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The 5-year-old had been forced to take a cold shower at home, after getting dirty with his clothes that night, and had gone to bed alone and naked before his parents found him dead, announced the authorities.
Court documents filed by a detective looking for a warrant sadly describe his last days. The detective said the boy was probably dead on the night of April 15 – but that he was missing only three days later.
Meanwhile, his father told investigators, Andrew Freund Sr. hid AJ's body in a bag and stored it in the basement. Then he put it on the back of his truck and buried it in an empty lot, according to court documents.
AJ's body was found on April 24 in a shallow, straw-covered grave at Woodstock, about 15 km from the family home at Crystal Lake. His parents, JoAnn Cunningham and Freund Sr., have been charged with murder.
He was allegedly ill-treated until the day of his death
A few weeks before her death, a video shot on her mother's phone in March and discovered by the investigators after her death showed AJ with bruises on her face and body. The two-minute cell phone video, which her mother had erased and found during a forensic analysis, shows the boy being sentenced for urinating in bed, according to documents.
The video was found after Andrew Freund signed a consent form authorizing the search of his cell phone after the announcement of the disappearance of AJ, according to the documents.
The investigators discovered that the SMS communications were in the father's phone but had been removed in Cunningham's phone. They also discovered that AJ's mother had been looking for CPR that night using Freund's mobile phone, according to documents.
Crystal Lake police contacted Apple to obtain data belonging to Cunningham and found the video showing a mishandled AJ in her deleted files, as well as missing text messages and a photo of a shopping list including adhesive tape, plastic gloves and an air freshener. and gloves.
Mobile phone video marks a turning point
The court documents detailed his bruises in the video.
"We see that AJ is (naked) naked, with the exception of a few small bandages around the wrists and surrounding her hips," the document says. "We see that AJ is holding an ice pack on his face and when he removes it, we see that he has bright red blues around his eyes."
The video marked a turning point in the case. When investigators showed him to Freund during his interrogation on April 24, he told them that his wife had caused AJ's injuries and told him what had happened the night when the boy was dead.
"He thought AJ died Monday morning after spending a long time in a cold shower," the documents said. "Drew explained that he wanted Joann to stop with the hard knocks and suffer some form of less violent punishment." Drew said the cold showers were decided (as an alternative).
A father took the police to his son's grave
After the confession, Freund took the police to Woodstock's grave, where she found AJ's body on a vacant lot, according to court documents. An autopsy concluded that he had died as a result of a blunt wound.
Freund told the detectives that his wife thought that AJ had an "opposite challenge disorder" and was always combative and provocative.
Before the police confronted him with video evidence on a mobile phone, Freund maintained that his wife had put AJ to bed after reciting prayers that night, according to documents. The next morning, he went to his doctor at 4:30 pm on April 16 and on his return home, AJ was missing.
At the doctor's office, a woman who examined him said that he had asked for a receipt and had said: "The lawyer in me thinks I need a written trace."
A report from the Department of Child and Family Services of Illinois revealed a long history of calls to the hotline for the well-being of children, reporting on A troubled family life, miserable living conditions and addiction among parents. Some of these calls preceded the birth of AJ.
The agency said that she was reviewing her treatment of cases involving the AJ family. A social worker and a supervisor were commissioned without such responsibilities during the course of the examination. The agency said it would also review all cases handled by both employees.
The AJ memorial will take place on Friday.
CNN's Kara Devlin and Sheena Jones contributed to this report.
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