Court documents released on Friday state that the tattoo-faced boyfriend who was the last to see a 4-year-old boy who went missing from his home at the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe Reservation in Mt. Pleasant, Mich., had been abusing the boy.
Carnel Chamberlain was found buried under his mother’s porch on Thursday, eight days after he went missing. His body had been burned.
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Bennett who is the boyfriend of Carnel’s mother, Jaimee Chamberlain, 21, has been charged for beating and dragging Carnel weeks before his death.
Bennett is the last person to see Carnel as he was under his care while Jaimee was at work at Isabella’s at the Soaring Eagle Casino. When she returned home from work, she was not able to locate Carnel, and called the police.
On Friday, more information has come out about the weeks leading up to Carnel’s death after authorities released a criminal complaint. In the criminal complaint Jaimee talks about the abuse Carnel suffered.
According to the complaint, Jaimee told the FBI that it was late May or early June when she came home from work and her boyfriend Anthony Bennett, who lived with her, asked her to sit down. He asked her to tell him that she loved him. Jaimee stated she entered a bedroom where she saw her son on a bed with a bruised and swollen face, and a cut on the inside of his lip.
The complaint also states that Jaimee said that a few days after that incident, she saw a 6- to 8-inch-long bruise along Carnel’s ribcage. Bennett told Jaimee that he had backhanded Carnel. Carnel said that Bennett had punched him.
Then a few days later Jaimee witnessed Bennett picking Carnel up by his neck, dropping him, and then dragging him by his right foot to his bedroom, which bruised his buttocks, reports the Times Herald.
“Based on the above information, probable cause exists to believe that Anthony Bennett, an Indian, assaulted Carnel Chamberlain, a child under 16 years old, within Indian country,” FBI agent Steven Flattery wrote in the affidavit.
Friday afternoon, more information surfaces when Jaimee appeared on the Nancy Grace show. The show had been taped earlier in the week before Carnel had been found.
Jaimee, talking on the phone, told Nancy Grace that the last time she saw Carnel was around 3:45 p.m. on June 21 and he was laying on the bed watching cartoons.
Nancy asked if there had been any disputes and Jaimee said recently that Bennett was spanking Carnel and putting him a chair to discipline him.
Jamiee said that she “noticed the bruises on Carnel’s butt and I saw Anthony put a lot of force when spanking Carnel.” Jaimee said she didn’t understand why he [Bennett] was doing it so hard and asked him why he was. She also said that she didn’t notice the bruises on his [Carnel] butt until a week.
She said that Anthony would not really explained to her why Carnel was being disciplined.
“Sometimes he [Bennett] said he [Carnel] didn’t clean his room We were training him [Carnel] to be a grown man and teaching him to put his plate in the sink and putting trash in the trash can,” Jaimee said.
Jaimee said that Anthony and her moved in with each other about the end of February or March. “That is the only man my son has called a step dad,”
Jaimee said that Carnel would complain to her about Anthony being mean to him.
“I didn’t think anything of it till now,” said Jaimee.
Grace asked Jaimee if Bennett worked and she said, “he does not have a job, because he has two felonies on him and nobody will help him.”
Grace asked Jaimee if she was concerned about leaving her child with him, and Jaimee responded, “He said he loved me…and my brother introduced us…I trusted him with my son.”
Jaimee told Grace that after she had called the police when Carnel went missing that she noticed that the bathroom floor was wet.
“It was wet to the point my carpet was wet.” she said.
Jaimee also said that when she asked Bennett about it he said he was drawing a bath for her and he wasn’t paying attention and it overflowed.
Jaimee said later she saw two brown stains on the bathroom carpet and when she put her hand in it, “it was sticky” and then when she smelled it, “it smelled like cleaning products.”
Jaimee also said that Carnel was wearing dark green shorts with a light green trim and he had no shirt on when she last saw him and she said later than evening she found the shorts in the laundry room and they were wet.
Violet Green, who used to live with Bennett, told 24 Hour News 8 that she finally kicked him out of her home when she saw his violent side.
“When he left, he took my granddaughter’s dog and that’s when he killed her dog and set it on fire,” said Green.
Bennett was convicted on two previous felony charges, both from Sep. 6, 2010, reports Michigan Live. Bennett was found guilty on Nov. 10, 2010 of attempting to resist and obstruct a police officer and fourth degree fleeing arrest, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections website.
He took a plea deal but, according to the website, Bennett violated his probation on May 24, 2011.
Anyone with information related to the case is asked to call tribal police at 989-775-4700.
