'Violently Abused' 8-Year-Old Boy Found Dead In Hotel Room; Mother, Boyfriend Arrested

A Texas couple has been charged with murder after an 8-year-old boy was found dead with multiple injuries in a hotel room.

Codie McCrory, 29, and Leslie Curtis, 30, were arrested Monday on charges of capital murder in connection with the death of 8-year-old Delmer Best-Curtis. Delmer was Leslie's son.

Emergency officers responded to the report of an unresponsive child found in a hotel room on Jan.8. The officers performed CPR on the child and rushed him to Children's hospital in Dallas but he died there, according to a news release from Irving Police Department.

Initial investigation revealed that the child had suffered "violent abuse" for at least 10 days. The couple had been in a relationship for less than a year and had moved into the hotel with the child in November 2020.

The investigators also found out that the child was not attending school. According to an arrest affidavit, the victim had "blood on his head, facial swelling and obviously broken left arm."

"It's pretty bad. From bite marks to burn marks to fingernail marks, you can tell he was choked before because there were fingernail marks around the neck," said Robert Reeves, a police officer, FOX6 reported. "Some of them are so graphic, it’s kind of disgusting to even talk about them."

Leslie told the investigators that she had witnessed her boyfriend kicking the child in the head on more than one occasion. She claimed McCrory used to beat her too. "Curtis had a black right eye and a significant bruising to the left side of her face," according to the arrest affidavit.

"If the child moved while being hit or beaten, the male would sometimes bite the child to teach them to quit moving," Reeves said.

According to the Children's Bureau at HHS' Administration for Children and Families, 678,000 children were victims of maltreatment in 2018. Out of these, 60.8% of victims were neglected, 10.7% were physically abused and 7% were sexually abused.