CENTENNIAL — The brother of Shelley Lowe endured about four hours of questioning by police before he admitted that Lowe told him and other children living in the home to lie about the disappearance of little Aarone Thompson.
During the trial Thursday of the girl’s father, Aaron Thompson, prosecutors played the video recording of the police’s interview of Rajon Russell, who was 15 at the time the girl was reported missing.
Russell was interviewed Nov. 17, 2005, three days after Thompson first reported his daughter missing. She would have been 6 years old at the time, but authorities believe she died when she was 4.
In the video, Russell at first is defiant toward detectives, cursing at them, pacing back and forth and punching the walls of the interview room several times.
Detectives Gretchen Fronapfel and Terrance Allen tell the teen that if he cooperates and tells them the truth, they will try to keep the family together and not put them in different foster homes.
But he doesn’t budge.
“Aarone is not dead. She ran away,” Russell yells at one point.
“You can stop,” Fronapfel said.
“How could my sister kill her? How could she cover that up?” Russell said.
But by the about the fourth hour, Russell is weary and gives in, saying Lowe instructed him to tell police that, among other things, Aarone’s favorite color was orange and also that she was a witch for Halloween.
Russell, though, acknowledges that he had never even met Aarone after he moved into their Aurora home from Detroit in August 2003. At the start of the interview, he was unable to remember how to pronounce Aarone’s name.
Aaron Thompson faces 60 criminal charges, including child abuse resulting in death. Aarone’s body has not been found. A former boyfriend of Lowe’s testified this week that Lowe told him Aarone died in a bathtub and then Lowe and Thompson buried her in a field.
Detective Allen testified Wednesday that Lowe gathered all seven of the kids at the dining room table on the day after Aarone was reported missing and told them what to say to police.
Thompson, 41, has shown virtually no emotion during the trial, which has lasted five days so far and is expected to extend well into September. His defense team has maintained Thompson had nothing to do with Aarone’s death but that he lied to them about what happened to his daughter.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
