Inset: Matthew Maison (Justice for Matthew Facebook Group). Background, left to right: Amanda Maison and Maurice Houle (St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office).
New information has been revealed in the case of a 33-year-old mother and a 28-year-old man in Michigan who are facing possible life sentences for allegedly killing the woman’s 3-year-old son nearly seven years ago so they could afford to have another child shared between the two of them.
Investigators provided additional details about the death of young Matthew Maison during Tuesday’s court proceedings for his mother, Amanda Maison, and her then-boyfriend, Maurice Houle, both of whom are facing charges of first-degree murder in the boy’s 2018 slaying. Houle is also facing an additional three counts of assaulting, resisting, or obstructing a police officer stemming from his alleged conduct when he was arrested last month.
According to the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office, Matthew was found dead by his mother in his bed inside the family’s Port Huron Township home on Feb. 18, 2018.
During a preliminary hearing last month, prosecutors said that Matthew suffered “years of abuse at the hands of both defendants,” per courtroom footage posted by Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV.
“We came to realize of a scheme where both defendants conjured up this lie of previous injuries to the victim in our case, Matthew Maison, and came up with the lie about how the injury occurred prior to talking to investigators,” Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Josh Sparling said at the April hearing, adding that both defendants “admitted” that the other abused Matthew.
On Tuesday, prosecutors called two detectives as witnesses, one who investigated the case in 2018 and another who took over the case and interviewed Maison and Houle last month, according to a report from the Times Herald.
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The original detective testified that when he went to the Maison residence on the day of Matthew’s death, he noticed that the child had visible injuries, including bruises and a black eye. Soon after, he discovered that Matthew’s grandfather had previously reported Maison and Houle to Child Protective Services (CPS).
The incident involving CPS occurred after Maison claimed she saw Houle physically abuse Matthew because the child spilled some food. She reportedly told her father what she had witnessed, and he called CPS. However, when authorities arrived at the Maison home, the mother retracted her story and cut off ties with her father.
The same detective testified that when he interviewed Houle in 2018, the defendant initially claimed that Maison was the one who dealt with disciplining Matthew and the biological child of the two defendants. But under further questioning, the detective said Houle did admit that he sometimes punished Matthew by making the child do “military time-outs,” which involved kneeling in front of a wall with his hands on his head.
Prosecutors last month alleged that Matthew had been subjected to punishments that included “being placed in timeout on his knees where his head would be banged off the drywall.”
The new detective testified that when the couple was interviewed in April 2025, they both claimed to have witnessed the other attempt to smother Matthew with a pillow.
Maison also alleged that Houle had killed her son and even asked her to “take the fall” for him to keep him out of prison.
The judge said he would allow prosecutors to admit testimonial evidence that when Matthew was still alive, Maison became pregnant with her third child, but the couple mutually decided to have an abortion, according to the Times Herald. Despite wanting another shared child, the couple allegedly decided they could not afford the additional expense.
District Court Judge John Monaghan overruled objections from Maison’s defense attorney, reasoning that any prejudice against the defendants was outweighed by the evidence that Maison and Houle wanted another child and that Matthew was an impediment to that happening.
Prosecutors last month alleged that the couple had a “plan” to “kill Matthew to make room for a child the two of them could have together.”
Monaghan ultimately decided that the state had provided enough evidence to establish probable cause to have the cases bound over to the circuit court. It was not immediately clear when the defendants would make their first appearance in circuit court.
