AARONE THOMPSON - 6 yo (2003) - Centennial CO

Aaron Thompson, convicted on 31 counts
related to the death of his daughter Aaroné, today was sentenced to 102
years in prison and 12 years in county jail.
Aaroné, would have been 6 years old when Thompson, 42, reported her
missing Nov. 14, 2005. Police believe she died two years earlier. Her
body has never been found.
Thompson told investigators that the child had run away because he would not give her more cookies.
A massive police search ensued, but authorities quickly focused on
Thompson and his girlfriend Shelley Lowe as suspects. After three days,
Human Services took custody of the seven other children living in their
home on East Kempner Place and police began a lengthy investigation.
Lowe died of natural causes in 2006. In 2007, Thompson was charged
with 60 counts related to the disappearance of Aaroné and the physical
abuse of the other children living in the house.
During his trial in Arapahoe County District Court, defense
attorneys acknowledged that Thompson lied to police in the coverup and
tried to pin the Aaroné's death on Lowe, but said he was not
responsible for her death.
But jurors saw it differently. On Sept. 28, after deliberating for
nine days, the jury convicted Thompson on 31 of 55 counts, including
the most serious charge of child abuse resulting in death.
Thompson was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit child abuse
resulting in death and accessory to child abuse resulting in death.

A judge’s decision to send him to prison for more than 100 years Tuesday marked the end of Aaron Thompson’s criminal trial.

But
even as the case came to an end this week, and as the four-year
anniversary of the day Thompson reported his daughter missing passes on
Nov. 14, closure may never come for the seven surviving children who
endured Thompson’s abuse and for the investigators who labored over the
case for four years.

And amid it all, Thompson has appeared
unconcerned about the case and unwilling to cooperate with
investigators, despite the lengthy sentence he faces.

According
to testimony at Thompson’s eight-week trial and his sentencing Tuesday,
it’s clear his daughter, Aaroné, is long dead, likely killed sometime
in 2002 or 2003 when she would have been 4 or 5 years old.

Despite hundreds of hours and millions of dollars spent on the case, the girl’s body has never been found.

Police
and prosecutors have said that until they found Aaroné’s body, other
developments in the case — from Thompson’s conviction this fall to the
lengthy sentence he received on Tuesday — will mark only partial
closure for them.




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And, they say, Thompson is the only person who can bring that closure.

“It
is not too late to reveal where Aaroné’s remains are,” Aurora police
Chief Dan Oates said during testimony at Thompson’s sentencing hearing.

Oates
said the case was one of the largest and most resource-intensive cases
in the department’s history, costing tens of thousands of dollars on
the initial search and later millions on the investigation.

The case affected everyone in the department, Oates said, and left lasting impacts on the investigators who worked the case.

“They are forever scarred and changed by what occurred,” Oates said.

Oates wasn’t the only person who called on Thompson to tell investigators where Aaroné is buried.


Judge
Valeria Spencer, in a stinging condemnation of Thompson on Tuesday,
seemed to urge the 42-year-old man to tell police where his daughter is
and exactly how she died.

“Mr. Thompson, you are the only person left on this Earth who knows what happened to that child,” she said.

But,
Spencer said, rather than be honest with investigators, Thompson has
spun lie after lie, starting the day he reported Aaroné missing.

In
handing down her sentence, Spencer pointed to a video of Thompson from
the day he called police and said Aaroné ran away after he wouldn’t
give her a cookie.

In an interview room at Aurora police
headquarters, a distraught sounding Thompson, who was alone in the room
but knew he was being videotaped, said out loud: “Aaroné, where you at?”

Spencer said Thompson knew then where his daughter was.

“It
was Oscar caliber,” she said of Thompson’s performance. “Oscar caliber
that you would lie like that to yourself about a child that you had
already killed and buried.”

The lies about Aaroné weren’t the only galling crimes Thompson committed, Spencer said.

He also forced the other children in his care — children he was convicted of savagely beating — to lie about Aaroné.

By
doing that, Thompson made the other children feel responsible for what
happened to the girl and made them leery of the authorities who tried
to help them.

“What you did to them by telling them to lie to the authorities was to set them up for a life of mistrust,” she said.

According
to testimony Tuesday and during Thompson’s trial, the other children in
the home are living with foster families or Thompson’s family.

One
of the boys, who is now an adult and who prosecutors said received
particularly savage beatings from Thompson, is incarcerated in
connection with a unrelated case.

Spencer said one of the
younger boys, who is living with Thompson’s family in Michigan, suffers
from post traumatic stress disorder.

All of the children, she
said, have lengthy recoveries ahead of them and will probably never
fully recover from the abuse at the Thompson home.

“They will never recover from the injuries to their souls that you inflicted on them,” she told Thompson.

Spencer said some of the children in the home still feel they are in some way at fault for the beatings they received.

“For
a child to think that it is their fault that she is being beaten shows
us the effects of child abuse on children,” she said.

Child abuse experts say it is common for victims of child abuse to blame themselves.

“Unfortunately,
that’s a pretty typical response for a child,” said Bob Cooper,
executive director of the Tennyson Center in Denver. “Often times they
feel like they deserve to be abused.”

Cooper, whose organization
works with victims of child abuse, said those feelings of guilt often
remain with child-abuse victims throughout their lives.

Cooper,
who has been working with such victims said that while the Thompson
case — with multiple victims and one fatality — is one of the darker
cases he has seen, abuse like that happens more than people think.

“I think people need to be aware that it isn’t just the Aaroné Thompson cases,” he said.

For
his part, Thompson himself seemed unmoved by the magnitude of his
sentence or the lingering impacts his actions could have on the
children he was tasked with raising.

Throughout the trial and
sentencing phase, Thompson sat quietly at the defense table, showing no
emotion, even when Judge Spencer and other witnesses at the sentencing
hearing laid into him for his crimes.

Thompson never said a word
in his defense, something his lawyers said was their idea because they
didn’t want to jeopardize an appeal.

In spite of all of that, Aaroné’s mother said she thinks Thompson will some day tell investigators where her daughter is buried.

“I think so,” she said. “I have faith.”

A candlelight memorial is scheduled for this afternoon at The
Children’s Hospital in honor of Aarone Thompson, the Aurora girl who
police say was beaten to death by her parents and whose body was never
found.

The event, scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at the playground of
The Children’s Hospital in north Aurora, is sponsored by the Kempe
Center and co-sponsored by the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office, the
Arapahoe County Department of Human Services, the Aurora Fire
Department, the Aurora Police Department, the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, the North Metro Child Advocacy Center,
the FBI’s Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force, Rural Metro
Ambulance, South Metro Fire District and the Sungate Child Advocacy
Center.

The event is open to the public.

Aarone’s father,
Aaron Thompson, was convicted this fall on multiple charges related to
his daughter’s 2005 disappearance, including child abuse resulting in
death. A judge this month sentenced him to more than 100 years in
prison.

On what would have been her 11th birthday, a crowd of about 50
people gathered to remember Aaroné Thompson, who was reported missing
in November 2005 and whose body has never been found.

For the
crowd gathered at The Children’s Hospital — largely made up of the
investigators, social workers and prosecutors who worked the Aaroné
case — the memorial service was a chance to say goodbye to the little
girl.

“The thing that resounded with me ... was not being able
to say goodbye in the way we usually say goodbye,” said Dr. Andrew
Sirotnak of the Kempe Center at Children’s. “In many ways, this is a
way to say goodbye to Aarone.”

Sirotnak, whose organization
works to prevent child abuse and treat victims, said it was important
that the people who worked the case and the community said goodbye to
the little girl who died such a violent death.

Thompson’s
father, Aaron Thompson, reported her missing Nov. 14, 2005. He told
investigators that Aaroné ran away because he wouldn’t give her a
cookie. But within days, police said they believed the girl was dead
and launched an investigation into Thompson and his live-in girlfriend,
Shely Lowe.

Lowe died in May 2006. A year later, a grand jury
indicted Thompson on more than 60 counts, including child abuse
resulting in death and numerous child abuse charges connected to the
other seven children who lived in the Thompson home.


This
fall, a jury convicted Thompson after an eight-week trial during which
prosecutors called the family home a “torture chamber” and said Aaroné
spent much of her young life locked inside a tiny closet. A judge
sentenced him this month to more than 100 years in prison.

Arapahoe
County District Attorney Carol Chambers, whose office prosecuted the
case, said if Aaroné were around, the community would likely want to
apologize to her.

“I think we would say I’m sorry, we hate that it happened to you,” she said.

Chambers
urged community members to work with children and be invested in their
well-being, whether that means being a foster parent or a court
appointed advocate for children.

“Sometimes, we will not be able to prevent a child death, but we will certainly try and we will never stop trying,” she said.

Aurora
police Sgt. Joe Young, who oversees the department’s crimes against
children unit and worked the Thompson case from the beginning, showed
an artists rendering Monday of what Aaroné would like if she were still
alive.


The picture, which showed a smiling Aaroné with her hair in braids, sat near one of the few photos of the girl ever taken.

“We’re
here today to pay respect to Aaroné and all the children who are lost
to abuse,” Young said. “One child lost is one child too many.”

A man sentenced to 114 years behind bars in the death of a daughter
who was originally reported as missing is appealing his sentence and
conviction.
Aaron Thompson's lawyers filed a notice of appeal Monday with the Colorado Court of Appeals.
Thompson told police in 2005 that his daughter Aarone (AIR'-on-ay)
ran away from home after an argument about cookies. She would have been
6 years old at the time. Aurora police later said they believe she may
have died two years earlier. Her body has not been found.
Thompson blamed his late girlfriend, Shely Lowe, for Aarone's death.
Thompson was convicted in September of 31 counts, including child
abuse resulting in death and accessory to child abuse resulting in
death. He was acquitted of 24 other counts.