A teenage boy, L. (b. 2007), was imprisoned and tortured by his parents, Joseph and Peggy Flores. L. was homeschooled.
Joseph Flores had a conviction of sexual assault in 2002 and had a warrant for his arrest in Colorado for failure to register as a sex offender. According to L., the Floreses began to abuse him in March 2020 after the public school district was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several news articles identify L. as being homeschooled during this time, although no education occurred.
The Floreses locked L. in a room with the window nailed shut and imprisoned him in a dog kennel, naked, with two dogs. They poured urine on L, yelled profanity at him (including racial slurs), and hit him with an extension cord. When L. was later examined, the medical examiner found bruising and scarring on his body.
The abuse came to light when L. talked to an investigator at the Child Advocacy Center in July 2020. Due to the pandemic, it took a long time to investigate the abuse and remove L. from the Floreses’ custody. The Floreses were charged with child abuse in June 2022.Read More
A 14-year-old boy (b. 2005) was choked, beaten, neglected, and imprisoned by his father, Anthony Jerome Lewis. The boy’s mother was also present and witnessed the abuse but did not stop or report it. The boy was homeschooled.
When he was growing up, Anthony Lewis’s son was often sent to live with his aunt due to incidents of abuse. At the beginning of 2019, he returned home to live with his mother and father. In January of that year, Lewis removed the boy from school to homeschool him. Instead of teaching him, though, Lewis forced him to do chores, such as cleaning the house. When he wasn’t working, the boy was forced to stay in his room with no television, phone, or access to the internet. He had only two pairs of clothes at a time. If he needed to use the bathroom, he was forced to ask Lewis for permission.
During this time, Lewis physically assaulted his son at least three times. In one incident, the boy said that Lewis choked him until he saw “weird colors” and “it started turning black.” On another occasion, he was beaten with electrical cords and belts twenty times each. At one point, the boy disclosed to his father and mother that he was having suicidal thoughts. With the boy’s mother watching, Lewis brought a shotgun, put it between the boy’s legs, and forced his fingers onto the trigger. “Do it,” he said. “Just do it. End it now.”
On November 20, 2019, police were called to the high school that Lewis’s son had begun attending to respond to a report of child abuse. The boy spoke to police, describing the abuse he experienced at Lewis’s hands between January 19th and June 30th of that year. Lewis was charged with first- and second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, second-degree child abuse, providing means of assisting suicide, use of a firearm in a violent crime, and failure to send his child to school, and has been ordered to have no contact with his son.
Date: November 20, 2019
Location: Odenton, Maryland Read More
From left to right: Brian Nelson II holding Kurgan Nelson; Ragnar, Brantley, and Vegeta Nelson
Six children—Brian Anthony Nelson II (a 13-year-old boy b. 2009), Brantley Nelson (a 9-year-old girl b. 2013), Vegeta Nelson (a 7-year-old boy b. 2015), Ragnar Nelson (a 5-year-old boy b. 2017), Kurgan Nelson (a 2-year-old boy b. 2020), and Britannica Nelson (a 1-year-old girl b. 2021)—died as part of a murder-suicide plot conceived by one or both of their parents, Brian and Brittney Nelson. The children were homeschooled.
Brittney Nelson was raised by “mean” relatives after her single mother died young. Brian Sr. and Brittney went to high school together and married in November 2008 when she was 18 and he was 20. Their first child, Brian II, was born in March 2009 shortly after their marriage. In his early 20s Brian Sr. experienced a serious head injury at work which left him permanently disabled. While the Nelsons sent Brian II to school for kindergarten, they pulled him out of school to homeschool him in the middle of first grade because “his father didn’t get along with what they were teaching… [The school] wanted boys to dance like girls. That was the final thing.” After that, all subsequent children were homeschooled by Brittney, who did not work outside the home and also had debilitating medical issues. Brian II enjoyed playing with his younger siblings; Brantley was the “artist in the family”; Vegeta, called “Vegeta the Prince”, was mechanically inclined and loved to watch repair videos; Ragnar was the “rough-and-tumble one of the bunch”. Neighbors reported that they had no idea six children were living in the home. By December 2020, the unemployed Nelsons were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and declared bankruptcy. The children’s paternal grandparents, Danny and Marilyn Nelson, helped as much as they could by offering babysitting and financial assistance, but the Nelsons began to distance themselves more over time.
In October 2022, the Nelsons were relying on government assistance for food, rent, and utilities. They arranged to have the children’s grandparents babysit during a planned medical appointment for Brittney. The Nelsons called their landlord and asked to have the gas line turned off. Two days later, rather than taking the children to their grandparents’ house, one or both Nelsons gathered the children in a room at the back of the house and killed them, then set the room on fire. The adults then came to the front of the house and died by violence. Numerous firearms were recovered from the home. The murders came to light when neighbors noticed the fire and tried to pull the adult Nelsons out of the house, but they were beyond help. When the authorities arrived, they determined that none of the family members were killed by the fire.
Date: October 27, 2022
Location: Broken Arrow, Oklahoma Read More
Teresa Milligan (b. 2009), Nora Milligan (b. 2011), and Finn Milligan (b. 2013) were shot to death as part of a murder-suicide by their father, Marcus Milligan, who also killed their mother, Tara Milligan. The children were homeschooled.
The Milligans were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and were active in their church ward. Teresa was opinionated, creative, and loved reading, theater, and playing the harp. Nora was well-spoken, an animal lover, and enjoyed piano and soccer. Finn had a great sense of humor and loved music and sports. The children treasured their pets, 5 cats and a dog. The Milligans’ fourth child, Conor Milligan (2015-2019), died of childhood cancer.
Three years and one week after Conor’s death, the police received a 911 call, likely from Marcus Milligan. When authorities arrived at the home they found that Marcus had shot and killed Tara, then had shot and killed each of the children, before killing himself. The motive remains unclear, although family and friends’ statement that “the reunion [in heaven] is a beautiful one for the family” indicates that grief and theological beliefs may have played a role in the murders.
Date: September 9, 2022
Location: Elk Mills, Cecil County, Maryland Read More
Roman Anthony Lopez, age 11 (b. 2009), was starved, tortured, and murdered by his father, Jordan Piper, and his stepmother Lindsay Piper. Roman’s 7 siblings who lived in the home (ages 1 to 17) were also abused, including Carson (b. 2008) and Brock Garvin (sons of Lindsay Piper and her former husband Marcus Garvin). All the children were homeschooled.
Roman’s mother, Rochelle Lopez, did a tour of service in Iraq in 2009, around the time Roman was born. Rochelle Lopez experienced physical and mental health challenges as a result of her service, so Roman spent his first seven years with his paternal grandmother, Jackie Farah, in Wisconsin. Farah described Roman as “funny, goofy and loved to dance,” and Rochelle noted that “he loved trains and he loved cars and he loved being in the water. He was a little water bug.” Rochelle Lopez last saw Roman in 2018 “after a custody agreement with his father fell apart.” Around that time Roman went to live with the Pipers in Michigan and later Pennsylvania, where Roman “became distant” from Farah and the abuse began March 1, 2018. Around the same time, when Roman was in third grade, Lindsay Piper pulled all the children out of school to homeschool them, explicitly in order to hide the abuse. In his victim statement, Carson noted that “She told people we were homeschooled but we weren’t… It was to protect herself from school counselors and staff. I believe that if we had gone to school that someone would have had a feeling that something was off and that she would have been reported.” Carson and Brock also reported that Lindsay Piper coached the children to lie to authorities about the abuse and threatened to abuse them if they did not participate in abusing their siblings. The family moved often to avoid detection. In December 2019, Jordan Piper also began grooming and creating pornographic images of a girl who lived in the home.
Lindsay Peters whipped Roman with a cord, zip-tied him to a bed by his fingers, zip-tied him in a stress position in the closet, and forced him to sleep in a box or closet without access to a bathroom. She also starved him, so at the time of Roman’s death he weighed only 42 lbs., the weight of a 5-year-old. She mixed poison into Roman’s drinking water; he was dehydrated when he died. She deprived Roman of medical care—he had not visited a medical professional in several years at the time of his death. About two months before Roman’s death, the Pipers moved the family to California where they rented a house.
The abuse came to light when Roman was reported missing in January 2020. After a community search, later that same day, his body was found in a storage bin in the Pipers’ basement. After a lengthy investigation, the Pipers were finally arrested Feb. 4, 2021 and charged with child abuse, poisoning, and torture. In April 2021, Rochelle Lopez died before the Pipers could be charged with Roman’s murder; they were finally charged in October 2021 as the investigation continued. In June 2022, Jordan Piper was additionally charged with sexual exploitation of a child; his case is ongoing. As part of a plea deal, in July 2022, Lindsay Piper pled “no contest” to murder and the other charges against her were dropped; she was sentenced to 15 years to life.
Date: January 11, 2020
Location: Placerville, California Read More
Olivia Rose Huggler, b. 2003, was murdered, and two of her brothers (born between 1996 and 2003) were shot, as part of an apparent murder-for-hire plot in which her brother, Samuel Huggler (b. 1996), and his friend, Daniel Alvey (b. 2003), were implicated. Olivia and her siblings were homeschooled, as was Alvey.
Samuel Huggler was the oldest child of Steve and Ami Huggler, who had a large homeschooling family and attended Maranatha Baptist Church. At the time she was murdered, Olivia had recently turned 18 and was in 12th grade. She owned her own cleaning business, was admired for her musical talent, and was an outdoor enthusiast. Alvey also attended Maranatha Baptist Church, and he and Samuel Huggler worked together; Alvey also lived in a house owned by someone in the Huggler family.
According to Alvey, Samuel Huggler hired Alvey to murder one of Samuel’s siblings. Alvey drove to the Hugglers’ home and shot Olivia and two of her brothers, who were unloading groceries in the garage. Olivia was killed and her brothers were seriously injured. Alvey fled the scene and was apprehended. Alvey and Samuel Huggler were charged with conspiracy; Alvey was charged with murder and attempted murder, and Samuel Huggler was charged with inducing attempted murder. Later, the charges against Samuel Huggler were dropped when Alvey refused to testify against him.
Date: December 14, 2021
Location: Evansville, Indiana Read More
Bobby Richmond (L) and Rebecca Richmond
An 8-year-old girl, A. (b. 2014), was tortured, imprisoned, and starved by her father, Bobby Richmond, and his wife Rebecca Richmond. Bobby Richmond’s mother Carol Richmond, who also lived in the home, was aware of the abuse but did nothing to stop it. A. was homeschooled.
Bobby Richmond had a prior felony conviction that barred him from owning a firearm, though he illegally possessed one. A. “expressed terror at seeing her father” and reported that Bobby Richmond also abused his wife, Rebecca Richmond. The Richmonds may have had more than one child, as Bobby Richmond reported that he had previously placed his children in social services’ custody for their own protection. The Richmonds’ home was unsanitary and they kept A. locked up in a laundry room with exposed wires, cleaning supplies, and “a little desk sitting up there for her to do homeschool type work.” Despite the available food in the house, the Richmonds starved A., feeding her only beans on the day she was rescued. They tortured her with a cattle prod and shaved her head. When she was rescued, A. was covered in her own urine, wearing only underwear, with marks all over her body. Bobby Richmond claimed that he was unaware of his daughter’s living conditions because he was always working.
The abuse came to light in February 2022 when a relative who owned the home visited, noticed the abuse, and called the authorities. Bobby, Rebecca, and Carol Richmond were charged with felony child neglect, and Bobby Richmond was also charged with unlawful possession of a deadly weapon.
Date: February 8, 2022
Location: Bragg, Raleigh County, West Virginia Read More
Kendrick Lee (b. 2012) was murdered by Brian Coulter, his mother’s boyfriend, on or around November 20, 2020. Before his death, Kendrick and his three brothers (b. 2006, 2011, and 2014) were physically abused by their mother, Gloria Yvette Williams, and Coulter for at least six years. All four boys were homeschooled.
A 10-year-old boy, R., was physically abused by his mother, L., and sexually abused by Nelson Head, his homeschool teacher and mother’s boyfriend.
R. was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome in 2017 at the age of 10 and was removed from school around the same time. Head, who lived with R. and L. at their shared Wichita Falls home, began to homeschool R. When the two were home alone, Head repeatedly sexually abused R., despite R. continually refusing and asking for the abuse to stop . During this period, R. was physically abused by his mother, who either did not know about or did not try to stop Head’s sexual abuse.
The abuse came to light in September 2017 when Wichita Falls police received a call from R., who said that he was going to wait until his mother fell asleep and kill her with a knife. A police officer took R. to the local campus of North Texas State Hospital for evaluation, where he complained of physical abuse. R. revealed Head’s sexual abuse in the CPS investigation that followed. His mother gave up custody, and Head received two consecutive life sentences. R. testified at Head’s 2021 trial that he has found happiness with a prospective adoptive family.
Date: September 15, 2017 Location: Wichita Falls, Texas
Chaskah Davis Smith, age 11, was murdered by his grandmother, Stephanie Marie Davis. Chaskah (b. 2011) and his half brother L. (b. 2013) were starved and physically abused by Davis for several years prior to Chaskah’s death. Davis’s husband, Thomas Desharnais, knew about the abuse but did nothing to stop it. Chaskah and L. were homeschooled.
Chaskah and L. lived with their mother, Amandria Davis-Smith, until around 2015. The family was Lakota. Following the March 2016 death of Davis-Smith’s brother (in which Desharnais claimed Davis-Smith was a suspect), the boys went to live with Davis, their maternal grandmother.. Between March 22, 2017 and August 31, 2017, Arizona police received three reports that the boys were being abused. At least one report came from staff at Anasazi Elementary School who had noticed Chaskah’s injuries. Investigators dismissed all three reports for a lack of evidence. The family moved out of Arizona until the final investigation closed on September 18, 2017, and then Davis pulled the boys out of school, claiming that she was going to homeschool them. The boys were not enrolled in school after 2017.
In 2019, the family moved into an Extended Stay America building in Scottsdale, where the abuse escalated. According to Desharnais, Davis called the boys “worthless crap” and “lower than dirt,” bent their fingers back with pliers, and hit them with a broom. Courtney Lange, who worked at the hotel front desk, called police twice after witnessing strange behavior from both boys, including wearing hats and long sleeves in hot weather. However, no investigation was opened as a result of Lange’s calls. Desharnais told investigators that Davis became more abusive in the last three months of 2021. She hit Chaskah on the head with a wrench, refused him food and water, cut skin off his genitals to punish him for wetting the bed, and forced him to sleep in the bathtub so that he would not get blood in the room.
The abuse came to light on the afternoon of January 30, 2022 when Davis called 911 to report finding Chaskah unresponsive in the hotel bathtub. Half a liter of water was removed from Chaskah’s body during EMTs’ attempts to resuscitate him, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Although Davis claimed his injuries were self-inflicted, investigators found bedding with bloodstains at the hotel, along with pliers, a wrench hidden under a mattress, a trash bag filled with human hair, and an animal shock collar (although the family had no pets). Davis and Desharnais were charged with first degree murder and child abuse, and L. was placed in foster care.
Date: January 30, 2022
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona Read More
Last Updated: February 10, 2023 by angela Leave a Comment
Son of Joseph and Peggy Flores
A teenage boy, L. (b. 2007), was imprisoned and tortured by his parents, Joseph and Peggy Flores. L. was homeschooled.
Joseph Flores had a conviction of sexual assault in 2002 and had a warrant for his arrest in Colorado for failure to register as a sex offender. According to L., the Floreses began to abuse him in March 2020 after the public school district was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several news articles identify L. as being homeschooled during this time, although no education occurred.
The Floreses locked L. in a room with the window nailed shut and imprisoned him in a dog kennel, naked, with two dogs. They poured urine on L, yelled profanity at him (including racial slurs), and hit him with an extension cord. When L. was later examined, the medical examiner found bruising and scarring on his body.
The abuse came to light when L. talked to an investigator at the Child Advocacy Center in July 2020. Due to the pandemic, it took a long time to investigate the abuse and remove L. from the Floreses’ custody. The Floreses were charged with child abuse in June 2022. Read More
Posted: January 31, 2023 by refulton Leave a Comment
Child of Anthony Jerome Lewis
A 14-year-old boy (b. 2005) was choked, beaten, neglected, and imprisoned by his father, Anthony Jerome Lewis. The boy’s mother was also present and witnessed the abuse but did not stop or report it. The boy was homeschooled.
When he was growing up, Anthony Lewis’s son was often sent to live with his aunt due to incidents of abuse. At the beginning of 2019, he returned home to live with his mother and father. In January of that year, Lewis removed the boy from school to homeschool him. Instead of teaching him, though, Lewis forced him to do chores, such as cleaning the house. When he wasn’t working, the boy was forced to stay in his room with no television, phone, or access to the internet. He had only two pairs of clothes at a time. If he needed to use the bathroom, he was forced to ask Lewis for permission.
During this time, Lewis physically assaulted his son at least three times. In one incident, the boy said that Lewis choked him until he saw “weird colors” and “it started turning black.” On another occasion, he was beaten with electrical cords and belts twenty times each. At one point, the boy disclosed to his father and mother that he was having suicidal thoughts. With the boy’s mother watching, Lewis brought a shotgun, put it between the boy’s legs, and forced his fingers onto the trigger. “Do it,” he said. “Just do it. End it now.”
On November 20, 2019, police were called to the high school that Lewis’s son had begun attending to respond to a report of child abuse. The boy spoke to police, describing the abuse he experienced at Lewis’s hands between January 19th and June 30th of that year. Lewis was charged with first- and second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, second-degree child abuse, providing means of assisting suicide, use of a firearm in a violent crime, and failure to send his child to school, and has been ordered to have no contact with his son.
Date: November 20, 2019
Location: Odenton, Maryland Read More
Last Updated: December 28, 2022 by clmccracken Leave a Comment
6 Children of Brian and Brittney Nelson
Six children—Brian Anthony Nelson II (a 13-year-old boy b. 2009), Brantley Nelson (a 9-year-old girl b. 2013), Vegeta Nelson (a 7-year-old boy b. 2015), Ragnar Nelson (a 5-year-old boy b. 2017), Kurgan Nelson (a 2-year-old boy b. 2020), and Britannica Nelson (a 1-year-old girl b. 2021)—died as part of a murder-suicide plot conceived by one or both of their parents, Brian and Brittney Nelson. The children were homeschooled.
Brittney Nelson was raised by “mean” relatives after her single mother died young. Brian Sr. and Brittney went to high school together and married in November 2008 when she was 18 and he was 20. Their first child, Brian II, was born in March 2009 shortly after their marriage. In his early 20s Brian Sr. experienced a serious head injury at work which left him permanently disabled. While the Nelsons sent Brian II to school for kindergarten, they pulled him out of school to homeschool him in the middle of first grade because “his father didn’t get along with what they were teaching… [The school] wanted boys to dance like girls. That was the final thing.” After that, all subsequent children were homeschooled by Brittney, who did not work outside the home and also had debilitating medical issues. Brian II enjoyed playing with his younger siblings; Brantley was the “artist in the family”; Vegeta, called “Vegeta the Prince”, was mechanically inclined and loved to watch repair videos; Ragnar was the “rough-and-tumble one of the bunch”. Neighbors reported that they had no idea six children were living in the home. By December 2020, the unemployed Nelsons were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and declared bankruptcy. The children’s paternal grandparents, Danny and Marilyn Nelson, helped as much as they could by offering babysitting and financial assistance, but the Nelsons began to distance themselves more over time.
In October 2022, the Nelsons were relying on government assistance for food, rent, and utilities. They arranged to have the children’s grandparents babysit during a planned medical appointment for Brittney. The Nelsons called their landlord and asked to have the gas line turned off. Two days later, rather than taking the children to their grandparents’ house, one or both Nelsons gathered the children in a room at the back of the house and killed them, then set the room on fire. The adults then came to the front of the house and died by violence. Numerous firearms were recovered from the home. The murders came to light when neighbors noticed the fire and tried to pull the adult Nelsons out of the house, but they were beyond help. When the authorities arrived, they determined that none of the family members were killed by the fire.
Date: October 27, 2022
Location: Broken Arrow, Oklahoma Read More
Posted: December 27, 2022 by clmccracken Leave a Comment
Teresa, Nora, and Finn Milligan
Teresa Milligan (b. 2009), Nora Milligan (b. 2011), and Finn Milligan (b. 2013) were shot to death as part of a murder-suicide by their father, Marcus Milligan, who also killed their mother, Tara Milligan. The children were homeschooled.
The Milligans were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and were active in their church ward. Teresa was opinionated, creative, and loved reading, theater, and playing the harp. Nora was well-spoken, an animal lover, and enjoyed piano and soccer. Finn had a great sense of humor and loved music and sports. The children treasured their pets, 5 cats and a dog. The Milligans’ fourth child, Conor Milligan (2015-2019), died of childhood cancer.
Three years and one week after Conor’s death, the police received a 911 call, likely from Marcus Milligan. When authorities arrived at the home they found that Marcus had shot and killed Tara, then had shot and killed each of the children, before killing himself. The motive remains unclear, although family and friends’ statement that “the reunion [in heaven] is a beautiful one for the family” indicates that grief and theological beliefs may have played a role in the murders.
Date: September 9, 2022
Location: Elk Mills, Cecil County, Maryland Read More
Last Updated: December 26, 2022 by clmccracken Leave a Comment
Roman Lopez, and 7 siblings
Roman Anthony Lopez, age 11 (b. 2009), was starved, tortured, and murdered by his father, Jordan Piper, and his stepmother Lindsay Piper. Roman’s 7 siblings who lived in the home (ages 1 to 17) were also abused, including Carson (b. 2008) and Brock Garvin (sons of Lindsay Piper and her former husband Marcus Garvin). All the children were homeschooled.
Roman’s mother, Rochelle Lopez, did a tour of service in Iraq in 2009, around the time Roman was born. Rochelle Lopez experienced physical and mental health challenges as a result of her service, so Roman spent his first seven years with his paternal grandmother, Jackie Farah, in Wisconsin. Farah described Roman as “funny, goofy and loved to dance,” and Rochelle noted that “he loved trains and he loved cars and he loved being in the water. He was a little water bug.” Rochelle Lopez last saw Roman in 2018 “after a custody agreement with his father fell apart.” Around that time Roman went to live with the Pipers in Michigan and later Pennsylvania, where Roman “became distant” from Farah and the abuse began March 1, 2018. Around the same time, when Roman was in third grade, Lindsay Piper pulled all the children out of school to homeschool them, explicitly in order to hide the abuse. In his victim statement, Carson noted that “She told people we were homeschooled but we weren’t… It was to protect herself from school counselors and staff. I believe that if we had gone to school that someone would have had a feeling that something was off and that she would have been reported.” Carson and Brock also reported that Lindsay Piper coached the children to lie to authorities about the abuse and threatened to abuse them if they did not participate in abusing their siblings. The family moved often to avoid detection. In December 2019, Jordan Piper also began grooming and creating pornographic images of a girl who lived in the home.
Lindsay Peters whipped Roman with a cord, zip-tied him to a bed by his fingers, zip-tied him in a stress position in the closet, and forced him to sleep in a box or closet without access to a bathroom. She also starved him, so at the time of Roman’s death he weighed only 42 lbs., the weight of a 5-year-old. She mixed poison into Roman’s drinking water; he was dehydrated when he died. She deprived Roman of medical care—he had not visited a medical professional in several years at the time of his death. About two months before Roman’s death, the Pipers moved the family to California where they rented a house.
The abuse came to light when Roman was reported missing in January 2020. After a community search, later that same day, his body was found in a storage bin in the Pipers’ basement. After a lengthy investigation, the Pipers were finally arrested Feb. 4, 2021 and charged with child abuse, poisoning, and torture. In April 2021, Rochelle Lopez died before the Pipers could be charged with Roman’s murder; they were finally charged in October 2021 as the investigation continued. In June 2022, Jordan Piper was additionally charged with sexual exploitation of a child; his case is ongoing. As part of a plea deal, in July 2022, Lindsay Piper pled “no contest” to murder and the other charges against her were dropped; she was sentenced to 15 years to life.
Date: January 11, 2020
Location: Placerville, California Read More
Last Updated: December 26, 2022 by clmccracken Leave a Comment
Olivia Huggler, and 2 siblings
Olivia Rose Huggler, b. 2003, was murdered, and two of her brothers (born between 1996 and 2003) were shot, as part of an apparent murder-for-hire plot in which her brother, Samuel Huggler (b. 1996), and his friend, Daniel Alvey (b. 2003), were implicated. Olivia and her siblings were homeschooled, as was Alvey.
Samuel Huggler was the oldest child of Steve and Ami Huggler, who had a large homeschooling family and attended Maranatha Baptist Church. At the time she was murdered, Olivia had recently turned 18 and was in 12th grade. She owned her own cleaning business, was admired for her musical talent, and was an outdoor enthusiast. Alvey also attended Maranatha Baptist Church, and he and Samuel Huggler worked together; Alvey also lived in a house owned by someone in the Huggler family.
According to Alvey, Samuel Huggler hired Alvey to murder one of Samuel’s siblings. Alvey drove to the Hugglers’ home and shot Olivia and two of her brothers, who were unloading groceries in the garage. Olivia was killed and her brothers were seriously injured. Alvey fled the scene and was apprehended. Alvey and Samuel Huggler were charged with conspiracy; Alvey was charged with murder and attempted murder, and Samuel Huggler was charged with inducing attempted murder. Later, the charges against Samuel Huggler were dropped when Alvey refused to testify against him.
Date: December 14, 2021
Location: Evansville, Indiana Read More
Last Updated: December 26, 2022 by angela Leave a Comment
Child of Bobby and Rebecca Richmond
An 8-year-old girl, A. (b. 2014), was tortured, imprisoned, and starved by her father, Bobby Richmond, and his wife Rebecca Richmond. Bobby Richmond’s mother Carol Richmond, who also lived in the home, was aware of the abuse but did nothing to stop it. A. was homeschooled.
Bobby Richmond had a prior felony conviction that barred him from owning a firearm, though he illegally possessed one. A. “expressed terror at seeing her father” and reported that Bobby Richmond also abused his wife, Rebecca Richmond. The Richmonds may have had more than one child, as Bobby Richmond reported that he had previously placed his children in social services’ custody for their own protection. The Richmonds’ home was unsanitary and they kept A. locked up in a laundry room with exposed wires, cleaning supplies, and “a little desk sitting up there for her to do homeschool type work.” Despite the available food in the house, the Richmonds starved A., feeding her only beans on the day she was rescued. They tortured her with a cattle prod and shaved her head. When she was rescued, A. was covered in her own urine, wearing only underwear, with marks all over her body. Bobby Richmond claimed that he was unaware of his daughter’s living conditions because he was always working.
The abuse came to light in February 2022 when a relative who owned the home visited, noticed the abuse, and called the authorities. Bobby, Rebecca, and Carol Richmond were charged with felony child neglect, and Bobby Richmond was also charged with unlawful possession of a deadly weapon.
Date: February 8, 2022
Location: Bragg, Raleigh County, West Virginia Read More
Posted: October 6, 2022 by refulton Leave a Comment
Kendrick Lee
Kendrick Lee (b. 2012) was murdered by Brian Coulter, his mother’s boyfriend, on or around November 20, 2020. Before his death, Kendrick and his three brothers (b. 2006, 2011, and 2014) were physically abused by their mother, Gloria Yvette Williams, and Coulter for at least six years. All four boys were homeschooled.
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Posted: September 7, 2022 by refulton Leave a Comment
Boy by Nelson Head
A 10-year-old boy, R., was physically abused by his mother, L., and sexually abused by Nelson Head, his homeschool teacher and mother’s boyfriend.
R. was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome in 2017 at the age of 10 and was removed from school around the same time. Head, who lived with R. and L. at their shared Wichita Falls home, began to homeschool R. When the two were home alone, Head repeatedly sexually abused R., despite R. continually refusing and asking for the abuse to stop . During this period, R. was physically abused by his mother, who either did not know about or did not try to stop Head’s sexual abuse.
The abuse came to light in September 2017 when Wichita Falls police received a call from R., who said that he was going to wait until his mother fell asleep and kill her with a knife. A police officer took R. to the local campus of North Texas State Hospital for evaluation, where he complained of physical abuse. R. revealed Head’s sexual abuse in the CPS investigation that followed. His mother gave up custody, and Head received two consecutive life sentences. R. testified at Head’s 2021 trial that he has found happiness with a prospective adoptive family.
Date: September 15, 2017
Location: Wichita Falls, Texas
Last Updated: March 15, 2022 by refulton Leave a Comment
Chaskah Davis Smith, and 1 sibling
Chaskah Davis Smith, age 11, was murdered by his grandmother, Stephanie Marie Davis. Chaskah (b. 2011) and his half brother L. (b. 2013) were starved and physically abused by Davis for several years prior to Chaskah’s death. Davis’s husband, Thomas Desharnais, knew about the abuse but did nothing to stop it. Chaskah and L. were homeschooled.
Chaskah and L. lived with their mother, Amandria Davis-Smith, until around 2015. The family was Lakota. Following the March 2016 death of Davis-Smith’s brother (in which Desharnais claimed Davis-Smith was a suspect), the boys went to live with Davis, their maternal grandmother.. Between March 22, 2017 and August 31, 2017, Arizona police received three reports that the boys were being abused. At least one report came from staff at Anasazi Elementary School who had noticed Chaskah’s injuries. Investigators dismissed all three reports for a lack of evidence. The family moved out of Arizona until the final investigation closed on September 18, 2017, and then Davis pulled the boys out of school, claiming that she was going to homeschool them. The boys were not enrolled in school after 2017.
In 2019, the family moved into an Extended Stay America building in Scottsdale, where the abuse escalated. According to Desharnais, Davis called the boys “worthless crap” and “lower than dirt,” bent their fingers back with pliers, and hit them with a broom. Courtney Lange, who worked at the hotel front desk, called police twice after witnessing strange behavior from both boys, including wearing hats and long sleeves in hot weather. However, no investigation was opened as a result of Lange’s calls. Desharnais told investigators that Davis became more abusive in the last three months of 2021. She hit Chaskah on the head with a wrench, refused him food and water, cut skin off his genitals to punish him for wetting the bed, and forced him to sleep in the bathtub so that he would not get blood in the room.
The abuse came to light on the afternoon of January 30, 2022 when Davis called 911 to report finding Chaskah unresponsive in the hotel bathtub. Half a liter of water was removed from Chaskah’s body during EMTs’ attempts to resuscitate him, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Although Davis claimed his injuries were self-inflicted, investigators found bedding with bloodstains at the hotel, along with pliers, a wrench hidden under a mattress, a trash bag filled with human hair, and an animal shock collar (although the family had no pets). Davis and Desharnais were charged with first degree murder and child abuse, and L. was placed in foster care.
Date: January 30, 2022
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona Read More
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