STOCKTON, Calif. — A Tracy husband and wife and a woman who had moved in with them were charged Thursday with a litany of felonies for allegedly chaining a teenage boy and torturing him for more than a year with belts, knives and baseball bats before he escaped.
Their hands shackled at the waist, Michael Luther Schumacher, 34, and his wife, Kelly Layne Lau, 30, made their first court appearance Thursday. Their former houseguest, Caren Ramirez, 43, is expected to appear in court Monday. She had been described as the boy's aunt, but authorities now say they are not related.
Lau smiled briefly and nodded as she spoke with her attorney. She and her husband otherwise sat stone-faced, occasionally glancing at the gallery packed with journalists and onlookers, as Judge Franklin Stephenson of San Joaquin County Superior Court read the 13-count complaint aloud.
Lau, a stay-at-home mother, was referred to the public defender's office. Schumacher, who makes $4,000 a month as a contract cable TV installer, was appointed an attorney.
The judge ordered bail set at more than $2 million for each defendant and told the couple to return to court Monday.
Schumacher, Lau and Ramirez were charged with torture, aggravated mayhem, false imprisonment by violence, kidnapping, child abuse and corporal injury. The three were accused of abusing the boy from July 2007 to December of this year.
If convicted of the torture or mayhem charge, the defendants could face life in prison.
The criminal complaint that prosecutors filed said the alleged victim is 16 years old, not 17 as police had said. Authorities have not released his name.
All three defendants used a belt, a knife and a baseball bat to abuse the boy, the complaint said. The couple were also charged with endangering their four children, ages 1 to 9, who lived in their home on the 600 block of Tennis Lane.
The judge ordered the couple to stay away from their children, who have been taken into protective custody.
The 16-year-old boy escaped from the home through a window Monday, then scaled an 8-foot wall before limping into the In-Shape Sports health club. He whimpered, "Hide me, please hide me," and was wearing only men's boxers. He was scarred with cuts, covered in soot and had a padlock and 3-foot chain attached to his right ankle, gym employees said.
'Horrendous' abuse
Angela Hayes, the deputy district attorney who filed the complaint, described the alleged abuse as "horrendous." The boy is in protective custody after being treated at a hospital.
Police had previously described Ramirez as the boy's aunt. However, authorities said Thursday she is not related to him, but simply considered herself to be his aunt.
The boy had been placed in her care after he was removed from his father's custody, authorities said. Ramirez pleaded no contest in Sacramento last year to charges of abusing him, and he was placed in a foster home.
Authorities have declined to detail how the boy ended up back with Ramirez and how the two of them came to live with the Tracy couple. But Lau's mother, Stephana Brown, has told The Chronicle that her daughter agreed to take them in after meeting Ramirez through a mutual friend.
In a jailhouse interview with KGO-TV Wednesday night, Lau said Ramirez had told the couple to discipline the boy the same way she did. Lau admitted in the interview that she hit the boy on five occasions in the stomach and arm and used a baseball bat to hit him in the knee.
Ramirez heated an aluminum bat in a fire before searing the boy's flesh with it, Lau said in the interview.
Lau said she had agreed to abuse the teenager because she feared Ramirez would harm her children if she didn't.
Hosed down once a week
Only Ramirez could feed the boy, who would wait in the living room and watch as the rest of the family ate at the table, Lau told the TV station. His showers consisted of being doused by a hose and a pitcher of hot water, one day a week at most, she said.
"I'm glad he escaped and I hope he's OK," she told the television station. "I never wanted any of this to happen."
All three defendants declined media interviews Thursday.
Ramirez pleaded no contest last year to abusing the boy in Sacramento County, after sheriff's deputies found him in her Citrus Heights home in May 2006 with severe bruises on his buttocks, arms and legs and a split lip, according to a probation report. Deputies had been called to the house by Ramirez's daughter.
The boy said Ramirez had beaten him with martial arts sticks, a spatula, a broomstick and a clothes hanger. He said she "gets angry at times and takes her anger out on him," the probation report said.
In September 2005, Ramirez's 16-year-old adoptive son told authorities that she had hit him with a stick in the head and chest after she ordered him to panhandle for her and he returned with only $9, the report said.
Ramirez at first denied the allegations, but eventually admitted responsibility and called the situation "a learning experience," the report said. She said she suffered from depression and anxiety attacks.
Ramirez was placed on five years' probation, but it was revoked after she failed to make court dates.