Dec 4, 2008 3:00 pm US/Pacific
Suspects Charged With Torturing, Abusing Teen
TRACY (CBS/AP) ―
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Michael Schumacher, Kelly Lau (Schumacher) , and Caren Ramirez (l-r)
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The Tracy home where police say a couple tortured a teenage boy held against his will.
AP
A husband and wife were charged Thursday with kidnapping and torturing a teenager authorities say was sometimes kept shackled inside the couple's home and abused with a baseball bat, belt and knife. The boy's one-time guardian also was charged with similar allegations.
Kelly Layne Lau and husband Michael Schumacher, of Tracy, were charged with 13 counts of abuse and former guardian Caren Ramirez, whom the boy called an aunt, was charged with 10 counts.
Lau, Schumacher and Ramirez were also charged with corporal injury to a child, child abuse and aggravated mayhem, which the San Joaquin County District Attorney's office said could yield life sentences if they are convicted.
Lau and her husband are also charged with endangering their four children, who range in age from 1 to 9.
The abuse at the couple's home started in July 2007, prosecutors said.
The boy escaped from the home in Tracy, about 60 miles east of San Francisco, on Monday and fled with a chain still attached to his foot to a nearby fitness center. He appeared emaciated, was covered in soot, and wearing only boxer shorts.
Lau and Schumacher appeared in court Thursday. Ramirez was being held at the county jail for psychiatric evaluation.
The couple entered the courtroom handcuffed and wearing red jail jumpsuits. They appeared bewildered by the standing-room-only crowd and throng of television cameras.
San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Franklin Stephenson read the charges to the couple, who nodded when asked if they understood, and ordered each to be held in lieu of $2.2 million bail. They did not enter pleas.
A woman in the courtroom who identified herself to a reporter as Lau's mother, but would not comment further, caught her daughter's eye after the 20-minute hearing and both women broke into tears.
The judge ordered all parties not to discuss details of the case.
Lau, 30, told KGO-TV of San Francisco in a jailhouse interview Wednesday that the boy and Ramirez, 43, came to live with her family more than a year ago because they had nowhere else to go.
Ramirez, Lau said, instructed Lau and her husband to discipline the boy as she did. Lau said she struck the boy in the knee with a baseball bat at least five times, KGO reported.
Lau said she participated in the abuse because she was afraid Ramirez would hurt her own children. Ramirez also burned the boy with an aluminum bat held in a fire in the fireplace, Lau said.
Ramirez also would not let anyone else feed the boy, Lau said, adding that the teen would sit in the living room and watch while the Schumacher family, including their four children, ate meals in the kitchen.
Those children were placed with Child Protective Services after their parents' arrest. Authorities have said they showed no signs of abuse.
Lau and Schumacher, 34, through jail officials, declined a request from The Associated Press for interviews Wednesday. On Thursday, jail officials said Ramirez could not see visitors.
Police declined to comment on the accusations made by Lau. Her court-appointed lawyer, Keith Arthur, said the judge's gag order prevented him from discussing the case.
Lawyers for Schumacher and Ramirez didn't immediately return phone messages.
Ramirez had been the boy's legal guardian after child welfare officials took him from his abusive father three or four years ago. According to court documents, she pleaded no contest to one felony count of beating the boy.
Authorities had earlier identified Ramirez as the boy's aunt but said Thursday they had learned she was a family friend he called his aunt. Police also previously said the boy was currently 17 years old. The criminal complaint filed by prosecutors on Thursday said he is 16. Police now say their preliminary information led them to believe he was a year older than he is.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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