New Hampshire mother who beat and starved her 5-year-old son to death cries as she is sentenced to more than 50 years in prison

A New Hampshire woman was sentenced Friday to 53 years to life in prison at the death of his 5 year old son, who was beaten, starved and exposed to drugs before his 19-pound body was found buried in a Massachusetts park in 2021.

“I am so sorry, Elijah, that I failed you as a mother,” Danielle Dauphinais said in court, reading from a letter that recounted her life as an abused and abandoned child. She burst into tears and one of her lawyers finished reading it.

Dauphinais, 38, was facing trial in Nashua, but last month he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and other charges in the death of his son Elijah Lewis in an agreement with prosecutors.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 55 years. The defense asked for 35 years, the minimum term. Dauphinais also received an additional three to seven years for misdemeanors.

Elijah’s autopsy showed he suffered facial and scalp injuries, acute fentanyl poisoning, malnutrition, and pressure ulcers.

Prosecutors said Elijah was tortured and abandoned.

He was confined for long periods of time in a bathroom tub, often naked, and monitored by video.

In the end, he couldn’t stand up, they said, showing photos of him over a 16-month period getting progressively thinner. One of his eyes was closed in the last photo.

Dauphinais was divorced from Elijah’s father, who had been caring for the boy in Arizona. He brought Elijah to New Hampshire in May 2020.

His lawyers said the boy had “serious psychiatric problems” and neither parent gave him an evaluation.

But Judge Charles Temple said that, full of expletives, hateful text messages he sent her boyfriend about her son and his actions were damning.

“You knew exactly what you were doing to Elijah. “They were killing him, hour after hour, day after day, month after month,” he said.

Dauphinais’ boyfriend, Joseph Stapf, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, tampering with physical evidence and witness tampering in 2022 in connection with the boy’s death.

He was sentenced to between 22 and 45 years in prison.

Prosecutors read a series of texts between Stapf and Dauphinais that expressed hostility toward Elijah and frustration if he did not behave according to their wishes.

“He said he wants food and wants me to stop starving him because it’s not nice,” one said. Another message said, “I’m going to kill him and I mean it,” and another said, “I hit him with the shower rod, that’s all I did.”

Stapf had texted Dauphinais to give Elijah more food to “fatten him up.”

Defense attorney Benjamin Faulkner said Dauphinais’ text messages were sent out of desperation because Elijah displayed aggressive behavior that he couldn’t handle while caring for another child.

She was also pregnant and abusing fentanyl and heroin.

Dauphinais said her ex-husband did not provide her insurance information for her to seek help.

Prosecutors said she placed blame and responsibility on the father and others.

“She did nothing to help Elijah,” prosecutor Bethany Durand said.

Elijah lived with Dauphinais, Stapf and the 2-year-old daughter he had with Stapf in the basement of a house where Stapf’s mother also lived.

By that fall, Elijah’s father, Timothy Lewis, became concerned that Elijah was not receiving adequate medical care and contacted the state Division of Children, Youth and Families.

Elijah had developmental challenges and a difficult pattern of behavior that worsened in New Hampshire, Lewis said in a wrongful death lawsuit filed earlier this year against Dauphinais, Stapf, Stapf’s mother and the child services agency.

Faulkner said Lewis told the child services agency he couldn’t take Elijah because he was worried about the safety of other children living in his home. The pressure fell on Dauphinais, “who didn’t have the ability to deal with it,” Faulkner said.

An independent judge on Friday granted the state agency a partial dismissal of the case.

A lawyer for Stapf’s mother denied the allegations in a court filing. Lawyers for Stapf and Dauphinais are not named in the lawsuit.

Elijah weighed 32 pounds and had bruises on his face, eye and arm from a doctor visit in November 2020, prosecutors said.

Dauphinais later told the agency that his son was sent to California to live with Dauphinais’ sister, a custody agreement the father had agreed to, but Dauphinais did not follow through, prosecutors said.

In October 2021, Dauphinais had given birth to a child at home, prosecutors said. Stapf took the baby to a hospital with the intention of leaving him there.

The hospital found evidence of drugs on the baby and contacted the child services agency, which opened an investigation.

The agency could find no sign of Elijah.

Dauphinais said her son was with his sister and then with a man he described as his brother but who turned out to be a friend.

Both the sister and friend told investigators that Dauphinais had contacted them and asked them to lie about Elijah’s whereabouts.

Prosecutors believe Elijah died in September 2021 and the couple put his body in a container and brought it back. to Massachusetts park, where Stapf dug a hole and buried him, prosecutors said.

When Elijah was still missing, Stapf and Dolphins were arrested in New York. Days after his arrest, Elijah’s remains were found.

Prosecutors said that when Elijah was found, he was 3 feet tall and weighed 19 pounds, while an average 5-year-old child would be about 3.6 feet tall and about 40 pounds.

Lewis addressed the court by phone Friday and said she could never forgive Dauphinais for his actions and wanted her son’s death to haunt her. Faulkner said yes.