A 28-year-old mother and a 31-year-old man were arrested in Michigan in the death of the woman’s 3-year-old son, who investigators say was killed in his home nearly seven years ago.
Amanda Maison and Maurice Houle, her boyfriend at the time of the incident, were taken into custody on Friday and charged with one count each of first-degree murder in the 2018 slaying of young Matthew Maison, authorities announced. Houle is also facing three counts of assaulting, resisting, or obstructing a police officer stemming from his alleged conduct during Friday’s arrest.
According to a Friday news release from the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office, Matthew was found dead in his bed inside of the family’s Port Huron Township home on Feb. 18, 2018. While no details surrounding the circumstances of the arrests were provided last week, the sheriff’s office said that the arrests were made following “significant recent developments” in the investigation into the toddler’s death.
During their arraignment hearing on Monday, prosecutors said that Matthew suffered “years of abuse at the hands of both defendants,” per courtroom footage posted by Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV.
“We came to realize of a scheme where both defendants conjured up this lie of previous injuries to the victim in our case, Matthew Maison, and came up with the lie about how the injury occurred prior to talking to investigators,” Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Josh Sparling said Monday, adding that both defendants “admitted” that the other abused Matthew.
Sparling alleged that Matthew was subjected to “very cruel, torturous abuse and punishment” such as “being placed in timeout on his knees where his head would be banged off the drywall” and being “locked in his room for hours on end without food or water.”
“There was a prior time where Maurice place a pillow over this child’s face and pretended like he was playing, but yet we know from the autopsy that Matthew died from blunt force trauma from all of the injuries he sustained as well as suffocation,” Sparling said.
The proceedings then took on an even more depraved tone as the prosecutor relayed another pernicious allegation levied against Maison and Houle.
“Not to mention this plan that was put forth to kill Matthew to make room for a child the two of them could have together,” Sparling said.
The Macomb County Scanner reported that during the duo’s arraignment on Monday, it was revealed that Matthew was likely beaten and choked to death, with investigators determining that his manner of death was a homicide.
“It is my opinion that Matthew Maison died secondary to blunt traumatic injuries with features of asphyxiation,” St. Clair County Medical Examiner Daniel Spitz reportedly wrote in the autopsy report. “The extent, severity, and distribution of the traumatic injuries is indicative of inflicted trauma.”
Prior to Monday’s proceedings, authorities had not released any details about the boy’s death.
The Times Herald reported that on the morning of Feb. 19, 2018, deputies and emergency medical personnel responded to the Maison residence in response to an unresponsive child in the home. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders found Matthew inside the home, already dead.
The newspaper in February 2020 submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the 911 call placed in connection with the boy’s death, but was told that the recording system for St. Clair County Central Dispatch automatically deletes recordings after one year.
Amanda Maison’s brother, Andrew Maison, and his wife, Hilery Maison, are currently serving sentences of life in prison without the chance of parole for the 2015 murder of Andrew Maison’s 5-year-old daughter Mackenzie Maison. They were also found guilty of severely abusing his 3-year-old daughter, Makayla Maison.