On Tuesday a Detroit mother was arrested shortly after authorities serving an eviction notice found the bodies of two of her four children in a freezer.
On Thursday the Detroit Free Press reported that the mother tortured the children before killing them and reportedly had her surviving children place their 13-year-old sister's body in the deep freezer.
According to court records viewed by the Free Press, Mitchelle Blair, 35, reportedly choked her 9-year-old son, Stephen Berry, with a belt and burned him with hot water before placing a plastic bag over his head. Blair allegedly wrapped the child in plastic and put him in a deep freezer. It is believed that Stephen was killed Aug. 30, 2012.
Stoni Blair, 13, was reportedly burned with a clothes iron and beaten with a curling iron before being strangled with a T-shirt. Mitchelle Blair then allegedly forced her two remaining children—an 8-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl—to put their sister into the deep freezer. It is believed that Stoni was killed sometime in 2013.
According to the Free Press, the two surviving children also have scars from being whipped with an extension cord and burned. They have been placed in the care of a family member as the state also tries to terminate paternal rights, claiming that the father did not protect the children from "an unfit home environment where the children were physically abused, tortured and murdered," according to a juvenile court petition viewed by the Free Press.
Mitchelle Blair has been charged with abuse, and murder charges are pending until the bodies have thawed, allowing the coroner to determine the cause of death. Blair is being held on $1 million bail.
Read more at the Detroit Free Press.