A 28-year-old mother and a 31-year-old man were arrested in Michigan in the death of the woman’s 3-year-old son, who investigators say was killed in his home nearly seven years ago.

Amanda Maison and Maurice Houle, her boyfriend at the time of the incident, were taken into custody on Friday and charged with one count each of first-degree murder in the 2018 slaying of young Matthew Maison, authorities announced. Houle is also facing three counts of assaulting, resisting, or obstructing a police officer stemming from his alleged conduct during Friday’s arrest.

According to a Friday news release from the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office, Matthew was found dead in his bed inside of the family’s Port Huron Township home on Feb. 18, 2018. While no details surrounding the circumstances of the arrests were provided last week, the sheriff’s office said that the arrests were made following “significant recent developments” in the investigation into the toddler’s death.

During their arraignment hearing on Monday, prosecutors said that Matthew suffered “years of abuse at the hands of both defendants,” per courtroom footage posted by Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV.

“We came to realize of a scheme where both defendants conjured up this lie of previous injuries to the victim in our case, Matthew Maison, and came up with the lie about how the injury occurred prior to talking to investigators,” Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Josh Sparling said Monday, adding that both defendants “admitted” that the other abused Matthew.

Sparling alleged that Matthew was subjected to “very cruel, torturous abuse and punishment” such as “being placed in timeout on his knees where his head would be banged off the drywall” and being “locked in his room for hours on end without food or water.”

“There was a prior time where Maurice place a pillow over this child’s face and pretended like he was playing, but yet we know from the autopsy that Matthew died from blunt force trauma from all of the injuries he sustained as well as suffocation,” Sparling said.

The proceedings then took on an even more depraved tone as the prosecutor relayed another pernicious allegation levied against Maison and Houle.

“Not to mention this plan that was put forth to kill Matthew to make room for a child the two of them could have together,” Sparling said.

The Macomb County Scanner reported that during the duo’s arraignment on Monday, it was revealed that Matthew was likely beaten and choked to death, with investigators determining that his manner of death was a homicide.

“It is my opinion that Matthew Maison died secondary to blunt traumatic injuries with features of asphyxiation,” St. Clair County Medical Examiner Daniel Spitz reportedly wrote in the autopsy report. “The extent, severity, and distribution of the traumatic injuries is indicative of inflicted trauma.”

Prior to Monday’s proceedings, authorities had not released any details about the boy’s death.

The Times Herald reported that on the morning of Feb. 19, 2018, deputies and emergency medical personnel responded to the Maison residence in response to an unresponsive child in the home. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders found Matthew inside the home, already dead.

The newspaper in February 2020 submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the 911 call placed in connection with the boy’s death, but was told that the recording system for St. Clair County Central Dispatch automatically deletes recordings after one year.

Amanda Maison’s brother, Andrew Maison, and his wife, Hilery Maison, are currently serving sentences of life in prison without the chance of parole for the 2015 murder of Andrew Maison’s 5-year-old daughter Mackenzie Maison. They were also found guilty of severely abusing his 3-year-old daughter, Makayla Maison.

Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.

A West Virginia father and convicted murderer is accused of fatally stabbing his fiancee and her mother in his home, then burning the property and taking his 15-month-old daughter to a friend’s house before he went on the run, prompting an Amber Alert that led to his arrest and the baby being found unharmed.

Joshua Russell Morrow, 42, faces murder charges in the deaths of his girlfriend, Britney Brown, 34, and her mother, Irma Brown, 57. He also faces a charge of first-degree arson, according to West Virginia State Police.

A 47-year-old day care employee in Connecticut has been arrested for allegedly picking up a 2-year-old in her care and throwing the child into a wall “like a piece of luggage.”

Kristie Kovarcik was taken into custody late last month and charged with one count of second-degree reckless endangerment and one count of risk of injury to a minor, authorities announced.

According to a news release from the City of Middletown Police Department, detectives with the department’s Special Investigations Unit responded on Jan. 12 to a report of a teacher assaulting a toddler at the Town & Country Early Learning Center in the 100 block of South Main Street. The day care facility is about 15 miles south of Hartford, Connecticut.

Authorities said that the facility notified the victim’s parents about the incident and invited them to watch internal surveillance footage showing what happened. After watching the tape, the parents immediately went to the police station to file a report and request that Kovarcik be arrested.

One of the victim’s guardians described the surveillance footage to investigators, saying that Kovarcik walked over to the toddler, grabbed the child by the shirt with both hands and then “launch[ed] the victim through the air like a piece of luggage,” Greenwich Time reported.

Detectives also viewed the surveillance footage of the alleged incident, saying it showed that Kovarcik “picked up the minor child and tossed the child to the side,” per the release.

“The child’s head then struck a nearby wall, causing a minor contusion above his/her right eye. The Director of the facility heard a commotion and pulled up the surveillance camera for Kovarcik’s room,” police wrote. “She witnessed Kovarcik toss the child aside and heard the child’s head strike the wall. The Director entered the room and removed the child. She then reported the incident to the parents and DCF as required.”