The mother of a 5-year-old boy who vanished months before he was found dead had compared the child to serial killer Ted Bundy, and said she wanted him out of her life.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, 5-year-old Elijah Lewis was found dead in a Massachusetts park last month, about 90 minutes from his home in New Hampshire. He is believed to have been missing since early September, and his mother Danielle Dauphinais did not report him missing. It is not clear who initially filed the missing persons report, as the Daily Beast reports.
Dauphinais, 35, and her boyfriend Joseph Stapf,30, have been arrested on charges of witness tampering and child endangerment. No one has yet been charged in the boy’s death.
The Boston Globe obtained text messages from a friend of Dauphinais, Erika Wolfe, who said the mother contacted her on Snapchat in June, in response to a post Wolfe had made about her teenager. Wolfe reportedly said that she had not been in direct contact with Dauphinais for years prior to that exchange.
“It’s so sad but I have no connection with this child,” Dauphinais reportedly said in the message exchange, complaining about Elijah’s behavior. “I call him the next Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer,” she wrote, referring to the notorious serial killers.
According to the Daily Beast, Elijah’s father sent the boy, one of Dauphinais’ six children, to live with his mother in May 2020, despite a previous custody battle that banned Dauphinais from contact with the boy. According to court records obtained by the Boston Globe, Elijah’s father alleged that Dauphinais had “a history of domestic violence and substance abuse,” and claimed that she exhibited “violent and impulsive” behavior.
Dauphinais reportedly told her friend that Elijah urinated on a bed and played with his own feces.
“He’s been getting worse and worse,” the mother claimed in a Snapchat message. “I want him gone. I can’t handle it anymore … “It’s like a [expletive] nightmare that I can’t wake up from.”
According to the Daily Beast, Wolfe did not take any action in response to the message exchange with Dauphinais, but remembered what the mother said after seeing news reports about Elijah’s disappearance.
“I remembered those messages,” Wolfe reportedly told the Boston Globe. “And I was like, ‘Oh, no.’”
Wolfe reportedly said she sent the text messages to a relative of Dauphinais,’ who claimed to have sent the messages to authorities. As of Monday, Wolfe had not been contacted by investigators, but Dauphinais was arrested the day after she shared the messages.
Dauphinais’ attorney questioned the authenticity of the message exchange, according to the Daily Beast, and said that he would seek to confirm their validity.
Authorities have not yet released Elijah’s cause of death.
CrimeOnline will provide further updates when more information is available.
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