The mother is accused of deleting threatening messages from her then-boyfriend that show how much he hated her son.
Warning: the following article contains disturbing content regarding child abuse, neglect and murder.
A US mother whose toddler was found dead at her boyfriend’s home has been arrested on suspicion of neglect and evidence tampering.
Amber McDaniel, 31, turned herself in to police on two felony arrest warrants almost three years after the death of her two-year-old son, Jason “Wilder” McDaniel.
Her then-boyfriend, James Staley III, is accused of strangling the infant in October 2018 after police and emergency services responded to his home in Wichita Falls, Texas.
They found the boy dead in his “extremely upset” mother’s arms as she cradled him and recovered bedding containing his blood. Investigators believed she had been asleep in another room while Staley allegedly choked her son to death.
Court documents reportedly reveal McDaniel admitted earlier this month to deleting messages between herself and Staley, as well as doing a factory reset on her phone to wipe it of previous messages.
Authorities say the deleted messages, which were recovered with the help of the Secret Service this year, show Staley’s hostility and hatred towards the child.
Investigators called particular attention to a message that referenced Wilder and his father, reading, “Scumbags and p*****s need to be culled. They both fall in that category. And I got plenty of guns.”
Also recovered from Staley’s phone was a video from August 2018, showing him holding the boy with bruises on his head and asking Wilder if he pushed him off the bed. Investigators say the child said he did, to which Staley responded, “That’s not what happened.”
McDaniel reportedly told detectives that Staley’s daughter later told her that Staley had kicked Wilder off the bed and then laughed about it. McDaniel did not report the incident to police.
Other messages included Staley using demeaning and dehumanising language in reference to the child, saying he wished to be rid of him, wishing death on him, threatening physical violence towards him, claiming to have put him in a fireplace tinderbox and admitting he doesn’t like kids apart from his own – to which McDaniel responded, “I’m sorry you hate my child.”
For the most part, she appears to have taken the messages as jokes. Investigators say the messages do not show any abusive or violent action on McDaniel’s part.
Now facing charges of tampering or fabricating physical evidence and abandoning or endangering a child, McDaniel is accused of continuing to put her son in Staley’s presence despite several disturbing threats.
The mother and son are also understood to have been staying with Staley for around two months before the murder.
“Your affiant believes any minimally protective mother would have immediately cut off Staley’s access to her son after receiving those Facebook messages,” detectives reportedly wrote in the arrest affidavit for McDaniel.
“Your affiant believes that Amber committed the offence of endangering Wilder, a child, on an ongoing basis by regularly forcing Wilder to be around James Staley, and by getting drunk and going to bed and leaving James Staley up in a house while her son, who Staley hated, was asleep in the other room.”
