A man accused of strangling an 11-year-old girl to death pretended to help search for the girl after she was reported missing, police said in new testimony.
Christopher Madison, 33, was arrested and charged with capital murder on March 4.
But before Amberly Barnett was found by the DeKalb County Sheriff’s House on March 2, Madison claimed he had searched a wooded area behind his house and didn’t see any sign of the missing girl, an investigator told the courtroom, reported AL.com.
Amberly’s body was found lying in the woods, strangled with a blue rope.
At the preliminary hearing on March 18, Judge Steven Whitmire ruled prosecutors have probable cause for the capital murder case.
Amberly was from Georgia but she’d been living with her aunt in Mount Vernon. Madison lived with his girlfriend in the mobile home next door to the house; his girlfriend was sister to Amberly aunt’s boyfriend.
The girl stayed home on the night of March 1 while her aunt and her aunt’s boyfriend went shopping. When they returned, she had vanished.
Before he claimed to look for the missing girl, Madison told deputies that he saw a dark Dodge Durango pull into the driveway of the house Amberly was living in. Other neighbors, though, never saw the car, the investigator said. Inside his house, investigators found a pair of bloodied jeans in the dryer, in addition to blood in the bathroom sink, on the walls, mattress, bed frame, and on a sheet of paper in a bedroom.
His girlfriend also told investigators that the blue rope around Amberly’s neck was in their home the day before.
The investigator said that Madison had “an interest in bondage” but authorities haven’t said what they believe motivated Madison to kill Amberly.
#Breaking: Judge rules prosecutors have probable cause for capital murder charge against Christopher Madison, a suspect in the slaying of 11-year-old Amberly Barnett. She was found dead March 2 in DeKalb County, Ala. pic.twitter.com/shGrJ00B6I
— Ashley Remkus (@aremkus1) March 18, 2019
Parents of Missing Boy Arrested for Suspected Child Abuse
The parents of a California boy who has been missing for over two weeks were arrested for suspected child abuse, officials said, as the boy’s grandfather said he thinks his grandson is dead.
Noah McIntosh, 8, vanished from Corona in early March, leading police officers to arrest his parents Jillian Marie Godfrey, 36, and Bryce Daniel McIntosh, 32, on suspicion of willful child cruelty.
Arraignment for both suspects, who were arrested on March 13, was postponed on Friday to April 8, reported The Press-Enterprise. McIntosh was being held without bail while Godfrey was being held in lieu of posting $500,000 bail.
Jillian Godfrey’s father Doug Godfrey said that his daughter was living in her car at the apartment complex where McIntosh lived with Noah and other children, hoping to see them, but when she went there on Tuesday for her weekly visit there was no response.
She contacted the police, who were unable to make contact with McIntosh. Officers obtained a search warrant for the apartment and once inside found an 11-year-old girl but Noah was nowhere to be found.
Godfrey told the Orange County Register that he thinks the boy is dead. “I never lost a kid and didn’t know where a kid was,” he said.
“This is a dream you would like to wake up from, but you can’t. We’re simply devastated by this,” he said.
He and his wife were caring for Noah at their Anaheim home for eight years along with Noah’s sister but, according to Godfrey, McIntosh convinced Jillian Godfrey to move to Corona and then “wrestled control” of the children from his daughter.
Godfrey said he thinks McIntosh became violent.
“Did I think he’d kill Noah? I thought at one time he would kill the whole family,” he said.
