The parents of a four-year-old Missouri girl allegedly murdered by neighbors to cast a “demon” have pleaded guilty to the charges in the case
COLE CAMP, Mo. – The parents of a four-year-old Missouri girl allegedly murdered by neighbors to remove a “demon” pleaded not guilty Monday to charges related to the case.
Mary S. Mast, 29, and James A. Mast, 28, both of Lincoln, Missouri, were charged Thursday with a felony in danger of child extinction that caused death and are jailed without bail. They don’t have lawyers yet.
During her complaints Monday, Associate Judge Mark Brandon Pilley also denied the couple’s request to attend the girl’s funeral, according to online court records. A bond hearing was scheduled for Jan. 5.
The couple’s other children, a 2-year-old son and a baby, were placed in protective custody, Benton County Sheriff Eric Knox said in a press release.
The girl was found dead at the family home on December 20th. Knox said she had been heavily beaten and wrapped in an icy pond as part of what appeared to be a “religious-type episode.”
Neighbors across the road, Ethan Mast, 35, and Kourtney Aumen, 21, were charged last week with second-degree homicide and other felonies. Both are imprisoned without bail. Ethan Mast is not believed to be related to James and Mary Mast, Knox said.
Both families attend the same church, but Knox said the girl-related actions are not accepted by the church, which he declined to name.
“The investigation done so far indicates that this is an isolated incident and NOT the actions of a cult,” Knox wrote in a statement on the department’s Facebook page.
A probable cause statement from the Benton County Sergeant. Chris Wilson said the girl was already dead and had “severe purple bruises” on her body, along with broken bottles, when she was called home.
Knox said the girl’s parents had also been beaten along with the 2-year-old. The child was unharmed.
James Mast told investigators that he and his wife observed his daughter’s beating, but were told they would be beaten or shot if they tried to intervene.
Still, Wilson asked James Mast “how he could let people do this to his family and he said they were told (his wife) that he had a“ demon ”inside her and that the her children would end up just like her if she wasn’t taken care of, ”Wilson wrote in the probable cause statement.
Ethan Mast told investigators that he and Aumen used a leather belt to beat the girl on Dec. 19, according to the statement. They then took her to a pond behind her house, where she was “submerged” in water one day when the temperature was high in the 1940s.
Ethan Mast said everyone went back to the victims ’home. It was not clear when the child died.
Benton County, with about 19,000 inhabitants, is located 161 miles southeast of Kansas City, Missouri.