Shelby County couple pleads guilty in horrific abuse case of adoptive son kept in basement
By Carol Robinson | crobinson@al.com
The adoptive parents of a young Shelby County boy reportedly kept alone in a concrete basement for an average of 23 hours a day have pleaded guilty to reduced charges.
Richard and Cynthia Kelly, ages 60 and 50, entered guilty pleas on Monday, according to prosecutors and court records made public Tuesday. The couple was originally arrested in 2016 and held on $1 million each before eventually getting out of jail on bond in 2017.
Both were charged with aggravated child abuse of the then 14-year-old boy.
Jury selection was to begin on Monday, after multiple continuations of the trial, and instead they entered guilty pleas to child abuse. Aggravated child abuse is a Class B felony, and child abuse is a Class C felony.
Prosecutors suggest the maximum sentence for the couple – 10 years with two years and a day to – serve. Attorneys for the husband and wife made application for probation.
Shelby County Circuit Judge William H. Bostick ordered a pre-sentence investigation and set sentencing for Feb. 24, 2020.
The plight of the young teen came to light the weekend of Nov. 12, 2016 when the boy was taken to Children's of Alabama. Helena Police Chief Pete Folmar later testified the then-14-year-old boy weighed 47 pounds when he arrived at the hospital.
He was described by doctors as severely and chronically malnourished, dehydrated, suffering from acute respiratory distress, shock, hypothermia, hypothyroid and close to death. Pictures taken at the hospital of the boy showed pressure sores on his legs. He was also placed on a ventilator for about a week to help him breathe.
His adoptive parents two days later were charged with aggravated child abuse and booked into the Shelby County Jail.
According to the arrest warrants for the parents, the couple was accused of denying food, nourishment and medical care to the boy, who was “subjected to forced isolation for extended period of time.” Authorities have said that “isolation” was disciplinary in nature. There were no signs, however, the boy was handcuffed, chained or restrained.
Neither Richard nor Cynthia Kelly, who had lived in Helena for about 20 years, showed any previous criminal record in Alabama. Richard Kelly worked in the computer technology field but had been unemployed for several weeks at the time of his arrest. Cynthia Kelly was a stay-at-home mother who home-schooled her adopted children.
In a 2017 hearing in the case, it was revealed that they received $500 a month from the state through DHR to help take care of their son. Adopted children may receive an adoption subsidy if they meet the special needs criteria. This is paid by the federal Department of Health and Human Services and distributed to the family by Alabama DHR.
The young teen, after being released from the hospital, was placed in a therapeutic foster home, where other family says he has done well. A therapeutic foster home caters to the physical, emotional and social needs of children with emotional challenges.
The police in the earlier hearing testifed that Richard Kelly took his adopted son, referred to in court only as "EK," to Shelby Baptist Medical Center that November Sunday morning, saying he had been ill for about a week. Within hours of their arrival, the boy was airlifted to Children's of Alabama, where doctors told investigators "EK" would have likely been dead within three more hours.
The boy's body temperature upon arrival at Children's was 86 degrees. "The doctor said that was not a sufficient body temperature to sustain life,'' Folmar testified.
The chief also testified to the conditions in which "EK" was kept. The basement room had concrete floors, a box-spring, blanket and pillow as well as a hanging strip of fly paper and an Algebra textbook. The teen's clothing was kept in a plastic, three-drawer unit which contained a few shirts, pants and diapers.
There were locks on the outside of the doors, Folmar testified, and a video surveillance camera that had one time been trained on the box-springs and used to keep an eye on the teen, and his older brother who also had been previously locked in the basement, according to testimony.
Though the camera was no longer functional, Folmar said, but Richard Kelly told the chief they made "EK" think it still worked and that they were watching his behavior. Folmar testified that the boy was fed once a day and fed food other than what the rest of the family was eating.
Cynthia Kelly told police "EK" had behavior issues and had threatened to harm the family. The parents said they kept him locked in the basement so that he wouldn't break things throughout the house or damage their belongings. "If I didn't do that,'' she told the chief, "he would get out and break things."
She also told investigators they monitored his food intake because otherwise he would over-eat. Folmar testified that Cynthia Kelly told them that when "EK" was allowed out of the basement, his presence with the rest of the family agitated her Labrador retriever and it would "turn the house into a circus."
The chief said he asked Cynthia Kelly if she had sought professional help in dealing with "EK"'s behavioral issues and she indicated to him that "no one believed them." "I'll be honest with you," she told the chief, "We just got tired of it."
The teen's biological brother, Eddie Carter, spoke extensively with AL.com shortly after the couple’s arrest. He says he suffered the same neglect, abuse and despair at the hands of Richard and Cynthia Kelly. He said he was kept in the basement for weeks and months at a time.
"You’re down there and nobody knows you’re down there except the people in the house,'' Carter told AL.com. "It’s up to those people to make sure everything’s going to be all right and it’s not all right and you’re kinda lost. You sit in the corner and weigh out what means the most. It was horrible. Horrific.
"It gets to that point where you’re like an animal,'' Carter said. “You feel like an animal.”