William DeJesus' youngest son called him the “Monster.”
At a Polk County foster home, the boy shrieked from nightmares and insisted the Monster was hiding under his bed.
He had good reason to fear: DeJesus had been accused of beating, stabbing and raping the boy's mother, who, in turn, once told authorities the couple had repeatedly molested the boy and his older brother.
But the “Monster” didn't remain under the bed.
Two weeks ago, DeJesus, 41, drove his family to a Deerfield Beach trailer home, killed the occupant and held police at bay for seven hours while he stabbed each member of his own family before killing himself. DeJesus' oldest son, 9-year-old Jeshiah, was pronounced dead at the scene; born disabled, he never uttered a word in his short life. His brother, 7, was hospitalized with a knife blade stuck in his head. He remained impaled for a day before a surgeon could remove it.
The youngster and DeJesus' wife, 37-year-old Deanna Beauchamp, are now recovering.
In the weeks since Jeshiah's death, Broward Sheriff's Office detectives have tried to figure out why DeJesus chose to execute the man in the quiet Broward neighborhood and why he tried to wipe out his own family.
But there is also this question: How could state child-protection administrators' actions toward the family have ended so tragically?
The inquiry centers on a petition the Department of Children & Families filed — and later withdrew — seeking to permanently sever the rights of DeJesus and Beauchamp to their young sons.
A foster mother had warned darkly that she was “afraid for the children if they are returned.”
But returned they were.
Said Joe Follick, the Department of Children & Families spokesman: “Obviously this is a terrible tragedy. Our immediate focus is in ensuring that the surviving child receives everything he needs.”
Records of the case — 500 pages of which were given to The Miami Herald under the state's public records law — paint a picture of an agency acting swiftly to strip DeJesus and Beauchamp of all parental rights until an abrupt about-face in May 2009. Then, agency workers were equally determined to keep the family intact — even in the face of warnings that the boys were in danger.
The surviving child is not being named to protect his privacy.
DeJesus' involvement with child-protection workers actually began several years earlier, when New York state permanently severed his right to children from a prior marriage. Records show DeJesus had been accused of abusing his former wife and molesting their children. The wife obtained an order barring DeJesus from contacting her or the children for five years.
By 2007, DeJesus and Beauchamp were raising two boys in Florida. Jeshiah was 4 and suffered from autism. His brother was 2 and was also being tested for a developmental disability. DCF's child-abuse hotline received a report on Sept. 18, 2007. During a drinking binge, DeJesus had choked his wife and punched his children's bedroom door, leaving a hole.
A police report on the incident said DeJesus had a handgun on the couch when officers arrived. Beauchamp was crying. “Thank you, thank you,” she said. “You saved me.”
The abuse had gone on, Beauchamp said, for eight years, and she showed an investigator scars to prove it. Beauchamp said DeJesus had stabbed her, punched her in the stomach, causing a miscarriage, and pushed her in the bathtub, leading to a back injury.
DCF filed a dependency petition in court, asking a judge to order the family to accept the agency's help and supervision, but the children were not taken into protective custody. “No evidence of physical or sexual abuse to the children, nor is any suspected,” an investigator wrote.
But the evidence soon followed. In February 2008, after Beauchamp left DeJesus and went to a domestic violence shelter, she told authorities that both parents had been molesting the children.
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Report: RV park killer kept sons despite molestation allegations
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