CENTENNIAL — In an interview with police, Shelley Lowe’s daughter said that Aaron Thompson was a “great dad” to the children in the home.
“He’s been great for my mom,” the 12-year-old told police the week Thompson reported his daughter, Aarone, missing in November 2005. “She finally found the perfect guy.”
Her interview and those of other children living in the home were played Monday in Arapahoe County District Court, where Thompson is on trial for the death of his daughter.
The 12-year-old said the Aurora family went to the Heritage Christian Center about twice a month and that all eight children living in the home felt like a tight-knit family, even though some had different biological fathers or mothers.
She also said that Lowe, Thompson’s live-in girlfriend, rarely spanked Aarone. Most of the time it was Thompson, she said, and even then it was rare.
But a 60-count indictment against Thompson tells a different story. The children were routinely beaten, the indictment said. Some were hit with a belt, others with a bat or electrical cord. And the kids lived in constant fear at the home on East Kepner Place.
The children are expected to testify at the trial.
Jurors also saw video Monday of several other children being interviewed at Sungate, a child advocacy agency serving Colorado’s 18th Judicial District.
One, Lowe’s daughter who was 11 at the time of Aarone reported disappearance, at first lied about Aarone, saying she was at the home. But like other children before her, the girl then admitted that she hadn’t seen Aarone in nearly two years and that Shelley Lowe told her to lie.
“I’m supposed to,” the girl said. “I’m her daughter.”
Thompson’s son, also 11 at the time, was interviewed by Sungate but only five minutes of that tape was played. It was the only time Thompson has poked his head up and looked at any of the interviews with the children, including one with Lowe’s brother, Rajon Russell, 15, which lasted five hours.
Both Lowe and Thompson were considered suspects, but Lowe died of heart failure in 2006 about a year before a grand jury indicted Thompson.
In opening statements, Thompson’s lawyers said he did not kill the girl but lied in the cover-up.
During the interviews, most of the children said they saw Aarone sleeping in a bed the day she was reported missing. But the 12-year-old said her parents told her Aarone went to go live with her biological mother in Detroit two years earlier.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
