*A Texas mother and her boyfriend have been charged in the death of her 8-year-old son whose skeletal remains were found Sunday in an apartment where she had abandoned her three other kids.
According to ABC 13, Brian Coulter, 31, was charged with murder, and the boy’s mother, Gloria Williams, 35, charged with injury to a child by omission and tampering with evidence, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez tweeted. Coulter reportedly beat the child to death and Williams allegedly did nothing to stop him. After the killing, Coulter covered the child’s body with a blanket and he and Williams fled the apartment.
Per People, Williams made her first court appearance on Monday, where authorities said her children, ages 7, 9 and 15, had lived in the abandoned apartment with their brother’s remains since March 2021.
According to prosecutors, the children were locked in a room with the body while their mother and Coulter lived in the apartment.
According to reports, the mother and her boyfriend ultimately moved to an apartment 15 minutes away in Westchase. Williams continued to pay rent on the apartment and would occasionally stop by and bring food to her kids.
Neighbors said the 15-year-old relied on them for food as the mother only visited occasionally to drop off “ noodles, drinks and chips” said neighbor Erica Chapman.
The teen was paranoid about getting poisoned so he would not accept cooked meals from neighbors.
The 15-year-old contacted authorities on Oct. 24 to report his sibling “had been dead for a year and his body was in the room next to his,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters.
“The apartment was in a horrible condition. We saw soiled carpet, no furniture at all. No bedding, no blankets that we could see. We saw roaches and flies and a very bad condition for anyone to live in,” Gonzalez said last Wednesday.
The three boys were taken to the hospital and appeared “malnourished and showed signs of physical injury.”
Williams failed to report her son’s death because Coulter told her not to, and she was afraid of him, police said.
“This mother had a year to contact law enforcement so you can’t tell me that for every minute for a year you were afraid,” Lt. Dennis Wilford said at a press conference Wednesday.
“I would say they are both an abuser,” Wilford told reporters about Williams and Coulter. “He’s an abuser physically, and she’s an abuser by omission.”
Both Coulter and Williams reportedly remain behind bars.
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