — and under our system of justice, she is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. ... At the conclusion of the process, we are confident that the evidence will demonstrate our client did not commit the crimes alleged, and that she will be fully exonerated."

Child Protective Services placed Jor’Dynn with Kelly on Dec. 4, 2024, and she was granted custody of the girl in April 2025. Jor’Dynn was removed from the custody of her mother, Portia Duncan, because of alleged abuse and neglect when Jor’Dynn was about 14 months old in May 2019. She lived with her father’s ex-wife for several years before she was placed with Kelly, family members have said. 

Jor’Dynn’s family learned of her death in a text message from Kelly, they told Newsday in a recent interview. 

Renner's attorney, Danielle Coysh, has said she has dementia and "no criminal culpability." Seymore's attorney, Katherine Fernandez, has said her client denies the allegations against her relating to a three-day period in July 2025.

'The invisible girl'

On July 27, five months before Jor'Dynn Duncan died, the girl was crying in pain, on her knees in what prosecutors described as a bath of fecal matter.

"It is as if someone took a cup of fecal matter and splashed it across Jor’Dynn’s back," Rizopoulos wrote. "Jor'Dynn can be heard moaning and crying 'No' and 'It burns' as she shovels the brown liquid into her mouth and eyes."

Kelly, still recording, directed the girl to "look up," prosecutors said.

"When Jor'Dynn looked into the camera, her eyes were swollen and there were visible marks on her forehead consistent with chemical burns," Rizopoulos wrote.

On the same day in July that Kelly recorded Jor'Dynn in the bath, Kelly and Seymore discussed Jor'Dynn via text message, according to a transcript included in the bail letter.

"Damn, she dark as hell," Kelly wrote in a text, while discussing an injury under Jor'Dynn's eye, allegedly caused by Kelly striking her.  Prosecutors characterized the remark as evidence of hostility toward Jor’Dynn and noted that Kelly is white and Jor’Dynn was Black.

Seymore wrote that someone named "Zaya" was "worried about her eyes."

"Imagine he saw that," Seymore texted. "You would go to jail."

They discussed depriving Jor'Dynn of childhood joy. "No games. No books. No words." Seymore wrote.

Kelly replied: "I'm going to ignore her completely."

A minute later Kelly wrote: "The invisible girl except for putting her stuff in her cuts to heal quietly."

Seymore replied: "Food nd [sic] nothing more. Every time she [expletive] up belt to ass. No more hitting and fighting just belt to ass. ... That's it no more nice no more feeling sorry but no more hitting her face or talking. Simple we have to make her feel like we don't give a [expletive] about her or what she do."

A few minutes later, Seymore wrote: "Just beat a 7 year old. I'm going to hell."

'She lit up the room'

In addition to abusing Jor'Dynn, Kelly repeatedly lied about Jor'Dynn's condition and falsely claimed to have sought medical and psychological interventions, prosecutors alleged.

On May 21, 2025, Kelly spoke on the phone with Dixon, her fiancé, Dixon, who is serving a four-year prison term for attempted burglary in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, and told him that she went to Jor'Dynn's school that day for a conference with the principal, teacher, school nurse, school psychologist and an official from social services because the girl had "stuck her fingers down her throat and made herself throw up all over the table in the lunchroom," the bail letter said.

But when law enforcement interviewed the school officials, they were all "unequivocal" that no such meeting ever occurred, the bail letter said.

Jor'Dynn never threw up at school. She was actually absent that day, the bail letter said, and had "missed almost the entire month of school" in May 2025.

School officials told Suffolk homicide detectives a starkly different story about Jor'Dynn — that she "lit up the room" and was "smart, intelligent, kind and very well behaved."

"They explained that Jor'Dynn never had toileting issues — ever, that she never self-harmed, and that she never threw up at school," prosecutors said in the bail letter.

When school officials questioned Kelly about Jor'Dynn's approximately 40 absences from school over a five-month period from January 2025 to June 2025, Kelly was "extremely communicative," school officials said, providing "detailed excuses about illnesses, sicknesses, a fraud in the family, a trip to Disneyworld and so on."

Kelly also refused counseling that the school offered for Jor'Dynn because of her family situation, with Kelly falsely claiming, according to prosecutors, that Jor'Dynn was seeing a therapist.

On Christmas Eve last year, about a week before Jor'Dynn died, Kelly, again communicated with Jor'Dynn's father. Kelly told him that she had Jor'Dynn admitted days earlier to a hospital psychiatric ward because the girl had a "psychotic break."

"This was determined to be an elaborate fabrication," prosecutors said.