OkieGranny
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http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/police-autistic-teen-beaten-death/nkT2s/#__federated=1
An autistic teen was murdered at his Auburn home by his mother's live-in boyfriend, police said and charges are expected soon.
Police said Otto Smith, 18, was killed by Matthew Lee Christenson a man with a history of assault. The death that happened in 2014 first came to attention of police months later when Christenson was arrested for allegedly beating Smith's younger brother...
Mary S., a friend of Smith's mother, told detectives that the boys' mother disclosed she "watched helplessly" as her son died. Despite blunt force trauma to Smith's head, torso and extremities, his death was ruled "natural" by the King County Medical Examiner's Office. Investigators told KIRO 7 that Smith's mother a long-time special education teacher told everyone her son had "fallen down the stairs." Her story was "good enough that for months, it was believed," according to Myers.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Detective-Teacher-says-she-helped-beau-hide-her-6000450.php
Detectives began their investigation on Dec. 22, after the teens mother arrived at Tacoma General Hospital claiming to have been kidnapped. According to charging papers, she ultimately told hospital staff Christenson killed Smith she said she helped clean up the evidence and tortured her surviving son, the 14-year-old...
Prior to Christensons arrival, Smith had been seen regularly by a caregiver. The teens mother said Christenson forced her to cancel the help shortly after he moved in.
The practicalities of caring for a severely disabled teen really grossed Matt out, the woman told police, according to a search warrant affidavit by Tompkins. Christenson cut holes in large trash bags, which he made Smith wear like a large diaper; he pulled the bags up to Smiths armpits and then looped the drawstring around the teens neck.
What the younger son endured:
http://www.auburn-reporter.com/news/288624601.html?mobile=true
Five months of "horrific abuse" inflicted upon a minor. Those are the blunt words King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Mary Barbosa used in court to describe what 42-year-old Matthew Christenson of Auburn is alleged to have done to the 15-year-old son of the woman with whom he was living for eight months in 2014.
Indeed, the official account of what happened in that one Highline-area apartment paints a terrible picture of wanton acts of malignant cruelty, including all-night ice baths, forced, pointless marches up and down the apartment building's stairwell that lasted for hours, and forcing the boy to live in the bathroom and sleep on the floor there...
According to court records, investigators found the woman "seemingly unable or unwilling to stop the abuse or protect her child," including the alleged ice baths. Asked to explain the ice baths, the woman speculated that "it was to reduce the swelling and bruising from the beatings Christenson inflicted," according to court records.