Danielle D. Dauphinais and Elijah Lewis (New Hampshire Department of Justice).
A New Hampshire mother who was charged with brutally abusing and neglecting her 5-year-old son, found dead with fentanyl in his system, is going to plead guilty to killing him.
Danielle D. Dauphinais, 38, is taking a plea for second-degree murder, knowing, which is a lesser-included charge of the original crime of first-degree murder. She will also admit to two counts of tampering with a witness. She will face 55 years to life behind bars for the homicide charge. She must also spend three-and-a-half to seven years in prison for the tampering charges.
“While we can confirm that there is a plea hearing scheduled on Thursday at 9 a.m., we are unable to comment as to any potential plea,” Michael S. Garrity, spokesman for the State of New Hampshire’s Department of Justice, told Law&Crime in an email.
More Law&Crime coverage: Judge upbraids ‘heinous, cruel, and depraved’ mother who starved her 6-year-old boy to death — denies possibility of parole during sentencing
Authorities said they launched a 10-day search in October 2021 to find young Elijah Lewis. They caught his mother and her boyfriend, Joseph Stapf, 33, in New York City on Oct. 17 that year. Six days later, Elijah’s body was found in a state park in Abington, Massachusetts. They determined, however, that he had been dead for about a month.
He died sometime between Sept. 21 and 24, 2021.
Prosecutors have read texts showing Dauphinais and Stapf talking about abusing Lewis and not feeding him, according to Manchester ABC affiliate WMUR. For example, Stapf reportedly told Dauphinais they had to feed the child and allow him to sleep so he would look better and they could take him out.
Dauphinais said she did not want to do that, prosecutors said. According to authorities, Stapf once threw the boy on a bed, causing him to hit his head, but he started pleading with Dauphinais to stop what he called “torture.” Again, she refused, according to the evidence.
Stapf finally found Lewis naked and bleeding from the head in a bathtub. He failed to get medical help, however, authorities said. Lewis died sometime between sept. 21 and Sept. 24, 2021. Dauphinais recruited Stapf to help get rid of the body. They drove a pickup truck to Abington, where they buried Lewis in a shallow grave, prosecutors said.
Investigators formally determined Elijah died from “violence and neglect, including facial and scalp injuries, acute fentanyl intoxication, malnourishment and pressure ulcers,” according to The New Hampshire Department of Justice.
Stapf pleaded guilty in September 2022 to manslaughter, second-degree assault, falsifying physical evidence, and tampering with a witness. He was sentenced to spend 22 to 45 years behind bars.
“You are less than human,” Elijah’s father, Timothy Lewis, reportedly said then. “You could have stepped up to stop this at any point if you had been man enough. You could have brought him back to us at any point.”
The Boston Globe previously reported that Dauphinais had texted a friend about Elijah, saying she wanted him “gone” and comparing him to serial killers.
“I call him the next Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer,” Dauphinais said in a message to her friend, Erika Wolfe, months before the murder. “It’s so sad, but I have no connection with this child. His father took him at the age of one and never returned him until last May 2020. He’s been getting worse and worse. I want him gone. I can’t handle it anymore.”
Wolfe told the Globe that she had forgotten about the correspondence until October 2021, when Elijah’s disappearance made headlines. While surprised by some comments, Wolfe said that she assumed Dauphinais was just venting her frustrations. She also said she thought the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) was checking in, likely based on what Dauphinais had said about the agency in her messages. She told the Globe that she got a knot in her stomach when she saw the reports.
“I remembered those messages,” Wolfe told the Globe. “And I was like, ‘Oh, no.””
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