A Missouri couple was charged with murder after they allegedly tortured and killed a four-year-old girl, and tortured the child’s mother and 2-year-old brother, numerous sources reported.
Ethan Mast, 35, and Kourtney Aumen, 21, were charged with first-degree murder felony assault, and child abuse charges after a 4-year-old girl in Cole Camp was found beaten from head to toe and died Sunday. The suspects are the neighbors of the child’s family, and had been accused of torturing the family for weeks.
Benton County Dispatch was notified just before 1 AM this morning, December 20, 2020, regarding a four-year-old female…
Posted by Benton County MO Sheriff’s Office on Sunday, December 20, 2020
Deputies responded to a call at a rural home where the child’s father told authorities that his daughter was “beaten, submerged in a pond, then left to freeze on the bank before being taken back into the residence,” according to KY3. (RELATED: Ex Maryland Cop Pleads Guilty For Possessing Child Porn)
Police found the child deceased in her bedroom. Court records reviewed by KOLR said that the child had bruising that appeared to be from belt marks.
The child’s mother, Mary Mast, 28, and her 2-year-old son were also beaten and then hospitalized. Benton County Sheriff Eric Knox said that the abuse was happening for weeks and that an instrument was involved.
“To see a child in any kind of distress is terrible for first responders. In something to this magnitude, with a severe beating the child went through and the trauma she went through, it is very traumatic for everyone involved,” Knox said, according to KY3.
When the father was asked why he let people hurt his family like this, he reportedly said that he was told a “demon” was inside his wife and children, court documents reviewed by KOLR said. He also said that Mast and Aumen had told him that if he didn’t comply, someone would get shot, and that if one of the parents comforted the children, satan would come.
He said that he had been beaten with a wooden spoon two days earlier. The family has an infant that had no injuries.
Mast and Aumen reportedly told authorities that they had beaten the children and the mother, and that they assaulted the mother and daughter at a pond.