Couple Hung 3-Year-Old Boy Upside-Down Before Beating Him

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A Pennsylvania couple has been charged after hanging a boy upside down, whipping and striking him repeatedly with a frying pan and later beating him to death. Read more on HuffingPost:

Jillian Tait, 31, and Gary Lee Fellenbaum, 23, were charged Thursday with murder in the death of Tait’s son, Scott McMillan, and aggravated assault in the beating of his older brother.

Chester County District Attorney Thomas Hogan called the case “an American horror story.”

“It was an unspeakable act of depravity,” he said.

The couple met working at Wal-Mart and last month moved in together, along with Fellenbaum’s estranged wife and three children — Tait’s 6- and 3-year-old sons and the Fellenbaums’ 11-month-old daughter. The six lived in a mobile home park outside the city of Coatesville, about 35 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

The prosecutor said what started as spankings morphed into “concentrated, repeated, escalating abuse.” Then, “over three days he was systematically tortured and beaten to death,” Hogan said.

The three adults told authorities “that Scott McMillan had been punched and beaten with blunt and sharp objects, whipped, taped to a chair with electrical tape and beaten, hung up by his feet and beaten, and suffered other acts of violence,” police said in affidavits released Thursday.