CENTENNIAL, Colo.—An Aurora man charged with fatal child abuse in his daughter’s disappearance acknowledged Friday that the girl was already dead when he reported she was missing in 2005.
Aaron Thompson faces 60 counts involving his daughter Aarone (AIR’-uh-nay), who has never been found. Thompson faces 54 years in prison if convicted on all counts, which include allegations that Aarone was malnourished, beaten and denied proper medical care.
In opening statements Friday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Chappell told jurors that all evidence suggests Aarone—who would have been 6 when she was reported missing in November 2005—had been dead at least two years.
Later, defense attorney Lucienne Boyd said Thompson’s story that his daughter ran away because of an argument over a cookie was a desperate attempt to cover up Aarone’s death at the hands of Thompson’s live-in girlfriend, Shely Lowe, who died in 2006 from heart problems.
When Thompson called 911 in November 2005, Chappell said police initially took him at his word and launched a massive search for Aarone, checking fields, searching in trash bins, going door to door in the neighborhood and checking with registered sexual offenders.
But when asked for a recent picture of Aarone, all the family had was a vacation picture showing Aarone at the Grand Canyon about two years earlier.
“This was the last indication of a live child,” Chappell said of the picture, telling jurors there were no doctor’s visits since 2002 and she wasn’t enrolled in school.
When police asked for an article of clothing so they could develop a DNA profile, the family produced a pair of purple pants that appeared too small for a 6-year-old.
Chappell said the family also provided a pair of tennis shoes.
There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when Chappell showed a picture of the tennis shoes next to an enlarged portion of the Grand Canyon picture showing Aarone’s shoes—apparently the same ones.
Chappell also showed jurors videotaped interviews with the other six children living in the home. Lowe’s brother, a then 15-year-old boy, couldn’t remember Aarone’s name.
“The missing one,” the teen said, stumbling on Aarone’s name when asked to name all the other children in the home.
The teen, the brother of Thompson’s live-in girlfriend Shely Lowe, later admitted that he had not seen Aarone since moving into the house in August 2004.
Chappell said jurors will hear testimony from the children, who describe Thompson, whom they called Big A, whipping them with a baseball bat, belts, and cords as punishment. They will also describe how Thompson would beat Aarone and lock her in a closet for hours for wetting the bed.
Other witnesses will describe how Lowe told them that Aarone died during one of the punishments and how Lowe and Thompson conspired to make up a story to cover up her death.
The children were removed from the house and placed in foster care shortly after Aarone’s reported disappearance.
Boyd said Lowe’s teenage brother and one of her sons are responsible for testimony pointing to Thompson, which was developed out of loyalty to Lowe.
“She was a tyrant, controlling. She was manipulative,” Boyd said. “Nobody here is going to ask you to believe that Aarone is alive today,” Boyd said. “Mr. Thompson did not kill his daughter, Shely Lowe did.”
Boyd said five of the six remaining children in the home are not biologically related to Thompson.
The trial, which started Monday, is expected to last nine weeks.
Thompson’s neighbors said they had no idea how many children lived in the house because they hardly ventured out. The children had been told that Aarone was sent to Michigan to live with her mom.
