Serialously with Annie Elise - 37: “Cavemen” Children Escape House of Horrors in Wisconsin? Locked Up & Unable to Speak?

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

Bonus Episode! This is a shorter bonus episode, and there’s not much information yet on this case. It’s a case that is straight out of a horror movie and is so unbelievably horrifying and devastating. On the 13th of July, Milwaukee’s District 3 Police Officers were called in response to distress calls regarding two naked young boys - aged 7 and 9 - roaming South 71st Street, covered in blood, waste, bruises, and red marks. A 911 caller reported seeing a woman forcefully pulling one of the boys back inside their home. This woman was Katie Koch– And her house, some are calling the Milwaukee House of Horrors. Your True Crime BFF, Annie Elise  All Social Media Links: https://www.flowcode.com/page/annieelise_ About Me: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: [e-mail]

Hey true crime besties, welcome back to all new bonus episode of Serialistly with me, Annie. So I'm going to jump right into it today, guys. I hope you're all having a good week, but I had to jump on here and drop this bonus episode because this case that I'm going to talk with you guys about is happening right now and it is beyond me and blows my mind why more people aren't talking about it because it is truly so grotesque and depraved and I don't know why it's not in the media. We have seen cases similar to this with House of Horrors, Turpin, all of these cases in the media before. So I have no idea why this one isn't being discussed. So I knew I had to just jump on here with you guys. I had to break it down for you.

It's one that I'm going to continue to follow very, very closely. But let's get right into it. South 71th Street. Sounds like my neighbors be saying that the children might be in danger. We're going to stay for a second here. It's a dispatch call. Milwaukee fires acting assistant chief Skyler Belot. This one just sounded, just sounded different. So on the 13th of July, Milwaukee's District 3 police officers were called in response to distress calls regarding two naked young boys, aged 7 and 9. The boys were roaming South 71st Street, covered in blood, in their own waist, in bruises and red marks.

A 911 caller reported seeing a woman forcefully pulling one of the boys back inside their home. This woman was Katie Koch. The person who called 911 was a neighbor named Chris Etter. Ever forget the way they looked when they came running out of that house. Never forget that. Prosecutors say the boys were naked, covered in feces, blood, and red marks. The look on their faces was pure bewilderment. They just, they were just looking all around. They could not, like I said, I don't think they'd ever been outside before. When officers arrived, they approached Katie, the mother of these two boys. Officers on the scene described Katie as being in a state of panic, pacing back and forth, swaying, and looking quite unkept. Katie explained to Officer

Cruz that her father had recently passed away, and her children had broken a window, and that's why she was outside. Well, because of the reports that were called in about distressed children covered in blood, feces, bruises, and red marks, officers obviously insisted on checking on the children. So Officer Cruz went inside the house, and what he saw is being described as the new house of horrors. He said his first thought was that it looked nightmarishly cluttered, like a nightmarish cluttered house was his direct quote. He struggled to see the floor and he witnessed Katie trying to diaper one of the boys. Now again, the boys are seven and nine years old. Why are you diapering them? So Officer Cruz could see both of the boys' injuries and asked Katie

what they were from. Katie grabbed one of her sons tightly and told the officer that she was terrified. So more officers arrived on the scene and managed to get the younger boy out of the house. As Katie gathered clothing for her naked sons, she kept repeating, I'm so sorry, I'm so scared. Five neighbors shared their observations with the police, providing snippets of the children's situation as they saw it. One compared one of the naked boys to a caveman wandering down the sidewalk. Another saw one child escaping through a broken window, then standing on an AC unit and attempting to scale a fence completely unsuccessfully. One neighbor even claimed that they hadn't seen the kids leave their home for around three years.

What did you notice living across from them? Nothing. That is actually something all of us neighbors talked about because we'd never seen either one of the children. According to court documents, and this is a direct quote, Katie walked Officer Cruz through the remainder of the residence. The officer observed the kitchen piled with trash and garbage, as well as the living room. The smell of urine and feces filled the residence. Next to the bathroom was the child's room, both children's room. There was a mound of trash and garbage outside of the children's room. The door was halfway open and a greater amount of urine and feces smell became present as the officer approached this room. The children's room had

feces smeared all over the walls of the room. There was also a latch to lock the door from the outside of the kids room. Literally a true hellish scene. You walk into this room which is locked from the outside. No room needs to be locked from the outside unless you're trying to keep someone in or you know torture them in some regard and lock them inside. Then when they entered the room, there was poop smeared all over the walls, urine everywhere, disheveled, dirty, disgusting. It is foul. So Katie stated that the substance on the walls of the room was clay, that it was also paint and chocolate. However, the officer indicated that the substance on the walls of the room was in fact feces, and that the room smelled of feces and urine. Now at 5, two children found walking the streets of Milwaukee naked.

Two adults now charged in a horrific case of child neglect. Police are saying that the kids under the age of 10 were often locked in a room, the walls covered with filth. Investigative reporter Sean Gallagher is on the city's west side with details. Neighbors here near 71st and Dixon tell me they are stunned to learn what was going on under the roof of this home, something they only discovered after two Children broke a window and escaped from the home on a thursday afternoon. Very, very disturbing. Rick Ader says he was coming around the corner when

two children ran out into the street. He said we thought they were wearing costumes at first, you know, because the hair was so long it looked like it was they were wearing wigs. And when I get a closer look at it, at him, I looked at my wife. I says, them are not costumes because we saw a bunch of red marks on them, and they had no clothes. Those two children, both under the age of 10, had marks and bruises, and police say their hair was full of matted feces. 911 was called. 219 North 71st Street.

We're going for two children, naked, walking down the street, unknown of what happened. I don't have blood on them. Katie Koch, the mother of the children, and her boyfriend, Joel Manke, both face several charges of chronic neglect of a child and false imprisonment. According to the criminal complaint, Koch walked police through a home that officers described as a terrible hoarding situation. COCKWALKED POLICE THROUGH A HOME THAT OFFICERS DESCRIBED AS A TERRIBLE HORDING SITUATION. INSIDE, POLICE SAY THE SMELL OF URINE AND FECES FILLED THE RESIDENCE.

AND THE CHILDREN'S ROOM HAD FECES SMEARED ALL OVER THE WALLS. A ROOM THAT HAD A LOCK ON THE OUTSIDE. You could tell they weren't well taken care of. THE COMPLAINT ALSO SAYS THE MOTHER TOLD POLICE THE CHILDREN HAD NOT BEEN BATHED IN FIVE DAYS. AND IT HAD BEEN A YEAR OR TWO SINCE THEY WENT TO THE DOCTOR. weren't well taken care of. The complaint also says the mother told police the children had not been bathed in five days and it had been a year or two since they went to the doctor. She said the kids are homeschooled but they're still learning to write and put sentences together. The mother was given a $30,000 cash bail and the boyfriend $6,500. They're both due back in court on the 26th. Reporting for the I-Team, I'm Sean Gallagher. Upon leaving the scene, officers encountered Joel Manke, Katie's boyfriend, and he was in the driveway.

He explained that he had been living with Katie and her kids for about three and a half years and that he saw himself as a stepfather to the boys. Joel confessed to boarding up the window in the children's room to prevent them from disturbing a nosy neighbor. He further revealed that Katie used the latch to lock the boys in overnight to prevent them from wandering off due to their alleged autism. In a formal interview, Joel admitted that he was aware of the children's living conditions and that they were inappropriate, but he felt he needed to choose his battles to avoid disputes with Katie. He also admitted to never reporting the situation to the police or to schools because he didn't believe in involving authorities in family matters, which, I'm sorry, what? You don't believe in involving authorities in family matters when the children are living in these conditions? First of all, what types of battles does he normally have with Katie that could possibly trump this, where he would have to choose his battles?

This is not, yeah, she lets the kids leave all of their toys strewn over the house and it bothers me, but choose my battles. He was complicit and he was also living in this filth. It makes no sense. During her formal interview, Katie was inconsistent with her statements. She claimed her boys were homeschooled and get this, she also told the officer, and this is again a direct quote, that she didn't want to disrupt the boys' stability. But she admitted to the officers that she had messed up and that they deserved better. Katie also shared her boys' educational progress. One could trace letters and read simple words, and the other was learning to form sentences correctly. She claimed to use educational apps and recently purchased hooks on phonics. But remember, these are seven

and nine-year-old boys. They should be well beyond tracing letters and reading simple words or putting together sentences. The complaint continues on to describe Katie's reaction to hearing that her boys had to have their hair shaved off due to feces matting inside their hair. And it says that she seemed unbothered, saying that they needed a haircut anyway and that she just wanted what was best for them. She admitted that the last bath she gave the boys was five days ago and that it was not as thorough as it should have been. Katie confessed her home was unfit for living and wrote a three-page apology letter to her sons. So I think this goes without saying, but obviously the boys' last bath was probably much longer than five days ago. To have feces matting so badly in their hair that it had

to be shaved off, I mean, clearly that's indicative that they have not been properly bathed in a long time. Even if that was a good excuse, what's the point in bathing them when they are essentially living in feces anyway? It may not come as a shock to anyone listening that this is not Katie's first run-in with the law either. Four-year-old Katie Koch and her boyfriend, 38-year-old Joel Manke, are accused of chronic neglect of a child and false imprisonment. Investigators say two children under the age of 10 broke a window to escape their home on Milwaukee's west side. They were covered in feces and had cuts all over their bodies. TMJ4 News found that their mother, Cock, was previously convicted of robbing a Cudahy gas

station. Since 2011, Cock's other run-ins with the law involve theft, drugs, and a hit-and-run. Nearly 10 years ago, Mankey pleaded guilty for illegally possessing prescriptions. A mixed bag of emotions of just frustration and anger. I talked with Eric Strasser over the phone. He has a son with Cock who is not involved in this case. She hasn't seen him or talked to him in six years. He says the siblings have not had much contact either. We don't know what to tell them because we never knew where they were, you know, or, you know, what was going on. So it was just sadness for them. It was frustration. Cock and Manke both have family in the Milwaukee area. We tried reaching multiple relatives, but no one answered.

Is there a part of you that wonders, you know, what if you hadn't gotten custody of your son? Yeah, my wife and I are terrified of what could have been, you know. That's why we feel terrible about those other kids, because it would have been the same scenario with ours. Luckily, the boys are now in protective custody custody and their mother is facing years in prison. Neighbors told me they didn't even know people lived in this white house behind me because they never saw people go in or out until last Thursday when seven and nine year old brothers jumped through a shattered window in the rear of the home. That's when the neighbors called 911 as the boys stumbled naked through the streets. They had never been outside before.

If they have been, it's been a very long time. Christine Ader said it took a moment for her to process what she was seeing when two boys stumbled away from a usually quiet home across the street last Thursday. They were just walking different. Their hair looked like it had never been brushed, never been cut. They were just, and they just, looked like it had never been brushed, never been cut.

They were just and they just they didn't know the outside existed. The boys were naked and there was blood. Her husband called 911 while she kept eyes on the boys. It's really terrible. It's like something out of a horror movie. 34 year old Katie Cock is now facing four felony counts and two misdemeanor counts

related to the false imprisonment and neglect of a child. 38 year old Joel Manke is facing four felony counts and two misdemeanor counts related to the false imprisonment and neglect of a child. 38-year-old Joel Manke is facing four felony counts. What do you know about the couple who lived there? Absolutely nothing. Never saw, I never saw her or him ever. Manke said he's lived in the home since 2007. Cox said she and the children moved in about four years ago. The kitchen and living room were piled with garbage and the smell of feces and urine filled the home. Trash was also piled outside the children's room, which

locked from the outside. Inside, the walls were smeared with feces. A child witness described them as acting like human, like they had never seen the sun before. In an interview with investigators, Mankey said Cock had never taken the children to a doctor in the years she had lived with him, nor had they been to a school in that time. Koch told investigators that she homeschooled the children. She also, quote, admitted that the home is not habitable and said, quote, her boys deserve better. These children have been permanently damaged from their mother's actions. They are completely uneducated.

They are not potty trained. Even at their ages, they are essentially at this point unable to function in society. Now, Katie Cox's cash bail was set at $30,000 today, though a public defender says she has no way of paying that amount. Joel Manke's cash bail was set at $6,500. Both of them have preliminary hearings July 26. Now, if convicted of all four felony charges, the maximum penalties are $120,000 fines and 42 and a half years in prison. Cockface has an additional $20,000 in fines and 18 months in prison for her two misdemeanor charges. So this makes me wonder, just how neglected were the boys?

How much human contact had they had? Do they know how to speak? Do they know the alphabet? Can they count? This reminds me of that devastating story of the little girl, Jeannie Wiley, who was also known as the feral child, who was strapped to a chair by her parents and neglected for 13 years, and actually ended up showing researchers for the very first time ever the major and permanent damage that neglect can leave on children. Jeannie wasn't her real name either, but a name was only given to protect her identity after she was the poster child and spectacle for this scientific research.

When she was found, she was unable to speak, and her growth was so hindered that she appeared to be just an eight-year-old, but she was really 13 years old. She was kept in almost complete isolation, spending most of her time locked in a dark room or a makeshift cage. She was also forced to sit strapped into a child's toilet seat, used like a restraining device, and she hadn't been potty trained. It was disgusting. Her father would punish her with a wooden plank any time Jeannie did something wrong, and he would also growl like a rabid dog outside of Jeannie's door, even scratching the door, pretending to be a wild animal to torment her. This scarred Jeannie for life and instilled a deep fear of any animals with claws. And that's not even one-tenth of what Jeannie was put through. After she was taken into custody and looked at by doctors, scientists, and researchers, they found that she could be taught words but would never have the ability to form an actual sentence.

For example, instead of saying, I saw a bluebird on a tree, she could only say, saw bird tree, and that it would be like that for the rest of her life. According to Psychology Today, the case of Jeannie confirms that there is a certain window of opportunity that sets the limit for when you can become relatively fluent in a language. Of course, if you are already fluent in another language, the brain is already primed for language acquisition, and you may well succeed in becoming fluent in a second or a third language. But if you have no experience with grammar, however, Broca's area remains relatively hard

to change. You cannot learn grammatical language production apparently later on in life. I hope to god that's not the case for these poor boys. I don't know if I really believe the whole homeschooling and tracing letters and hooked on phonics story. It's hard to believe that the boys could be so unbelievably neglected that they had matted feces in the hair, yet their mother tried to teach them hooked on phonics and letter tracing, and the poor boys were heard grunting. When neighbors tried to approach them to help, one of the boys ran away, and the other one screamed in horror. Cases like this one make me absolutely sick to my core, because I just don't understand. There are so many questions in this story, like where is the boy's real father? Did they have any family members that knew about

them or cared about them to reach out to their mother, a grandmother, which, spoiler alert, they did have a grandmother that seemed to be involved in their lives at one point. It's just so sickening that the one person who was supposed to care about them treated them this way. And as far as Joel, he is just an absolute trash coward. How dare he sit there and say, yeah, I knew it was inappropriate, but I didn't do anything about it because I wanted to choose my battles. Bullshit. You don't live like that unless you are complicit and just as equally responsible as their mother since he referred to the boys as their stepsons. Interestingly, there was an article from the Daily Mail and it said a Milwaukee mother

charged with child neglect and imprisonment after her two sons escaped from their horror movie home shared glossy photos of her family online, while in reality the boys were living in squalor. So again there needs to be a deeper dive on this and I'm going to keep looking but it looks like by this article if it's true she was posting photos of them living a happy life when really they were living a nightmare and when I saw this I was thinking oh my god there's no way because the woman that is in court and in these mug shots looks like she also may have feces matted in her hair. So I looked into it further, and sure enough, it looks like at one point she was normal, and not long ago either. The boys were with their grandmother having birthday parties, playing in the snow, just being kids. The posts were old,

and it looks like something serious must be going on with both the mom and the boyfriend now. I'm not sure if it's mental health, I'm not sure if it's an addiction, but it has to be something major in my opinion. There's not much known about either of their backgrounds other than their criminal records and that they are both from that area of Milwaukee. Just recently, the boy's uncle and Katie's estranged brother spoke out in an interview about this. What Milwaukee police uncovered at this home on the city's West Side continues to floor people

outside of it. Investigators say neighbors found Katie Cook's two children outside naked and dirty with cuts after breaking through a window. Cook and her boyfriend, Joel Mankey, were arrested and charged for child neglect and false imprisonment.

Those poor babies, we had no idea. And don't think for a second, if we had an idea, we wouldn't have took care of that. We talked with Cook's estranged brother, Matt, over the phone. He says they haven't seen each other in several years. Matt is overwhelmed with frustration. He questions why Mankey didn't do more.

Why did he step in and go? Hey, this isn't right. Because of an argument, does he have a spine? His biggest concern is the children. Matt says his mother is struggling to get answers. Where can those kids go to get the

help that they so desperately need now? Those kids need around the clock-clock care right now. The officer who went into the home described it as a terrible hoarding situation. Carla Alejo is the director of the Hoarding Intervention and Treatment Program at Catholic Charities. I could tell that this isn't a case of hoarding disorder. It was much, much more than that. She was not involved in this case, but says it appears this was a situation of people living in squalor. Those are completely separate. Unfortunately, situations like this, if they're labeled hoarding, it just adds to the stigma of those who actually suffer from the hoarding disorder. Mankey's mother told GMJ4 News that the two children were with her for a few days before she returned them to a social worker earlier this week. I reached out to MPD for an update on their condition.

Their response was there is no update. This story is still developing and there isn't a ton of information yet, but I wanted to share this story because it's absolutely heartbreaking, frustrating, and just truly unbelievable that one of the adults involved out there was walking the streets because, as Katie's brother Matt said, Joel didn't have a spine. He saw all of this happen and did absolutely nothing, yet he's good to go out after a $6,500 bond? Where's the accountability here? This is a situation where had these kids not escaped through that broken window, this could have been an entirely different story and police could have found them mummified in a locked up bedroom. It is absolutely horrifying and haunting to think about.

So I am going to continue to follow this case and I'll give you guys another update I might actually do a full video breakdown of this case over on YouTube as well on my channel 10 to life so if you're not subscribed to my YouTube channel or have checked it out before definitely go and take a peek that's where I post the majority of my true crime documentary style videos on cases so I think I might do this one over there. And let me know either through email or on the comment section on one of my YouTube videos, or I'll do a poll actually on Spotify on here as well. If you want me to also cover that other case I mentioned in this episode about Jeannie and what fully transpired in that case, let me know and we can

do a deep dive on that one as well. But in the meantime, I'm going to keep following this one closely and I will let you guys know once we have an update because again they're dubbing it the new house of horrors yet nobody is talking about it where is the accountability in this this is what I mean when I say like laws need to change the system is broken systems need to change how are these boys treated this way and one of them now is just walking on the streets like nothing ever happened after claiming to be the stepfather who loved them and lived with them for years and years makes no sense to me so i'll keep you updated really quickly before you go and close out your app or hop over to your next podcast please take a quick second and just rate

this podcast give it a rating on whatever platform you're listening to it on please and if you are also able to leave a quick 10 second review just type a few words it really does help the algorithm and it helps push the podcast out to more people who may never have heard of it and that really is the ultimate goal here is to get all of these victims heard by as many people their these victim stories heard by as many people as possible so that awareness can be had and, you know, hopefully it can lead to generating change, getting justice, accountability. So the more people that hear about these cases, the better because that's the way we really are going to get that change in the long run.

So please do me a quick favor and just rate and review and if you can share this podcast with friends and family I would also greatly appreciate it thanks for tuning in to another bonus episode I drop new case episodes every Monday with full true crime case deep dives so make sure you check those out but I also do drop these bonus episodes randomly throughout the week when there is a case update or when there's a case like this one that just needs to be talked about. So to make sure you don't miss any of those episodes or the full deep dive episodes, make sure you are following the podcast. I think there's a little part in the corner where you can just like check it and follow along with it so that you'll get notified when a new episode is posted. All right, guys.

Thanks so much for tuning into another bonus episode of Serialistly with me today. Let's talk more about these cases in the future and figure out what it is we can do to try to make sure that this doesn't happen as often as it does because it really is sick. All right, until the next one, guys, stay safe, have a fantastic week, and I will be talking to you again on here very, very soon. All right, see you later, true crime besties. I am signing off. Bye.