The teenage boy accused of raping and murdering 10-year-old Iliana ‘Lily’ Peters in Wisconsin is the son of a convicted pedophile, according to a report.
The 14-year-old murder suspect’s father spent three years in prison for being in possession of child pornography with young girls on his cell phone, the reported on Thursday.
Charging documents obtained by the news outlet state that 10 pornographic images of young girls with their legs spread were found on the 37-year-old father’s phone. His face was superimposed in some of those pictures. Other photos showed semi-dressed girls in heels, a tutu skirt and a feather boa, and all of them focused on their genitalia, according to the court documents.
The father currently lives in a halfway house after being released from a correctional institution in April 2021 on supervised probation, court documents obtained by the news outlet show. He is a registered sex offender.
In a letter sent to a judge from jail, the father petitioned to have unsupervised visits with his son, whom he called ‘the best of me’.
Other letters filed in support of his efforts to regain unsupervised contact with his son describe the accused killer as an unhappy child, who looked miserable in the company of his mother.
Prosecutors on Wednesday said that the 14-year-old boy, who has not been publicly named despite being charged as an adult, planned ‘to rape and kill the victim from the get-go’ after following Lily out of the home they were at together.
The boy, identified only by his initials C P-B, punched Lily in the stomach, knocked her to the ground and beat her with a stick before strangling her to death and then raping her, Chippewa County District Attorney Wade Newell said.
On Wednesday, a judge set the suspect’s bond at $1million. The teen has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree sexual assault and first-degree sexual assault of a child under the age of 13.
The suspect is also no longer allowed to be alone with his siblings if visits are requested. Officials have said the boy left the same house as Lily, but have not confirmed how they knew each other.
His father often wrote to the family and said he dreamed of a future reunited with his son. He advocated for unsupervised contact with the suspected killer, claiming in documents obtained by the court that ‘he is not a victim of my offense’.
The motion was denied. It is unclear whether he has seen his son since his release in April 2021.
Lily, who lived less than a mile away from her aunt’s house in Chippewa Falls, was found dead just blocks from her aunt’s home near a walking trail and brewery parking lot.
The previous night, when she failed to return home from a visit with family.
Authorities searching for her found what appeared to be her bicycle abandoned along the wooden trail, and soon discovered what the Chippewa County coroner confirmed were her remains.
Chippewa Falls Police Chief Matthew Kelm during a Tuesday night news conference following the suspect’s arrest said that there was no present danger to the community.
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