Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Man Accused of Abusing Special Needs Kids with His Parents Cries as Cops Arrest Him

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Prosecutors in Clermont County, Ohio have filed more charges against a couple accused of treating their five adopted special needs children "worse than prisoners of war." Matthew Edmonson and her husband, Charles Edmonson, now faces 31 charges felonious assault and child endangering. Their 20-year-old son, Bailey Edmonson, now faces the similar charges. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy has body camera footage of the arrests and details about the new charges in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Can I get for my St. Christopher's medal really quick? I'll take it off for you. An Ohio man breaks down sobbing as he's arrested and charged with assaulting and endangering the children his parents adopted. Give me a roll down the window so you can get some air. assaulting and endangering the children his parents adopted. Give me a roll down the window so you can get some air. Sheriff's body cameras were recording when his stepmother was arrested days earlier.

I take a look at the new charges the Edmundsons are facing out of Ohio. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Matthew and Charles Edmondson were charged last month with five counts of child endangering. The prosecutor had said they tortured the five children they adopted. Three of the children were triplets. The prosecutor says the children were treated worse than prisoners of war at the house east of Cincinnati. It sounds like a virtual house of horrors. Detectives claim the children were deprived of food and physically abused. When the Edmonsons were first charged, they faced five counts of child endangering. Now the couple faces additional charges, seven counts of felonious assault,

and 19 counts of child endangering. That's a total of 31 felony counts each. Hello, I'm Debbie Bailey. You got anything in your pockets at all? Nothing at all. Matthew Edmondson turned herself in last month. She had an attorney at the time and didn't say much. The police report documenting the investigation, which started with the sexual assault complaint in August of 2022, claims that Matthew Edmondson told

detectives her husband Charles wasn't bisexual, but that they had met in a gay chat room. Charles Edmondson has been in prison serving time for sexual battery. The prosecutor said Edmondson had sex with an adopted son who was an adult at the time, but the grooming had started much earlier. The sheriff's office released a police report that showed Claremont County Sheriff's deputies first started investigating Charles Edmondson for sexual assault back in August of 2022. A man reported that Edmondson assaulted him with a sex toy the day before. There was a lot of contact between detectives and the Edmondsons related to the investigation. The sexual assault accuser, who was 18 at the time, claimed that Charles Edmondson had been sexually assaulting him for six years. Some of the allegations made against Charles Edmondson include him sexually assaulting a boy that

park staff believed was his son at a state park and defecating in the shower. That was part of sexual battery investigation that started in 2022. Around that time when detectives approached Charles Edmondson, he refused to talk to them or allow them to look at videos on his phone. As Charles Edmondson was serving time in prison for the sexual battery case, he and Matthew Edmondson were charged with felony child endangering. Claremont County Prosecutor Mark Toccolvi told me he felt the Edmondson's tortured the five special needs children that they had adopted. There would be placed in the basement. There was a bed in the basement. It was a cold concrete floor. Sometimes there would be a mattress on this one bed, often not.

The defendants, I'm not going to call them parents because they didn't act in any way that a parent should ever act. These defendants had installed a video monitoring system and audio so they could communicate back and forth with these children. They would be punished. They would be stripped naked, placed in the basement. There are images of one child in just a horrible mess of his own waste. These three little fellas, the triplets, they are just wrapped up with one another naked.

You can imagine why they're doing this. It is for warmth and probably for comfort as well. We intend to prosecute this case and seek the maximum possible penalty. Now, to be clear, the alleged abuse of those five adopted children was discovered while the investigation into the sexual assaults was underway. Earlier this month, just a couple of weeks after the Edmondsons were charged, their 20-year-old son was taken into custody. I'm going to check you real quick. 20-year-old Bailey Edmondson faces two counts of felonious assault and four counts of child endangering.

The sheriff says the charges stem from mental and physical abuse inflicted on the children in the home. Now remember, these are all young children. The triplets were between six and eight years old when the alleged abuse occurred. The other siblings were older but younger than 13. What I can tell you is these children are special needs children. And some of the injuries that they sustained are consistent with the behaviors that would be exhibited by special needs children. And they didn't communicate. The defendants convinced them that adults were bad.

They shouldn't report things that were occurring in the home to other adults. So my kids, they were little, they were injured all the time. I think I went to Children's Hospital 11 times in a 12 month period. You have four boys, they're breaking bones or getting stitches. So that's why I think it was easy to explain away these injuries. Bailey Edmondson began to sob as deputies put him in cuffs. I'll pat you down real quick, okay? Just turn around for me. No guns or knives on you?

Bailey, I don't mean to be rude, but were you born a man or a woman? I was born a man. Were you born a female? Yes. Okay, so what will happen? I'm sorry. Go. Once we born a female? Yes. Okay. So what will happen, sorry, once we get to the jail obviously you're going to go through body scanner. You don't have anything inside you.

So I'm not going to pat down below your waist or anything like that, okay? So once we get to the jail they're going to check, okay? Do you care to turn around for me real quick? Bailey, you need to explain to them. You're going to lock your fingers for me. Did you explain? Can I give her my Saint Christopher's medal really quick? I'll take it off for you or I'll have her do it, okay?

Tell them the dogs are not locked up. I will tell Peanut I want to text your mom and you will be apparently tomorrow in court for your bond hearing. I'll be there, okay? I love you, buddy. Take care. Yeah. I love you buddy. Take care. Deputies led Bailey Edmondson to a cruiser to take him to jail. He turned back to talk to the woman who took off his necklace.

Do you need anything else? No. Okay. Okay, I will tell him all about the dogs next. So there's a cruiser behind this white car. Okay. Julie, can you tell me what's in front of you? I'll hold your breath. I will. I will see you. Deputies walked Edmondson to the cruiser.

He sobbed the entire way. Let's get this back to the scene. You want me to roll down the window so you can get some air? Yes, please. Okay. I'm sorry. I want to bring in Detective Troy Looney of the Akron Police Department. Troy, talk to me a little bit about your thoughts on this case. The child abuse is uncovered after police are investigating this awful allegation of sexual assault by Charles Edmondson.

Yes. So my understanding of the abuse and nature of the case, obviously it's terrible. And I understand that the children are now in protective custody, but this took place, I guess, as of several months now. Also, it sounds like there was some opposition to them being placed there originally. That's my understanding. Obviously, there are a lot of working components of what took place and parts of the case investigation from the cps to the sheriff's office to other detectives so kind of hard to have all the working pieces of the puzzle to understand all the dynamics but it will be good to see how the outcome is adjudicated. How common is it that you're investigating something as horrific as a sexual assault? And the allegations in this case, I mean, I feel like half of them I can't even talk about on YouTube because they're so graphic and disgusting. But then you discover evidence potentially of other crimes, which is how the prosecutor

says this unfolded, that they got a hold of Charles Edmondson's phone. He wouldn't let them look at it. And so it took some time, but they had to get into that phone. And once they did, they find these videos showing, you know, surveillance cameras in the house showing these children. You know, he said they're piled on top of each other like puppies naked in the basement on a concrete floor trying to stay warm. So how common is it that you are investigating one crime and you find others? Typically, so it's pretty common for us to investigate and uncover other crimes or other additional offenses that may have taken place within the same context of the case. It's really contingent upon what kind of data is available, what kind of evidence has been discovered. Mr. Edmondson was charged for one particular or several particular offenses, and upon examination of the phone, that new discoveries of these allegations, these videos and images were

discovered. So then you go back to your prosecution and approach that with additional search authority if necessary and or additional offenses to be charged. Of course, separate investigations require separate discovery, separate search authority, separate components as to what's required. Are there additional victims? Is it potentially the same victims that have been offended or criminalized in a different manner? So just contingent upon the totality of the evidence that we find. I've heard of these cases before where you can't get into a phone,

the police can't get into a phone. And so there are some cases I've seen where they actually have to get the secret service involved in getting into the phone. And that took some time in this case, you know, that the prosecutor's not commenting on who got into the phone for them but a lot of times it is the secret service that has to break into the phone so talk to me about how challenging that can be in an investigation yeah so the challenges that are presented with that in that capacity where we have to engage and collaborate with other agencies, that's not uncommon because

we all have different resources. We all have different components and equipment to use, different levels of expertise and so forth. So it is not uncommon to request the services of other agencies such as Secret Services, whomever was responsible for assisting. These data and these devices are very intricate and they're very complex in terms of the make and model versus like iPhone versus Android devices. Some of the iPhone components or if this, I'm not sure if this was an iPhone or Android, but in either context it's just it's contingent upon the difficulty, the encryption that may have taken, may have been present. It's contingent upon the passwords or passcodes, if there was

cooperation or not. In this case, there was no cooperation as we know, but with that being the case, it's contingent upon how the devices are locked down and what's required to engage and to find and break through the protected elements that are there. So they're all different. Each case is different. But I'm just glad they were able to gain entry into these devices and that device particularly to find these new images and new data. Do you think we could possibly see more coming out of this?

I mean, the Edmondsons were already indicted once. Then a new indictment came with additional charges. The prosecutor had initially told us, we're not done with this yet. Now we have the son, the 20-year-old son being indicted. He's accused of being in on this too. Your thoughts on the son, the 20-year-old being allegedly a part of this horrific abuse that the prosecutor said, you know, these kids, special needs kids were being treated worse than prisoners of war. Yeah, so my thoughts on some of the details mentioned about the kids and the treatment. Obviously, this was a collaborative effort by the family

to avoid detection of what they were doing, the offenses they were committing, and crimes. It makes more sense to me, obviously, that if you're trying to uncover what's taking place with the children, check on their well-being, their welfare. Are they being fed properly? Are they attending school even? Are they enrolled?

All those things are factored into what is the status of the children? What's the status of the home? How accessible would the residents be and how much access services would have to the children just to check their well-being. So it makes more sense being a collaborative effort by the family to avoid detection and avoid being discovered. But the 20-year-old son being brought into this now too, I mean, you're saying it was a collaborative effort, but I mean, is it just like coming up in that environment? I mean, these are all allegations that have to be proven in court of course, but is it just a 20 year old being brought up through that? And I mean,

you know, you would think there might be a protective instinct there, but obviously the prosecutor and the sheriff are saying no. That is correct. And of course we are speculating but in that context there very well could be some past history of that 20 year old being abused uh themselves and or potentially other crimes that have been committed or just uh the fear factor of um the parents or foster parents um making statements or um setting a foundation unfortunately one this nature, setting the precedence to, you know, avoid being discovered and avoid detection. So not sure, not knowing the history of the 20-year-old and of the family or any other offenses that may have taken place,

it'll be nice to have, like, psychologists just, you know, talk about, you know, some of the details, some of the history, maybe behavioral health and so forth as to the, you know, the mindset of the parents and the 20-year-old when they interview that party. The statements will be interesting to hear about, you know, what took place and how. Well, it's horrifying. And these poor children, the last time we talked to the prosecutor, he said that, you know, they're doing well, which is good. Let's hope that they aren't absolutely scarred for life. And it is very concerning that some of the officials in that county opposed this adoption, and yet it was able to go through in another county anyway. Detective Troy Looney, we're going to keep an eye on this case and see where it goes. Thank you so much for joining us. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Hopefully that the kids are doing better, much better, and they get some additional assistance further. Bailey Edmondson and his stepmother, Matthew Edmondson, remain in the Claremont County Jail

where they are being held on those charges. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.