Kansas man guilty in death of boy found encased in concrete

Carlo Brewer, Evan’s father, celebrated the verdict but said his joy was tempered by sadness because of the cruelty his son had endured. Brewer had been fighting for custody of Evan in the months leading up to his death, and authorities had been alerted at least six times that Evan was being abused .

“(Evan) didn’t get to have the imagination like other children, where they think there’s monsters in their closets or under their beds,” Brewer said. “He had real monsters.”

Miller is also charged with murder in her son’s death. In exchange for testifying against Bodine, she will be allowed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder.

Much of the evidence at trial came from a cache of 16,000 photos and video files collected by the couple’s home surveillance system. In one video, Bodine and Miller are heard chastising Evan over the course of several hours, less than two months before he was killed.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said the jury performed an extraordinary service to the community for enduring the sometimes grisly testimony.

“I can’t really overstate what a difficult task it was to sit and absorb the kind of wretched details of how this little boy lost his life and the role this defendant had in it,” Bennett said.

Miller testified that Bodine had been punishing Evan for not eating on May 19, 2017, when he took the screaming boy into the bathroom. She said he soon came out with her son’s wet and lifeless body in his arms.

She said during a preliminary hearing that a few days later Bodine told her that he wanted “to take care of Evan before he started to smell.” She said he mixed up several bags of concrete and buried the boy’s body in it.

Evan was discovered entombed in the concrete in early September, after Miller and Bodine had moved out of the property.

An autopsy couldn’t determine the cause and manner of Evan’s death because his body was so badly decomposed by the time he was chipped out of the block of concrete. He had Benadryl in his system, and Miller said she thinks Bodine sickened him in the days leading up to his death by force-feeding him large amounts of salt.

Bodine’s own daughter, Samantha Johnson, also testified about the physical abuse she suffered from her father, saying her experience was similar to Evan’s.

Brewer said he hopes his son’s death will lead to more efforts to confront child abuse.

“Take a step back and question what you’re doing as a parent, question if it’s the right way to discipline or not or if it’s abuse,” Brewer said. “Because it’s got to stop. It’s got to stop.”

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The Latest on the trial of Stephen Bodine: https://bit.ly/2qav2bU

The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Kansas man guilty in death of boy found encased in concrete

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