(LifeSiteNews) – An Ohio mother and her two live-in transgender “co-parenting” males who allegedly tortured and killed 7-year-old William Evans-Ellis were indicted Thursday on 13 counts each.
Perhaps most chillingly, evidence collected by law enforcement showed that the adults began plotting the child’s prolonged sadistic torture and killing six weeks before his brutal murder.
According to court documents, as early as July 1 the suspects used the encrypted communications app Signal to discuss their plan to kidnap, abuse, physically restrain, and kill the young boy.
Kaitlin Evans, the boy’s biological mother, and her partners, Kirby Rankin and Nessa Keaney, were charged with aggravated murder, murder (four counts), kidnapping, felonious assault, endangering children (four counts) and conspiracy (two counts).
“This is a horrific, monstrous, unfathomable act,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich said.
“The defendants lived together and acted as co-parents of the victim, and as parents, they did have the duty to protect this child from harm, provide care and social support, and obtain medical care, when necessary, but they failed miserably as parents,” Pillich said. “Instead, they committed atrocious acts, causing this child to suffer terribly. And as for all of these monstrous crimes that were committed, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure these people never again see the light of day, and never again have the opportunity to harm another child.”
“They wanted complete control over the child, and they tortured him in one of the most terrifying ways,” Alexandra “A.J.” Greer, a forensic psychology researcher and supervised visitation monitor, told NewsNation.
Greer explained that survivors of waterboarding-type of torture endured by the boy have described their experience as “horrifying” to her.
William Evans’ broken, lifeless body was found bound with duct tape and stuffed in a closet by law enforcement on August 6.
According to police, the boy’s body showed evidence that he had been brutally tortured and beaten for two months.
“I’ve had 21 years of law enforcement experience. This was probably one of the most disturbing examples of child abuse I’ve witnessed in my career,” Detective Kyle Smith of the Cincinnati Police Department testified in court.
“We believe the victim was choked under water, held under water for long periods of time,” Smith said. “There was some burn torture involved.”
“We always say we expect the worst, and sometimes, we get it,” Hamilton County coroner Lakshmi Sammarco said during a press conference.
“I opened the closet door and just froze for a while.”
“The cause of death for this little boy was blunt trauma to the head,” she said. “He had bruises that were too numerous to count and of various ages.”
“Bones were separated,” she added.
The boy’s father was estranged from the boy’s mother and had been deprived of visits with his son for the past nine months. He too is a female-identifying male.
At the time of the boy’s torture and death, defendant Kirby Rankin was out on bail after having been arrested and convicted for assault and aggravated menacing in the violent attack against a woman in shopping center parking lot in January.