The details just keeps getting darker and darker in the case of William DeJesus, the man who executed a Canadian snowbird at a Deerfield Beach RV park and stabbed his own wife and two young sons before killing himself.
One son, a 9-year-old with autism, died; his 7-year-old son spent a day with a knife stuck in his head before surgeons could remove it, according to the Miami Herald. Both the boy and DeJesus' wife, Deanna Beauchamp, are expected to make a full recovery, but their family's situation is starting to look like more than a case of a guy going off the deep end -- information is starting to emerge that authorities had evidence that DeJesus and Beauchamp were unfit parents who allegedly molested both their sons, but the state gave...
... the sons back anyway.
DeJesus was barred from seeing children from a previous marriage after being "accused of abusing his former wife and molesting their children," according to a Miami Herald story using records from the Department of Children & Families.
Then, in 2007, investigators responded to a call that DeJesus was drunk and had choked Beauchamp:
The abuse had gone on, Beauchamp said, for eight years, and she showed an investigator scars to prove it. Beauchamp said DeJesus had stabbed her, punched her in the stomach, causing a miscarriage, and pushed her in the bathtub, leading to a back injury.
Then, in February 2008, Beauchamp fled DeJesus, going to a battered women's shelter and telling authorities that both of them had been molesting their sons:
DeJesus, she said, "had been fondling the children for a long time," a report said. "She stated that he had told her that his family had shown their love by touching the children's privates. The mother stated that the father would touch the children every other day when the children had their Pampers off. The mother also disclosed that the children's father told her to touch the children, and she states that it did not feel right, but she did it anyway because she loves her children. He had made her believe that this was the way to show the children their love."
And, she told investigators, there was another reason she molested her own children: "She was afraid William would kill her if she refused."
The children were immediately put into foster care. But that changed in 2009, when authorities ruled there wasn't enough "clear and convincing evidence" that the parents were unfit.
Check out the rest of the Herald story for more details, but be warned -- there are a lot of them.
