Normally I like to keep things light on my blog and most times my posts consist of humorous takes on life. But there has been a situation here locally that literally has me heart sick.
It started while I was out of town on vacation, but I came back to find the entire Cincinnati area looking for a 3 year old boy named Marcus Fiesel. He had gone missing from a nearby park that is so close to my house that we walk there often. Apparently the mother (who was a foster mother) had passed out and Marcus had “wandered off". Hundreds of volunteers spent hours and hours searching with no luck. His photo was plastered everywhere. Local donors had offered thousands of dollars for clues on the boy’s whereabouts. Both the foster mother & father and the boy’s biological mother (who lives a bit north of the city) gave tearful pleads for the boy’s return. But all was to no avail; he had simply vanished.
However, there were many things that weren’t quite adding up, and many people (myself included) speculated that things were not as they would seem. Little did we know how horrible this story would become, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
The mother said that she had passed out in the park and that the boy had wandered off. When she regained consciousness, he was gone. The security camera at the park’s main building showed no proof that the boy had ever been there. There was no one that could verify that he had been seen with the mother. Oh wait, I take that back. There was supposedly a “grey haired” woman that had seen them there, which the police had desperately been trying to locate… but no one ever came forward.
Then it comes to light that the social services caseworker that had been there the week before hadn’t actually seen Marcus because the foster mother told her he was sick in bed and didn’t want to disturb him.
Then this comes to light as well:
Just five days after their three-year-old foster son went missing, the family of a still unaccounted for Marcus Fiesel has “moved” from their Union Township home. Marcus Fiesel went missing in Anderson Township’s Juilfs Park Tuesday after his foster mother allegedly suffered a medical emergency there.
Neighbors of the foster family told 9News that Liz Carroll, the foster mother, has been released from the hospital. Neighbors also told 9News the family left their rented home on Valleywood Drive Saturday night with many of their possessions. One neighbor claims they looked to be in a hurry as they moved out.
And one more odd twist in the case:
Friends, family and law enforcement also say a third adult living with Liz and David Carroll was David Carroll’s live-in girlfriend.
Liz Carroll’s mother said that the other adult, identified as Amy Baker, had Liz baby-sit her children and later began dating Liz’s husband David when Liz and David nearly divorced earlier this year.
So basically we all knew it wasn’t looking good for poor Marcus, and there was so much more to this story than meets the eye.
But before I go on, let’s take a look back at Marcus’ life before foster care, shall we? He was autistic, and had the development of a 12 month old although he was three years old. In January of this year, he “fell” out of a two-story window while in his biological mother’s care. Although it was deemed an accident at the time, 3 months later, he was nearly struck by a car while found wandering the streets alone at night. At that point:
In April, officers removed three children — including the now missing boy — from the Grime Street home of their biological mother, Donna Trevino, police said. Marcus Fiesel’s bedroom had a foam mat, and there was feces on the walls and carpet, according to police.
God only knows what happened to this child before all that.
And then the news comes today that the foster parents have been arrested.
The prosecutor said that on Friday, August 4, the Carrolls went to a family reunion in Williamsburg, KY, while Marcus was left at their home in Clermont County in a closet, where he died.
When the Carrolls came back on August 6, Marcus was dead, police said.
According to police, Marcus’ body was then taken by David Carroll and burned in Brown County.
The Carrolls are in police custody.
So this little boy, who was mentally and developmentally disabled, had fallen from a two-story window, almost got struck by a car, and lived amidst feces before he was “rescued” and put into foster care. Here, his guardians went out of town to a happy ol’ family reunion, where he was left alone, locked in a pitch black closet for three days to die a slow, painful, and terrifying death.
As a mother this absolutely rips your heart out. It brings me to tears, not only for poor little Marcus’ soul, but for humanity as well. What kind of a human can do this act, then turn around and give a tear-filled plead for his return?! It almost defies comprehension, it’s so horrific, and I can only pray that God sent an angel to be with him in that closet… and I know that he is definitely in a better place than this hell on earth he was unwittingly born in to. God bless his little soul.
