The Hawkeye

Four year old boy murdered in Utah

Thursday, May 13, 2010 By Sinead Dean

Ethan Stacy was found wrapped in plastic, his face and teeth destroyed by a hammer and found in a shallow grave along the trail of Wolf Canyon, which borders Powder Mountain Ski resort. Stacy lives with his father in Virginia, but was sent to Utah to spend the summer with his mother via court order. "Ethan did not want to even talk to (his mother) on the phone. She'd call and he'd say, 'I don't want to talk to her,"' Freida Stacy, Joe G. Stacy's stepmother (Deseret News) Stacy's mother, Stephanie remarried and over the 10 days that Stacy was in Utah, his stepfather, Nathanael Sloop, 31, admitted to hitting the boy, making his face swell. He also admitted to leaving him in a locked room in their Layton apartment while Stephanie and Nathanael Sloop went off to Farmington, 10 miles away to get married. The boy was also found with burns from his feet to his buttocks from scalding hot bath water. “At another point, the couple forced the child to drink two 16-ounce bottles of water, a 16-ounce bottle of Kool-Aid and a glass of orange juice over two hours, police said. They also gave him Motrin and Benadryl to ease his facial swelling and pain.” (CBS) Originally the couple told police that the boy had wandered off and tried to run away four times out of the ten days he was with the couple. They also told police they had found Ethan's body in bed in Sunday and then took him up to the mountain to bury him. Police soon found evidence of the boy's continued abuse via pictures on the mother’s cell phone and after a search party set out trying to find the "lost boy" the couple gave up where they buried him. "Prosecutors said they expect to file charges on Friday against the couple. Nathanael Sloop is being held on suspicion of aggravated murder. He and the mother face additional charges of desecration of a corpse, along with felony child abuse and obstruction of justice, police said."(MSNBC) The couple is being held in Davis County jail awaiting their charges. Sources: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37120003/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/ Deseret News CBS News