commentary by Patrick Moore
It’s well-known that a lot of disturbing crime originates in Florida. In recent months, however, Florida may not have have kept up with the rust belt states in terms of sheer unadulterated evil. It seems like every time I take a deep breath, there’s another horrific case coming at us from either Michigan, Ohio or Pennsylvania.
Today’s Atrocity Exhibition comes to us from Chester County in the Keystone State, good ol’ Pennsylvania, and it’s so disturbing that the county District Attorney, Thomas Hogan, referred to it as “an American horror story.”
MaryClaire Dale of the AP writes:
A Pennsylvania couple went car shopping, bought pizza and engaged in sexual activity as the woman’s unresponsive 3-year-old son lay dying after weeks of escalating abuse that ended in three days of systematic torture, authorities said Thursday.
Jillian Tait, 31, and Gary Lee Fellenbaum, 23, were charged Thursday with murder in the death of Tait’s son, Scott McMillan, and aggravated assault in the beating of his older brother.
According to the prosecutor, Tait and Fellenbaum are accused of laughing with cruel joy while hanging Scott upside down and “striking him repeatedly with a frying pan” as a prelude to beating him to death.
“It was an unspeakable act of depravity,” said DA Hogan. (No one is going to disagree with him.)
The relationship seems to have begun routinely enough. They were both employed at the American institution that seems too epitomize a society in decline, Walmart. At some point sparks flew, and then Jillian and Gary moved in together in a trailer park near Coatesville, 35 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Now if it had just been the two of them, the worst they could have done would have been to abuse and/or slay each other.
But such was not the case. Jillian had two boys; one of them, 3-year-old Scott, is the victim in this matter. Scott’s older brother, who is 6, was also abused but survived. Gary had an 11-month-old daughter with his estranged wife Amber, and they odd thing is, she and the child lived there with Gary and Jillian and her two boys.
Like all addictive behavior, child abuse gets worse as it progresses. According to the prosecutor, it started out with Gary administering spankings that then morphed into “concentrated, repeated, escalating abuse.” Then, “over three days he was systematically tortured and beaten to death.”
Thus, it was much like a dope or alcohol binge. You start off with a “hit” or a drink and then you have another and pretty soon to keep the “party” going, you have to keep taking more and more and more…
Among other things (according to the three adults who apparently didn’t try to minimize their conduct while talking to the authorities), little Scott was “punched and beaten with blunt and sharp objects, whipped, taped to a chair with electrical tape and beaten, hung up by his feet and beaten, and suffered other acts of violence.”
The crowning act of cruelty appears to have been hanging the two boys up by their feet one at a time and beating them while they were upside down. Jillian and Gary told police they found this to be very funny and were laughing while hitting the boys.
Scott’s older brother realized that if he didn’t resist, Jillian and Gary would go easier on him, so he practiced a sort of passive resistance. Sadly, Scott was too little to adopt this approach and his struggles during this ordeal appear to have incited his killers to up the ante.
When Scott eventually lost consciousness, his tormentors placed him on an uninflated air mattress. Then they went shopping, picked up a pizza, took a snooze, woke up and had sex, according to Jillian.
Then Jillian decided to check on the boy and discovered he wasn’t breathing which led Amber Fellebnbaum to call 911. By the time the authorities arrived, Scott had been unresponsive for hours and had even been put in the shower for more than 30 minutes in a futile attempt to wake him up.
Curiously, investigators found no evidence that drugs or alcohol had been involved. Thus, it appears that Jillian and Gary were stone cold sober as they systematically brutalized the 3-year-old, which prompted DA Hogan to say, “This is just evilness.”
Amber Fellenbaum, was charged with child endangerment for allegedly failing to help the child. Her infant was not harmed, and is now in the custody of relatives along with Jillian’s 6-year-old.
Jillian and Gary were arraigned on Thursday and are being held without bail. They’ll be back in court this coming Friday. Amber’s bail has been set at $500,000.
* * * * *
Marc Levy and Kathy Matheson of the AP report that Gary’s mother, Paula Fellenbaum, doesn’t believe Gary could possibly be guilty of the charges:
“I believe he’s being railroaded. He liked kids. He never had an issue. I don’t understand it at all.”
Through tears, Paula also described her son as a hard worker who was “trying to make his way in the world.” He had recently visited his grandparents and everything seemed fine.
Shannon Taylor of West Caln Township provides some insight. She remembers that Tait was a “normal, goofy, everyday funny girl” when they used to hang out a few years ago.
“I never would have pictured her hurting a fly,” Shannon said. She did mention, however, that when she encountered Jillian working at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago, she seemed “pretty rough looking,” adding, “she just looked like she just didn’t care about herself really.”
It seems pretty clear that the Tait-Fellenbaum alliance somehow brought out the “demons” that both of these individuals had lurking within.
This is scary stuff. A single bad influence can ruin a person, and two bad influences affecting one another can result in the full catastrophe, which is apparently what happened here. It seems unlikely that anyone is going to go easy of Jillian and Gary, assuming the charges are substantiated.