The Call That Unraveled Everything

On June 29th, a mother reported her eight-year-old son missing. She told police he had wandered off before, that he took medication for ADHD, and that she'd woken up to find the back door open and her son gone. She was hysterical. Officers circulated the area, searched the house, found no signs of forced entry. Nothing seemed suspicious—except that the mother, Lashana, was lying about nearly everything.

By the time she sat down in an interview room, detectives already knew her son Martinio was dead. They knew she had put his body in the attic. They knew she had help. What they needed was for her to tell them what happened.

The Confession Unfolds

Lashana's story came out in fragments, each piece contradicting the last. She said she and her girlfriend John had been sleeping when she heard her son crying out from the closet where the children were locked at night. She heard Martinio saying "Mommy, he keep hitting me." She got up, opened the closet door, and saw her other son standing over Martinio with a rock. Martinio was on the ground, legs curled, not breathing.

But the timeline kept shifting. She initially said she didn't know what happened. Then she admitted she and John put Martinio's body in a trash bag and hid it in the closet. The next day, she moved it to the attic. Then she called police to report him missing.