Put in a Blanket and Put in the Freezer: Setina and Ren Weddles

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

May 25, 2024

Setina Princess Weddles and her twin brother, Ren, were born April 7, 2016, at UC Davis Medical Center to Aaron Ivan Weddles and Princess Dara Canez-Walker, joining several older half siblings born to the same couple across the preceding years. A nurse present at the twins' birth reportedly raised concerns almost immediately, flagging the parents as apparently unfit to take possession of the newborns, an early warning that, based on everything investigators would eventually piece together, was never meaningfully acted upon. The twins were never brought in for any subsequent wellness checkups after leaving the hospital, and the family itself was transient and homeless, living for extended periods out of a white 2002 Suzuki XL7 that the couple used as their primary shelter for themselves and their children.

A Shooting That May Have Actually Been the End

Although Setina and Ren were not formally reported missing until January 4, 2018, when their parents and several of their other children were located and questioned by Stockton police, the actual evidence gathered during the subsequent investigation points toward a far earlier date for when the twins likely disappeared, or died. Aaron Weddles himself told investigators that the last time he saw the twins was the night of May 13, 2016, when the babies were only about five weeks old. That same night, Weddles was shot multiple times, including once in the neck, during a late night shootout near the family's vehicle. He described placing Ren in a crib inside the car before the shooting began, and later suggested to investigators that the infant might have been accidentally killed during the exchange of gunfire itself, or alternatively killed afterward by the same unidentified man who had shot him.

A Blanket and a Freezer

A jailed informant later told investigators that Weddles had separately indicated to him that one of the children had in fact been killed during that same shooting incident, a claim that lined up unsettlingly well with an account investigators separately obtained from one of Princess Canez-Walker's own cousins. According to that cousin, she had asked Princess directly about Ren's whereabouts back in 2016, not long after the shooting, and Princess had told her plainly that he was killed in a shootout, and that Aaron put him in a blanket and put him in the freezer. Princess reportedly changed her account at various later points, but the specificity of that original description, a blanket, a freezer, delivered casually to a family member years before either twin was ever formally reported missing, has remained one of the case's most disturbing and closely scrutinized details.

Nearly Two Years Before Anyone Called Police

The gap between whatever actually happened to the twins in mid 2016 and the eventual missing persons report filed in January 2018 represents one of the most difficult aspects of the entire case for investigators to untangle. For close to twenty months, no one outside the immediate family appears to have raised any alarm about two infants who had simply stopped being seen. When Stockton police finally located Aaron, Princess, and several of their other children on January 9, 2018, five days after the family was first reported missing, they found them together inside their white Suzuki at the intersection of Trinity Parkway and McAuliffe Road in the Pixley Slough area of the city. A four year old daughter and what were reported at the time as two year old twin girls were with them. Setina and Ren, then closer to twenty months old had they survived, were nowhere in the vehicle and could not be located anywhere else either.

A Vehicle Full of Warning Signs

What police found inside that Suzuki once they searched it went well beyond simple evidence of homelessness. The vehicle's interior was described as being in deplorable condition, filled with garbage, suspected mold growth, and children's clothing stained with fecal matter. Investigators also recovered marijuana, crystal methamphetamine, and heroin inside the car, along with glass drug pipes and multiple weapons, including pocket knives, a hatchet, and a machete. It was, by any reasonable standard, an environment plainly unsafe for the children who remained in the couple's custody, let alone for the two infant twins who were no longer present at all.

Charges That Started as Murder and Ended as Something Else

Given the physical evidence, the informant's account, and the cousin's recollection of Princess's own earlier statement about a blanket and a freezer, prosecutors initially pursued the case aggressively, and San Joaquin County's district attorney's office requested that two counts of murder be formally added to eight existing child endangerment charges already filed against both parents. That effort to escalate the charges ultimately stalled. In August 2019, prosecutors dropped the murder charges entirely, citing a lack of sufficient evidence to actually prove homicide in a courtroom, despite everything investigators had already gathered pointing so strongly in that direction. The case's path to any resolution was further complicated when a judge found Princess Canez-Walker incompetent to stand trial in July 2018, following court ordered medical evaluations, a ruling that suspended proceedings against her specifically until she could be restored to competency through treatment.

Both Aaron Weddles and Princess Canez-Walker ultimately pleaded guilty to all eight counts of child endangerment connected to the deplorable conditions their surviving children had been living in, and each was sentenced to fifteen years and four months in prison. Neither parent has ever been formally held criminally responsible for whatever actually happened to Setina or Ren specifically, and neither has disclosed, even after accepting a lengthy prison sentence on the endangerment charges, where either twin's remains might actually be located.

Uncooperative Parents, No Answers Provided

Throughout the investigation, police repeatedly described both Weddles and Canez-Walker as uncooperative, unwilling to provide investigators with any consistent or verifiable account of what had actually happened to the twins, even as the couple's own other children remained in state custody and the search for Setina and Ren continued without any physical results. At one point during the ongoing court proceedings, reporting on the case noted that both parents had been observed smiling and laughing together in the courtroom, a detail that struck many following the case as strikingly incongruous given that their own missing twin infants remained unaccounted for the entire time.

Two Children Erased From Public Record for Years

What makes the Weddles case particularly wrenching is the sheer length of time that passed before anyone outside the family even knew Setina and Ren were gone. Unlike cases involving an immediate, visible abduction or a same day disappearance that triggers rapid public attention, these two infants may have been gone for the better part of two years before their names ever reached a missing persons database or a police report, hidden inside a family situation chaotic and transient enough that no outside party, extended relatives excepted, apparently noticed or intervened during that entire window. By the time investigators did begin actively searching, the physical trail connecting back to whatever happened the night Aaron Weddles was shot had already gone cold for the better part of two years.

Still Missing, Still Unexplained

Setina Princess Weddles and her twin brother Ren remain missing to this day, formally unaccounted for despite a police investigation, a nearly successful murder prosecution, and the eventual incarceration of both parents on separate, lesser charges connected to the broader neglect and endangerment of their surviving children. What the case leaves behind is an account from a jailed informant and a family member's secondhand recollection of a conversation from years earlier, details specific and consistent enough to shape investigators' own working theory of what happened, without ever actually rising to the level of evidence a courtroom required to convict anyone of causing either twin's death. Both parents are currently serving their sentences for endangering the children who survived, while the fate of the two who did not remains, officially, still unknown.

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