September 20, 2024 • 26 mins
A deceased 10 year old girl, tent people, and an all night game of hide and seek gone wrong.......
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Episode Transcript
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(00:37):
Hello everyone, welcome back to The Victim's Voice.
I am your host, Laura B. This week's case is out of
Arizona, and this will be part one of two episodes.
So let's go ahead and jump rightinto Part 1.
Police officer Albert Salais wasthe first to respond to the call
of an injured child in southwestPhoenix on July 12th, 2011.
(00:59):
The police were familiar with this neighborhood.
It was known to have frequent police activity.
And the house that he responded to was a house that he had just
been at a couple of weeks beforebecause of some kids throwing
rocks. He remembered that on that day,
there were a lot of kids at the house.
On this day, July 12th, as he walked up to the house and
before he could even knock, the front door swung open and a
(01:22):
Rottweiler came charging at him.He heard a woman yell at him not
to shoot her dog, but that's allshe said.
She then quietly led him around the corner to a nearby garage
and that's when he saw her. One of the kids he had seen when
he had been called for the rock throwing incident, The little
girl was lying on the floor nextto a plastic box and there were
(01:45):
people attempting CPR on her, but Officer Solais knew the girl
was dead and had been for some time.
The woman who answered the door seemed more concerned about her
dog being shot than about the little girl who lie there
deceased on the floor, Officer Solais later stated.
Quote I never, to this day will forget what she looked like.
(02:08):
That image is ingrained in my mind.
End Quote The little girl's namewas Amy, and she had died just
two weeks shy of her 11th birthday.
She hadn't just died, though. Amy had been tortured for years
and then murdered by the very people who were supposed to love
and protect her, stuffed into a box that would eventually become
(02:29):
her coffin. This is the story of Amy Deal.
Amy Deal was born on July 24th, 2000 to David and Shirley Deal.
She was the youngest out of their three children.
David and Shirley had gotten married in 1996 and their entire
relationship was violent and aggressive.
(02:50):
After having their second child,Shirley and David separated and
Shirley and the kids moved in with her mom.
During this time, she met a man who lived in her mom's apartment
complex named Kenneth Grest, andthey began seeing each other.
Shirley admitted that during that time that she was seeing
Kenneth, she became pregnant with Amy.
David was listed as the father on Amy's birth certificate, but
(03:14):
he doubted that he was actually her father.
Kenneth, however, absolutely believed Amy was his and took
care of her for the first four years of her life.
When Kenneth was in her life, Amy felt loved and was taken
care of, but that soon ended because in 2004, David came back
into Shirley's life and demandedthat she come back and be
(03:35):
together with him, and she did. By this time, David had moved to
Texas and was staying with his mom, Judith Deal, and his sister
Cynthia Stoltzmann, along with Cynthia's daughter Samantha
Allen and her husband John Allen.
So Shirley left Kenneth in Pennsylvania, where she and her
kids were in a safe and stable environment, and moved to Texas
(03:57):
to live with David and his family.
But she soon found out that the situation was one that she did
not want to be in. According to what Shirley told
AZ Central in an interview she did after Amy's death, she was
mentally, verbally, and physically abused by members of
David's family immediately aftermoving in with them.
She said they treated her like aslave, made her do everything
(04:18):
around the house while they sat on their asses calling her
names, made her stay up all night, and even hit her.
There are different stories going around when it comes to
how Shirley ended up leaving thehome.
Some say she left willingly, while others say she was kicked
out, but either way, when she left, she didn't take her
children. Shirley had met another man
online, so I think it's safe to say that she was more than happy
(04:41):
to leave the Dill family home nomatter how her leaving happened.
So she left Texas and relocated to a small town in Kansas with
this new man, leaving her children behind with David and
his family. She told AZ Central that this
man she met online was a good man who cut trees for a living
(05:02):
while she stayed home and cookedand cleaned the kind of life her
children probably would have loved to be a part of.
Shirley later stated in her defense so that she didn't look
like a total piece of shit mother in my opinion, that
though she was abused by David'sfamily, she never saw any of
them abuse the children, at least not in her presence.
(05:24):
I guess telling herself this helps her sleep at night.
In reality though, it seemed that after Shirley left and the
Deals no longer had her to use and abuse, they turn their focus
on to Amy. The Deals moved around a lot.
Kenneth said in an interview with AZ family that he had heard
Shirley had left her kids, including Amy with the Deal
(05:44):
family and he had actually triedto find them so that he could
get a paternity test to prove that Amy was his so that he
could try to get custody of her.However, the family moved around
so much that Kenneth was unable to ever locate them until it was
too late. The Dill family stayed for a
time in Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin, and different parts
(06:04):
of Arizona, and that's just a few of the places where they had
resided over the years. They always lived in the lower
income parts of town where they thought they would go unnoticed,
and they always kept to themselves.
They never let outsiders into their lives for fear that they
would report them for their living conditions or their
treatment of the kids. Therefore, the kids never had
(06:25):
friends outside of each other. Their world was small.
All they knew was the family andthe people that lived in their
home. The adults that lived in the
home loved to punish the kids for anything they did, but Amy
got it the worst. The family constantly said she
was a liar and that she stole food, when in reality the real
problem was that they knew that she was most likely not David's
(06:48):
biological daughter and therefore not blood related to
any of them. She was an inconvenience and a
burden to them, an extra mouth to feed and body to clothe.
So they let Amy know that they didn't like her and that she
wasn't wanted by the various punishments that they asserted
on to her, which most people would consider child abuse.
(07:09):
When Amy attended school in Utah, the teachers loved her and
said she was a bright little girl who enjoyed learning, but
that she craved constant attention from adults.
She tried so hard to please all of them because she knew what
the consequences usually were ifshe pissed off the adults at
home, so she thought all adults were the same.
This is understandable since theonly attention she got at home
(07:33):
was when she was being abused and punished for absolutely no
reason. When Amy's death was first
reported, articles said that thestate of Arizona claimed that
there had never been any reportsof abuse filed when it came to
Amy or any of the children in the home for that matter.
But that was far from the truth.There may have never been any
(07:55):
filed in Arizona, but Utah was adifferent story.
In fact, while living in Utah, school officials and even the
parents of some of the children that Amy was friends with
reported abuse and neglect to Child Protective Services
multiple times because the children would come to school
filthy. Amy constantly had bouts of head
(08:16):
lice and one time even came to school with her shoes saturated
with cat urine. When this happened, the school
counselor bought Amy a new pair of shoes.
These people at the school caredmore for Amy than her so-called
family did. The school officials even stated
that they felt Amy was the scapegoat in the family.
(08:38):
They could tell just by the little interactions that they
had with the different family members that they treated Amy
totally different than they treated the other kids.
I mean, don't get me wrong, noneof the kids were treated great.
They were all neglected. But Amy was not only neglected
but tortured, and what was done to her was heinous.
(08:58):
The adults in the family even had the nerve to tell the
teachers at the school that Amy wasn't one of them, that she
wasn't a real member of their family and that she was nothing
but a nuisance and that they shouldn't have to deal with her.
She was an outcast, and the family never tried to hide that
fact. When the family lived in
Wisconsin, they were once again reported to Child Protective
(09:21):
Services. This time it was because of the
gross and filthy conditions of their home.
But when the family would catch wind that they had been reported
and an investigation was about to be started, they would just
move to another state. Unfortunately, as we have
learned over and over from othercases that we've covered, Child
Protective Services don't followa family from state to state.
(09:42):
So if you are investigated in one state, you can just move to
another and there will be no record of anything.
A clean slate, if you will. Therefore, the suspicions of
abuse that were reported in Utahand Wisconsin didn't follow the
Dill family to Arizona. However, after Amy's death, the
police announced that there was evidence that Amy had been
(10:03):
abused prior to their move to Arizona and that there was
actually a court document listing Amy as an abused child.
So why was nothing done? They had an official court
document stating that Amy was abused but once again they moved
so there was nothing anyone could do.
(10:23):
I guess they considered Amy to be someone else's problem now.
Less paperwork for them to have to deal with.
This is sickening. And once the family got to
Arizona they took an extra precaution to make sure they
wouldn't get reported again. They started homeschooling all
of the kids. They did the quote UN quote
homeschooling in their UN air conditioned garage of all
(10:46):
places. Yes these people such as
Samantha who never went past the4th grade were supposedly
homeschooling these children. All of this has to change.
So many kids who end up missing or dead are due to the
regulations of Child Protective Services, not connecting to each
state. With the advances in technology,
(11:07):
I don't understand why this can't and hasn't been done.
And the homeschooling. How many kids have just suddenly
been pulled out of school and the parents say they were
homeschooling them only for themto die from abuse and the
homeschooling was just a means to hide what was going on?
Especially in homes where there is already suspicion of abuse
and then the children are suddenly homeschooled.
(11:29):
Homeschooling is fine as long asthat is actually what is
happening, but for some people with nefarious intentions, it's
a way to hide the abuse their children are enduring.
Why aren't there people from theschool districts or from the
state checking in on these homeschooled kids to make sure
they are safe being taken care of and actually being
(11:49):
homeschooled? I could do a whole episode on
changes that need to be made when it comes to Child
Protective Services and with this whole homeschooling ruse,
but this episode is about Amy, so let's get back to it.
Eventually, the Dill family endsup in southwest Phoenix, AZ in a
house near Broadway Road and 35th Ave.
(12:11):
Amy's final home, This 3 bedroomhouse was the home to between 11
and 24 people, depending on who was staying there at the time.
At least seven or eight of thesepeople were children.
Where did they all sleep, you might ask?
Well, most of the children crammed onto bunk beds in one of
the bedrooms. Grandma Judith, who was Queen of
(12:31):
the 5th Kingdom, got a bedroom to herself and Auntie Cynthia
got the other bedroom. I'm not sure where Samantha and
John slept, but as far as all the other people living there,
they overflowed into the backyard into tents.
Yes, this family had a tent cityin their own backyard.
In fact, David Deal lived in oneof those tents with his two
(12:55):
other children. I guess those children weren't
good enough to sleep in the house on the bunk beds with the
other kids. This house was not only small,
but it was downright disgusting.It reeked of urine and there
were roaches crawling everywhere, clutter, dirty
dishes piled all over, even dirty tampons, tissues and
sanitary napkins were lying on the floor.
(13:17):
These people were beyond disgusting.
Maybe they should have spent less time torturing an innocent
little girl and, I don't know, clean their house.
For starters, After Shirley tookoff and left the kids, Aunt
Cynthia was given primary guardianship of Amy.
I'm not sure why since Amy's father, David Deal lived on the
(13:38):
property, but even though Cynthia had guardianship, it was
Amy's cousin, 23 year old Samantha Allen, and her husband
John Allen that took care of Amy, if that's what you want to
call it. Amy was always treated
differently than the other children in the home.
Remember, she was the outsider, not really blood related as far
(13:59):
as they were concerned, even though no DNA testing had ever
been done. In their minds, she wasn't
really one of them. But these people were right.
Amy didn't belong to them. She deserved so much better than
to be with these people and be treated like garbage.
She deserved to live with peoplewho loved her and cared for her
(14:19):
and let her have a normal, happychildhood somewhere far, far
away from these monsters. At almost 11 years old, Amy was
only 60 lbs. She wasn't allowed to eat like
the other kids were. Grandma Judith would put hot
sauce in Amy's food when she wasallowed to eat, and she
sometimes put it straight into Amy's mouth when she got used to
(14:42):
the hot sauce and then it didn'tbother her anymore.
That's when they would make her eat dog feces.
You heard that right. Dog feces.
One of the people who lived in atent in the backyard came
forward after Amy's death and told authorities that they
witnessed a time that Amy had been made to pick up the dog
feces in the yard when she missed a pile.
(15:04):
Her punishment was to eat it. And that was only the beginning
of their special punishing techniques that they like to use
on Amy. Some other punishments included
being beaten, doing a backbend for hours at a time, chaining
her up like a dog, and making her sleep in a shower stall with
(15:25):
no pillow or any kind of beddingbecause she would wet herself.
Another tent city person actually witnessed Aunt Cynthia
screaming at and beating Amy onenight because she had wet on
herself while she was sleeping and said shower stall.
The family would also use a wooden paddle on Amy that they
(15:45):
so lovingly gave the name Butt Buster.
And don't forget the routine belt lashings and the times when
the family made Amy walk barefoot for at least 15 minutes
on the pavement in 114 degree heat.
She was being punished for merely existing and was forced
(16:06):
to walk on it until blisters formed on the bottom of her poor
little feet. Neighbors came forward after
Amy's death and said they witnessed this happening and
would see the fear and pain in Amy's eyes.
Yet no one said anything until after Amy was dead.
Then all of these witnesses to the abuse she endured started
(16:27):
coming forward. Had they done something when
they witnessed it, Amy may stillbe alive.
Then there was the horrific punishment of stuffing Amy into
a small plastic footlocker of what or what others have
referred to as a box that was once used to hold her sister's
Barbie doll collection, locking her in it for hours at a time
(16:49):
for her quote UN quote poor behavior.
You know, such as the horrible act of eating food.
Apparently the box which was 31 inches long, 14 inches wide and
12 inches deep, a box less than 3 feet long, never became too
small to hold Amy, who at 51 inches tall or 4 feet 3 inches
(17:12):
was 20 inches longer than the box and had to curl up in the
fetal position to fit inside of it.
Amy had been put into the box many times for these so-called
punishments. There have been times that John
Allen would roll, spin and throwthe box around with Amy locked
inside. Other times, they'd throw the
box with Amy inside into the swimming pool.
(17:35):
According to another tent resident in the backyard, there
were times that they witnessed and Cynthia sitting on the box
and playing on her laptop while Amy cried and screamed from
inside to be let out. According to ABC, 15-6 months
before Amy's death, someone elsehad reported seeing Aunt Cynthia
put Amy into the box at least five times.
(17:59):
Why were all of these people coming forward after it was too
late and all of these toothless fat ass adults in this backwoods
looking family of inbred, wrong turn the hills have eyes
hillbilly pieces of shit thoughtit was OK to pick on and bully
an innocent 10 year old girl Like it was her fault that her
mom had an affair and her dad could possibly be another man
(18:22):
besides their wonderful David who they forced to live in a
tent who they care about so much.
The other kids weren't treated like Amy was not even close.
Don't get me wrong, they lived in filth and were definitely
neglected and learned from the adults that it was OK to pick on
Amy. They would pick on her and
instigate situations just to gether in trouble.
(18:43):
Amy had nobody, not even the other children in the house on
her side. Amy was robbed of having a
carefree childhood. She was robbed of knowing what
it felt like to be protected andloved by her own family or
anyone else for that matter. She had nothing to look forward
to each day except for what punishment or torture tactic
would be used on her necks for whatever mediocre thing that she
(19:04):
might have done that the adults thought was worthy of these
punishments. So when Officer Solais arrived
at the home at 8:00 AM on the morning of July 12th, he had no
idea what he was walking into orwhat had taken place before he
got there. As he got to the back of the
property he didn't remember anything else except for what
was in front of him. On a piece of blue urine stained
(19:27):
carpet next to a black plastic box was a little girl, It was
Amy. She had been inside the box when
she was found and had suffocated.
Her lips were the color of the carpet at this point, and her
skin was starting to discolor. Her body was twisted in an
unnatural position. She was already in rigor
mortise, and it looked like she'd been trying to push the
(19:48):
lid off of her makeshift coffin all the way up-to-the-minute
that she died. Her clothes were dirty and
soiled and there was a mark on her right knee which seemed to
be from a forceful impact with the lid of the box.
This is the image that is stuck in his mind forever.
The image that he will never be able to Unsee no matter how hard
he tries. According to Fox 10, when
(20:13):
Officer Solais arrived, John Allen did all the talking.
He gave the officer some cockamamie story of how Amy
loved to play hide and seek and that the night before at around
1:00 AM, all the adults went to sleep.
And that's when Amy, her 12 yearold sister, and Samantha and
John's 3 year old decided they were going to play a game of
hide and seek. The next morning the adults woke
(20:35):
up and couldn't find Amy anywhere.
They said that's when the three-year old LED them to the
box and they found Amy. None of this made any sense.
What 3 year old is up at 1:00 AMand what kids of any age are up
at 1:00 AM playing hide and seek?
Everything about this situation seemed off to these officers and
(20:56):
there were a lot more questions than answers at this point.
Soleil's immediately suspected foul play.
He wasn't buying the hide and seek story.
In fact, when his Sergeant pulled up to the house a few
minutes later, the first thing he said to him was they fucking
killed her. It was obvious that this didn't
(21:16):
happen while the kids were pulling an all nighter game of
hide and seek, and the police knew this immediately, but they
had to prove it or get them to talk.
John's demeanor as he answered the cop's questions was strange
to say the least. He showed no emotion at all.
He said on the swing, talking tothe officers like it was any
(21:37):
other day and that they were talking about the weather.
When Amy's grandmother joined them, her demeanor was the same
as John's. They both acted like Amy's death
was just an everyday event, something that interrupted
whatever they had planned for the day, an inconvenience like
she had been since she came to live there.
Salais's next move was to talk to Amy's sister, the 12 year old
(22:01):
that had supposedly been playinghide and seek with the other
kids the night before. He found the little girl and
asked her to come out and talk to him.
When she did, she looked scared,as if she was worried to say the
wrong thing, like she had been warned that she didn't get the
story right. She would be the next to receive
one of these punishments that had been handed to Amy.
(22:23):
She never once made eye contact with Officer Slays, but the
story she told was the same as John and Judith's story, almost
as if it had been rehearsed. Except there was one small
detail that differed in her version.
According to her, she went to bed at 9:00 PM.
If that was true, then who was Amy playing the so-called game
(22:44):
of hide and seek with until 1:00AM?
Apparently John had decided to take up journaling the day that
Amy died because during the search of the house, the police
found a notebook that he had written in the one entry that
was in it said quote Amy found passed away in box.
They the kids were playing hide and seek.
(23:07):
We believe she fell asleep and suffocated.
End Quote. Was he trying to convince
himself that that was the truth or was he writing it down so he
didn't forget his story that he was supposed to tell?
That story was the story that everybody in the house,
including the kids, stuck with when they talked to the police,
detectives, news reporters, and everyone else.
(23:31):
According to the family, Amy being locked in the box was the
fault of the three-year old. These losers not only picked on
kids but also blamed them for the things that they did.
The adult family member said that the three-year old loved to
lock lock things as a prank and run away giggling.
So they assumed that this 3 yearold went grabbed a padlock and
(23:51):
locked Amy in the box by accident.
They must be doing some great homeschooling if their
three-year old knew what a padlock was and what it was even
used for and thought, hmm, I'm going to go grab that padlock
setting over there and put it through these holes on this box
and locked Amy inside. Won't that be funny?
I mean my 4 year old is pretty smart but I'm not sure he could
(24:14):
even figure that out. Are these people serious?
Even though the responding officers knew that there was
something not right about the whole situation.
In the days that followed Amy's death, news outlets reported
that Amy's death was a tragic accident and gave a recap of the
story that the family had told them about the deadly all night
(24:36):
hide and seek game. The day after Amy's death, her
aunt Cynthia told KNXV. Quote, I don't break down well
in front of other people, but when I'm by myself I can lose it
real easy. She was an awesome hider, let me
tell you. There were places she would
squeeze into that I didn't thinkmy dog could squeeze into.
(25:00):
End Quote. First of all, it sounds like
she's trying to make excuses as to why she shows no emotion
towards Amy's death before anyone has even questioned the
fact. And to talk about what a quote
UN quote awesome hider Amy was so good that it killed her.
That is just disgusting. For a couple weeks, Amy's story
(25:23):
seemed to disappear from the media and everyone just seemed
to consider it a tragic accident.
But that was as far from the truth as it could possibly be
and everyone would soon find outabout the horrific treatment
that Amy was dealt at the hands of her so-called family.
But that will have to wait untilnext week.
(25:43):
For photos from this episode, join us on the Victim's Voice
Facebook page. And to help support this
podcast, click on the link at the bottom of the show notes and
come back next week for the conclusion to Amy's Story.
Until then, peace out.
Hello everyone, welcome back to The Victim's Voice.
I am your host, Laura B. This week's case is out of
Arizona, and this will be part one of two episodes.
So let's go ahead and jump rightinto Part 1.
Police officer Albert Salais wasthe first to respond to the call
of an injured child in southwestPhoenix on July 12th, 2011.
(00:59):
The police were familiar with this neighborhood.
It was known to have frequent police activity.
And the house that he responded to was a house that he had just
been at a couple of weeks beforebecause of some kids throwing
rocks. He remembered that on that day,
there were a lot of kids at the house.
On this day, July 12th, as he walked up to the house and
before he could even knock, the front door swung open and a
(01:22):
Rottweiler came charging at him.He heard a woman yell at him not
to shoot her dog, but that's allshe said.
She then quietly led him around the corner to a nearby garage
and that's when he saw her. One of the kids he had seen when
he had been called for the rock throwing incident, The little
girl was lying on the floor nextto a plastic box and there were
(01:45):
people attempting CPR on her, but Officer Solais knew the girl
was dead and had been for some time.
The woman who answered the door seemed more concerned about her
dog being shot than about the little girl who lie there
deceased on the floor, Officer Solais later stated.
Quote I never, to this day will forget what she looked like.
(02:08):
That image is ingrained in my mind.
End Quote The little girl's namewas Amy, and she had died just
two weeks shy of her 11th birthday.
She hadn't just died, though. Amy had been tortured for years
and then murdered by the very people who were supposed to love
and protect her, stuffed into a box that would eventually become
(02:29):
her coffin. This is the story of Amy Deal.
Amy Deal was born on July 24th, 2000 to David and Shirley Deal.
She was the youngest out of their three children.
David and Shirley had gotten married in 1996 and their entire
relationship was violent and aggressive.
(02:50):
After having their second child,Shirley and David separated and
Shirley and the kids moved in with her mom.
During this time, she met a man who lived in her mom's apartment
complex named Kenneth Grest, andthey began seeing each other.
Shirley admitted that during that time that she was seeing
Kenneth, she became pregnant with Amy.
David was listed as the father on Amy's birth certificate, but
(03:14):
he doubted that he was actually her father.
Kenneth, however, absolutely believed Amy was his and took
care of her for the first four years of her life.
When Kenneth was in her life, Amy felt loved and was taken
care of, but that soon ended because in 2004, David came back
into Shirley's life and demandedthat she come back and be
(03:35):
together with him, and she did. By this time, David had moved to
Texas and was staying with his mom, Judith Deal, and his sister
Cynthia Stoltzmann, along with Cynthia's daughter Samantha
Allen and her husband John Allen.
So Shirley left Kenneth in Pennsylvania, where she and her
kids were in a safe and stable environment, and moved to Texas
(03:57):
to live with David and his family.
But she soon found out that the situation was one that she did
not want to be in. According to what Shirley told
AZ Central in an interview she did after Amy's death, she was
mentally, verbally, and physically abused by members of
David's family immediately aftermoving in with them.
She said they treated her like aslave, made her do everything
(04:18):
around the house while they sat on their asses calling her
names, made her stay up all night, and even hit her.
There are different stories going around when it comes to
how Shirley ended up leaving thehome.
Some say she left willingly, while others say she was kicked
out, but either way, when she left, she didn't take her
children. Shirley had met another man
online, so I think it's safe to say that she was more than happy
(04:41):
to leave the Dill family home nomatter how her leaving happened.
So she left Texas and relocated to a small town in Kansas with
this new man, leaving her children behind with David and
his family. She told AZ Central that this
man she met online was a good man who cut trees for a living
(05:02):
while she stayed home and cookedand cleaned the kind of life her
children probably would have loved to be a part of.
Shirley later stated in her defense so that she didn't look
like a total piece of shit mother in my opinion, that
though she was abused by David'sfamily, she never saw any of
them abuse the children, at least not in her presence.
(05:24):
I guess telling herself this helps her sleep at night.
In reality though, it seemed that after Shirley left and the
Deals no longer had her to use and abuse, they turn their focus
on to Amy. The Deals moved around a lot.
Kenneth said in an interview with AZ family that he had heard
Shirley had left her kids, including Amy with the Deal
(05:44):
family and he had actually triedto find them so that he could
get a paternity test to prove that Amy was his so that he
could try to get custody of her.However, the family moved around
so much that Kenneth was unable to ever locate them until it was
too late. The Dill family stayed for a
time in Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin, and different parts
(06:04):
of Arizona, and that's just a few of the places where they had
resided over the years. They always lived in the lower
income parts of town where they thought they would go unnoticed,
and they always kept to themselves.
They never let outsiders into their lives for fear that they
would report them for their living conditions or their
treatment of the kids. Therefore, the kids never had
(06:25):
friends outside of each other. Their world was small.
All they knew was the family andthe people that lived in their
home. The adults that lived in the
home loved to punish the kids for anything they did, but Amy
got it the worst. The family constantly said she
was a liar and that she stole food, when in reality the real
problem was that they knew that she was most likely not David's
(06:48):
biological daughter and therefore not blood related to
any of them. She was an inconvenience and a
burden to them, an extra mouth to feed and body to clothe.
So they let Amy know that they didn't like her and that she
wasn't wanted by the various punishments that they asserted
on to her, which most people would consider child abuse.
(07:09):
When Amy attended school in Utah, the teachers loved her and
said she was a bright little girl who enjoyed learning, but
that she craved constant attention from adults.
She tried so hard to please all of them because she knew what
the consequences usually were ifshe pissed off the adults at
home, so she thought all adults were the same.
This is understandable since theonly attention she got at home
(07:33):
was when she was being abused and punished for absolutely no
reason. When Amy's death was first
reported, articles said that thestate of Arizona claimed that
there had never been any reportsof abuse filed when it came to
Amy or any of the children in the home for that matter.
But that was far from the truth.There may have never been any
(07:55):
filed in Arizona, but Utah was adifferent story.
In fact, while living in Utah, school officials and even the
parents of some of the children that Amy was friends with
reported abuse and neglect to Child Protective Services
multiple times because the children would come to school
filthy. Amy constantly had bouts of head
(08:16):
lice and one time even came to school with her shoes saturated
with cat urine. When this happened, the school
counselor bought Amy a new pair of shoes.
These people at the school caredmore for Amy than her so-called
family did. The school officials even stated
that they felt Amy was the scapegoat in the family.
(08:38):
They could tell just by the little interactions that they
had with the different family members that they treated Amy
totally different than they treated the other kids.
I mean, don't get me wrong, noneof the kids were treated great.
They were all neglected. But Amy was not only neglected
but tortured, and what was done to her was heinous.
(08:58):
The adults in the family even had the nerve to tell the
teachers at the school that Amy wasn't one of them, that she
wasn't a real member of their family and that she was nothing
but a nuisance and that they shouldn't have to deal with her.
She was an outcast, and the family never tried to hide that
fact. When the family lived in
Wisconsin, they were once again reported to Child Protective
(09:21):
Services. This time it was because of the
gross and filthy conditions of their home.
But when the family would catch wind that they had been reported
and an investigation was about to be started, they would just
move to another state. Unfortunately, as we have
learned over and over from othercases that we've covered, Child
Protective Services don't followa family from state to state.
(09:42):
So if you are investigated in one state, you can just move to
another and there will be no record of anything.
A clean slate, if you will. Therefore, the suspicions of
abuse that were reported in Utahand Wisconsin didn't follow the
Dill family to Arizona. However, after Amy's death, the
police announced that there was evidence that Amy had been
(10:03):
abused prior to their move to Arizona and that there was
actually a court document listing Amy as an abused child.
So why was nothing done? They had an official court
document stating that Amy was abused but once again they moved
so there was nothing anyone could do.
(10:23):
I guess they considered Amy to be someone else's problem now.
Less paperwork for them to have to deal with.
This is sickening. And once the family got to
Arizona they took an extra precaution to make sure they
wouldn't get reported again. They started homeschooling all
of the kids. They did the quote UN quote
homeschooling in their UN air conditioned garage of all
(10:46):
places. Yes these people such as
Samantha who never went past the4th grade were supposedly
homeschooling these children. All of this has to change.
So many kids who end up missing or dead are due to the
regulations of Child Protective Services, not connecting to each
state. With the advances in technology,
(11:07):
I don't understand why this can't and hasn't been done.
And the homeschooling. How many kids have just suddenly
been pulled out of school and the parents say they were
homeschooling them only for themto die from abuse and the
homeschooling was just a means to hide what was going on?
Especially in homes where there is already suspicion of abuse
and then the children are suddenly homeschooled.
(11:29):
Homeschooling is fine as long asthat is actually what is
happening, but for some people with nefarious intentions, it's
a way to hide the abuse their children are enduring.
Why aren't there people from theschool districts or from the
state checking in on these homeschooled kids to make sure
they are safe being taken care of and actually being
(11:49):
homeschooled? I could do a whole episode on
changes that need to be made when it comes to Child
Protective Services and with this whole homeschooling ruse,
but this episode is about Amy, so let's get back to it.
Eventually, the Dill family endsup in southwest Phoenix, AZ in a
house near Broadway Road and 35th Ave.
(12:11):
Amy's final home, This 3 bedroomhouse was the home to between 11
and 24 people, depending on who was staying there at the time.
At least seven or eight of thesepeople were children.
Where did they all sleep, you might ask?
Well, most of the children crammed onto bunk beds in one of
the bedrooms. Grandma Judith, who was Queen of
(12:31):
the 5th Kingdom, got a bedroom to herself and Auntie Cynthia
got the other bedroom. I'm not sure where Samantha and
John slept, but as far as all the other people living there,
they overflowed into the backyard into tents.
Yes, this family had a tent cityin their own backyard.
In fact, David Deal lived in oneof those tents with his two
(12:55):
other children. I guess those children weren't
good enough to sleep in the house on the bunk beds with the
other kids. This house was not only small,
but it was downright disgusting.It reeked of urine and there
were roaches crawling everywhere, clutter, dirty
dishes piled all over, even dirty tampons, tissues and
sanitary napkins were lying on the floor.
(13:17):
These people were beyond disgusting.
Maybe they should have spent less time torturing an innocent
little girl and, I don't know, clean their house.
For starters, After Shirley tookoff and left the kids, Aunt
Cynthia was given primary guardianship of Amy.
I'm not sure why since Amy's father, David Deal lived on the
(13:38):
property, but even though Cynthia had guardianship, it was
Amy's cousin, 23 year old Samantha Allen, and her husband
John Allen that took care of Amy, if that's what you want to
call it. Amy was always treated
differently than the other children in the home.
Remember, she was the outsider, not really blood related as far
(13:59):
as they were concerned, even though no DNA testing had ever
been done. In their minds, she wasn't
really one of them. But these people were right.
Amy didn't belong to them. She deserved so much better than
to be with these people and be treated like garbage.
She deserved to live with peoplewho loved her and cared for her
(14:19):
and let her have a normal, happychildhood somewhere far, far
away from these monsters. At almost 11 years old, Amy was
only 60 lbs. She wasn't allowed to eat like
the other kids were. Grandma Judith would put hot
sauce in Amy's food when she wasallowed to eat, and she
sometimes put it straight into Amy's mouth when she got used to
(14:42):
the hot sauce and then it didn'tbother her anymore.
That's when they would make her eat dog feces.
You heard that right. Dog feces.
One of the people who lived in atent in the backyard came
forward after Amy's death and told authorities that they
witnessed a time that Amy had been made to pick up the dog
feces in the yard when she missed a pile.
(15:04):
Her punishment was to eat it. And that was only the beginning
of their special punishing techniques that they like to use
on Amy. Some other punishments included
being beaten, doing a backbend for hours at a time, chaining
her up like a dog, and making her sleep in a shower stall with
(15:25):
no pillow or any kind of beddingbecause she would wet herself.
Another tent city person actually witnessed Aunt Cynthia
screaming at and beating Amy onenight because she had wet on
herself while she was sleeping and said shower stall.
The family would also use a wooden paddle on Amy that they
(15:45):
so lovingly gave the name Butt Buster.
And don't forget the routine belt lashings and the times when
the family made Amy walk barefoot for at least 15 minutes
on the pavement in 114 degree heat.
She was being punished for merely existing and was forced
(16:06):
to walk on it until blisters formed on the bottom of her poor
little feet. Neighbors came forward after
Amy's death and said they witnessed this happening and
would see the fear and pain in Amy's eyes.
Yet no one said anything until after Amy was dead.
Then all of these witnesses to the abuse she endured started
(16:27):
coming forward. Had they done something when
they witnessed it, Amy may stillbe alive.
Then there was the horrific punishment of stuffing Amy into
a small plastic footlocker of what or what others have
referred to as a box that was once used to hold her sister's
Barbie doll collection, locking her in it for hours at a time
(16:49):
for her quote UN quote poor behavior.
You know, such as the horrible act of eating food.
Apparently the box which was 31 inches long, 14 inches wide and
12 inches deep, a box less than 3 feet long, never became too
small to hold Amy, who at 51 inches tall or 4 feet 3 inches
(17:12):
was 20 inches longer than the box and had to curl up in the
fetal position to fit inside of it.
Amy had been put into the box many times for these so-called
punishments. There have been times that John
Allen would roll, spin and throwthe box around with Amy locked
inside. Other times, they'd throw the
box with Amy inside into the swimming pool.
(17:35):
According to another tent resident in the backyard, there
were times that they witnessed and Cynthia sitting on the box
and playing on her laptop while Amy cried and screamed from
inside to be let out. According to ABC, 15-6 months
before Amy's death, someone elsehad reported seeing Aunt Cynthia
put Amy into the box at least five times.
(17:59):
Why were all of these people coming forward after it was too
late and all of these toothless fat ass adults in this backwoods
looking family of inbred, wrong turn the hills have eyes
hillbilly pieces of shit thoughtit was OK to pick on and bully
an innocent 10 year old girl Like it was her fault that her
mom had an affair and her dad could possibly be another man
(18:22):
besides their wonderful David who they forced to live in a
tent who they care about so much.
The other kids weren't treated like Amy was not even close.
Don't get me wrong, they lived in filth and were definitely
neglected and learned from the adults that it was OK to pick on
Amy. They would pick on her and
instigate situations just to gether in trouble.
(18:43):
Amy had nobody, not even the other children in the house on
her side. Amy was robbed of having a
carefree childhood. She was robbed of knowing what
it felt like to be protected andloved by her own family or
anyone else for that matter. She had nothing to look forward
to each day except for what punishment or torture tactic
would be used on her necks for whatever mediocre thing that she
(19:04):
might have done that the adults thought was worthy of these
punishments. So when Officer Solais arrived
at the home at 8:00 AM on the morning of July 12th, he had no
idea what he was walking into orwhat had taken place before he
got there. As he got to the back of the
property he didn't remember anything else except for what
was in front of him. On a piece of blue urine stained
(19:27):
carpet next to a black plastic box was a little girl, It was
Amy. She had been inside the box when
she was found and had suffocated.
Her lips were the color of the carpet at this point, and her
skin was starting to discolor. Her body was twisted in an
unnatural position. She was already in rigor
mortise, and it looked like she'd been trying to push the
(19:48):
lid off of her makeshift coffin all the way up-to-the-minute
that she died. Her clothes were dirty and
soiled and there was a mark on her right knee which seemed to
be from a forceful impact with the lid of the box.
This is the image that is stuck in his mind forever.
The image that he will never be able to Unsee no matter how hard
he tries. According to Fox 10, when
(20:13):
Officer Solais arrived, John Allen did all the talking.
He gave the officer some cockamamie story of how Amy
loved to play hide and seek and that the night before at around
1:00 AM, all the adults went to sleep.
And that's when Amy, her 12 yearold sister, and Samantha and
John's 3 year old decided they were going to play a game of
hide and seek. The next morning the adults woke
(20:35):
up and couldn't find Amy anywhere.
They said that's when the three-year old LED them to the
box and they found Amy. None of this made any sense.
What 3 year old is up at 1:00 AMand what kids of any age are up
at 1:00 AM playing hide and seek?
Everything about this situation seemed off to these officers and
(20:56):
there were a lot more questions than answers at this point.
Soleil's immediately suspected foul play.
He wasn't buying the hide and seek story.
In fact, when his Sergeant pulled up to the house a few
minutes later, the first thing he said to him was they fucking
killed her. It was obvious that this didn't
(21:16):
happen while the kids were pulling an all nighter game of
hide and seek, and the police knew this immediately, but they
had to prove it or get them to talk.
John's demeanor as he answered the cop's questions was strange
to say the least. He showed no emotion at all.
He said on the swing, talking tothe officers like it was any
(21:37):
other day and that they were talking about the weather.
When Amy's grandmother joined them, her demeanor was the same
as John's. They both acted like Amy's death
was just an everyday event, something that interrupted
whatever they had planned for the day, an inconvenience like
she had been since she came to live there.
Salais's next move was to talk to Amy's sister, the 12 year old
(22:01):
that had supposedly been playinghide and seek with the other
kids the night before. He found the little girl and
asked her to come out and talk to him.
When she did, she looked scared,as if she was worried to say the
wrong thing, like she had been warned that she didn't get the
story right. She would be the next to receive
one of these punishments that had been handed to Amy.
(22:23):
She never once made eye contact with Officer Slays, but the
story she told was the same as John and Judith's story, almost
as if it had been rehearsed. Except there was one small
detail that differed in her version.
According to her, she went to bed at 9:00 PM.
If that was true, then who was Amy playing the so-called game
(22:44):
of hide and seek with until 1:00AM?
Apparently John had decided to take up journaling the day that
Amy died because during the search of the house, the police
found a notebook that he had written in the one entry that
was in it said quote Amy found passed away in box.
They the kids were playing hide and seek.
(23:07):
We believe she fell asleep and suffocated.
End Quote. Was he trying to convince
himself that that was the truth or was he writing it down so he
didn't forget his story that he was supposed to tell?
That story was the story that everybody in the house,
including the kids, stuck with when they talked to the police,
detectives, news reporters, and everyone else.
(23:31):
According to the family, Amy being locked in the box was the
fault of the three-year old. These losers not only picked on
kids but also blamed them for the things that they did.
The adult family member said that the three-year old loved to
lock lock things as a prank and run away giggling.
So they assumed that this 3 yearold went grabbed a padlock and
(23:51):
locked Amy in the box by accident.
They must be doing some great homeschooling if their
three-year old knew what a padlock was and what it was even
used for and thought, hmm, I'm going to go grab that padlock
setting over there and put it through these holes on this box
and locked Amy inside. Won't that be funny?
I mean my 4 year old is pretty smart but I'm not sure he could
(24:14):
even figure that out. Are these people serious?
Even though the responding officers knew that there was
something not right about the whole situation.
In the days that followed Amy's death, news outlets reported
that Amy's death was a tragic accident and gave a recap of the
story that the family had told them about the deadly all night
(24:36):
hide and seek game. The day after Amy's death, her
aunt Cynthia told KNXV. Quote, I don't break down well
in front of other people, but when I'm by myself I can lose it
real easy. She was an awesome hider, let me
tell you. There were places she would
squeeze into that I didn't thinkmy dog could squeeze into.
(25:00):
End Quote. First of all, it sounds like
she's trying to make excuses as to why she shows no emotion
towards Amy's death before anyone has even questioned the
fact. And to talk about what a quote
UN quote awesome hider Amy was so good that it killed her.
That is just disgusting. For a couple weeks, Amy's story
(25:23):
seemed to disappear from the media and everyone just seemed
to consider it a tragic accident.
But that was as far from the truth as it could possibly be
and everyone would soon find outabout the horrific treatment
that Amy was dealt at the hands of her so-called family.
But that will have to wait untilnext week.
(25:43):
For photos from this episode, join us on the Victim's Voice
Facebook page. And to help support this
podcast, click on the link at the bottom of the show notes and
come back next week for the conclusion to Amy's Story.
Until then, peace out.
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