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Benton County Jail
Mary Mast and James Mast have pleaded not guilty to charges related to the death of their daughter.
The parents of a 4-year-old American girl allegedly killed by neighbors to eliminate a “demon” have pleaded not guilty to charges related to the case.
Mary Mast, 29, and James Mast, 28, both of Lincoln, Missouri, were charged with a felony of endangering a minor resulting in death and are being held without bail. They still don’t have lawyers.
Benton County Sheriff’s Department / AP
Ethan Mast has been charged with second degree murder and three counts of assault for torturing and killing a 4-year-old girl and torturing the girl’s mother and 2-year-old brother.
In court, Deputy Judge Mark Brandon Pilley also denied the couple’s request to attend the girl’s funeral, according to online court records. A bond hearing was scheduled for January 5.
The couple’s other children, a 2-year-old son and a baby, were taken into protective custody, Benton County Sheriff Eric Knox said in a news release.
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The girl was found dead in the family home on December 20. Knox said she had been brutally beaten and submerged in an icy pond as part of what appeared to be a “religious-type episode.”
Neighbors across the street, Ethan Mast, 35, and Kourtney Aumen, 21, were charged last week with second-degree murder and other crimes. Both are incarcerated without bail. Ethan Mast is not believed to be related to James and Mary Mast, Knox said.
Both families attend the same church, but Knox said the actions involving the girl are not approved by the church, which it declined to name.
“The investigation conducted thus far indicates that this is an isolated incident and NOT the actions of a cult,” Knox wrote in a press release on the department’s Facebook page.
A probable cause statement from Benton County Sgt. Chris Wilson said the girl was already dead and had “severe purple bruises” on her body, along with broken blisters, when he was called to the home.
Benton County Sheriff’s Department / AP
Kourtney Aumen has been charged with second degree murder and three counts of assault for torturing and killing a 4-year-old girl and torturing the girl’s mother and 2-year-old brother.
Knox said the girl’s parents had also been beaten along with the 2-year-old. The baby was unharmed.
James Mast told investigators that he and his wife observed the beating of their daughter, but were told they would be beaten or shot if they tried to intervene.
Still, Wilson asked James Mast “how could he allow people to do this to his family and he said they were told that (his wife) had a ‘Demon’ inside her and that their children would end up like her if they didn’t he took care of himself, ”Wilson wrote in the probable cause statement.
Ethan Mast told investigators that he and Aumen used a leather belt to beat the girl on December 19, according to the statement. She was then taken to a pond behind the house where she was “submerged” in the water on a day when the high temperatures were in the 40s.
Ethan Mast said they all returned to the victims’ home. It was not clear when the boy died.
Benton County, with about 19,000 residents, is located 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of Kansas City, Missouri.
