The 5-year-old boy was discovered dead with fentanyl in his system, and the mother from New Hampshire, who was accused of killing him, will enter a guilty plea.
Danielle D. Dauphinais, 38, is entering a plea for second-degree murder, knowing, a charge that is less serious than the initial first-degree murder charge. In addition, she will acknowledge that she tampered with two witnesses. She faces a prison sentence ranging from 55 years to life for the homicide charge. For the tampering charges, she faces a sentence of three and a half to seven years in jail.
“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.
In October 2021, authorities claimed to have started a 10-day hunt for little Elijah Lewis. On October 17 of that year, they caught his mother and her 33-year-old lover, Joseph Stapf, in New York City. Elijah’s body was discovered in an Abington, Massachusetts, state park six days later. But they found that he had been dead for around a month.
He passed away between September 21 and September 24, 2021.
According to Manchester ABC affiliate WMUR, prosecutors have received texts in which Dauphinais and Stapf discuss abusing Lewis and failing to feed him. Stapf, for instance, is said to have told Dauphinais that for the youngster to look healthier and be ready for removal, they needed to feed him and let him sleep.
Prosecutors said Dauphinais stated she didn’t want to do that. Authorities said that after Stapf tossed the youngster into a bed, he struck his head, but he began begging Dauphinais to end what he called “torture.” Once more, the evidence indicated that she declined.
At last, Stapf discovered Lewis in a bathtub, naked and struggling with head injuries. He neglected to receive medical care, however, authorities claimed. Between September 21 and September 24, 2021, Lewis passed away. Stapf was enlisted by Dauphinais to assist in disposing of the body. Prosecutors stated that after driving a pickup truck to Abington, they buried Lewis in a shallow hole.
According to the New Hampshire Department of Justice, investigators formally concluded that Elijah died as a result of “violence and neglect, including facial and scalp injuries, acute fentanyl intoxication, malnourishment, and pressure ulcers.”
In September 2022, Stapf entered a guilty plea to charges of homicide, second-degree assault, fabricating tangible evidence, and witness tampering. He received a sentence of 22 to 45 years in prison.
“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.”
According to an earlier Boston Globe article, Dauphinais contacted a friend about Elijah, expressing her want for him to be “gone” and drawing comparisons between him and 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 revealed to the Globe that she hadn’t thought about the letter until Elijah’s disappearance became news in October 2021. Wolfe stated that she thought Dauphinais was just letting out her feelings, but she was stunned by other remarks. Noting that Dauphinais had mentioned the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) in her emails, she also stated she believed the department was checking in. She told the Globe that upon seeing the news, she experienced an upset stomach.
“I remembered those messages,” Wolfe told the Globe. “And I was like, ‘Oh, no.’”
