A Michigan mother and her former boyfriend have been charged with first degree murder in the death of her 3-year-old son more than seven years ago.
During their arraignment on Monday, Amanda Maison, 33, and Maurice Houle, 28, were denied bond. Houle faced additional charges of three counts of resisting and obstructing a police officer related to an incident on Friday where he got into altercations with eight officers, as reported by WDIV.
The charges against them are linked to the death of Matthew Maison, who was discovered deceased at his residence in February 2018. The autopsy indicated that he perished due to blunt force trauma and potential suffocation.
According to St. Clair County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Joshua Sparling, the defendants pointed fingers at each other for mistreating the child. He informed the court that they allegedly devised a plan to eliminate Matthew so they could have a child together.
Sparling said that Houle would hit the toddler in the face and put him in timeout on his knees, then bang his head on the drywall. He would be locked into his room for a hours at a time without food or water, and at least once Houle put a pillow over the child’s head “and pretended like he was playing.”
Maison reportedly told investigators Houle held a pillow over the boy’s face multiple times and that she also shoved his head into a wall “forceful enough to remove the backing of the drywall itself,” Sparling said.
She also told detectives that she lied about the abuse, lied when she initially spoke with officers in 2018, and lied to Child Protective Services investigating Houle for abuse prior to the boy’s death. She also said the hadn’t taken her son to the doctor because she didn’t want them to see his injuries.
Houle and Maison are due in court again on April 22.
Killing children appears to run in the Maison family. According to the Detroit News, Amanda Maison’s brother, Andrew Maison, and his wife Hilery Maison, were convicted in 2018 — the same year Matthew was killed — in the 2015 death of Andrew’s 5-year-old daughter, Mackenzie, who weighed just 25 pounds when she died. The Maisons are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, Law&Crime reported.
