CENTENNIAL — Aarone Thompson was screaming and crying while her father, Aaron Thompson, beat her with a hairbrush in the family bathroom, then there was “dead silence,” one of the children living in the home testified Friday.
“There was a night when she was crying, then all of a sudden it stopped,” the 18-year-old son of Shelley Lowe, Thompson’s former girlfriend, testified in Arapahoe County District Court.
The teen said he was walking by the bathroom that night and saw Thompson hitting the little girl with the hairbrush. She was crying, then it was “dead silence,” Lowe’s son said. He said when Thompson came out of the bathroom he had blood on his hands.
The next day, Lowe’s son said, Aarone was gone.
He said he last saw Aarone on his 11th birthday, which was March 10, 2002. Aarone would have been 3 1/2 years old then.
Thompson reported his daughter missing on Nov. 14, 2005, saying she ran away after a fight over a cookie.
Thompson faces 60 criminal counts, including child abuse resulting in death, and other abuse charges in connection with the seven other children living in the home on East Kepner Place in Aurora.
Lowe died in 2006.
On Thursday, the teen’s former psychotherapist, Simon Dwyer, testified that the teen told Dwyer in a session that Thompson had beaten the girl and that Thompson and Lowe told him to “finish her off” with a butcher knife.
But Lowe’s son testified that he lied to Dwyer to protect the other children and prevent them from having to testify in the case.
Defense attorneys tried to raise more doubts about the credibility of Lowe’s son, because he has apparently told numerous versions of what happened to Aarone.
When asked by defense attorney Lucienne Boyd if he remembered telling investigators that Aarone was beaten with a bat and that he, Lowe and Thompson drove to a nearby park and buried her, he said he didn’t.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
