By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2026-08-12 21:08:01 | Updated at 2026-08-12 23:47:45
5 hours ago
In a case that has shocked hardened homicide detectives and even the county coroner, an Ohio mother and her two transgender lovers have been charged with repeatedly torturing and killing her seven-year-old disabled son before stuffing his body in a closet.
The boy was found dead and duct taped inside a closet in the mother’s Cincinnati home. The boy’s position, left undisturbed by detectives, hit Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco hard after she arrived at the house during the murder investigation.
Video of her report has gone viral on social media.
The medical examiner told journalists that despite putting on her “emotional armor,” when she opened the closet door she “just froze for a while.”
The body of William Evans, 7, was discovered by police last week. Following the child’s autopsy, the coroner reported Tuesday, that the “the cause of death for this little boy was blunt trauma to the head.”
The boy’s mother, Kaitlin Evans, 38, and her live-in, transgender partners, Nessa Keaney, 23, and Kirby Rankin, 33, allegedly burned, beat, and water-tortured the boy, authorities alleged.
The trio of suspects were arrested last week and are facing murder and child endangerment charges, the New York Post and other news outlets reported.
Video and TV news coverage of the court appearance of the three suspects also went viral on X.
Detective Kyle Smith, a veteran homicide investigator, testified in court on Friday that the case could be the most horrific example of abuse he has ever seen, FOX19 reported.
“In my 21 years of law enforcement experience, this is probably one of the most disturbing examples of child abuse that I’ve witnessed: physical beatings and blunt force injuries from striking devices on the face, torso, back, and upper and lower extremities,” he told the court.
Smith also told the court the boy apparently was burned and water boarded before he was left in the closet.
The coroner’s report was not for the weak of heart. There was evidence of abuse all over the boy’s body, including “too many bruises to count,” the Daily Mail reported.
The medical examiner reported that his skull was so severely fractured that bone had been separated. Police were still looking for a “possible weapon.”
Sexual abuse has not been ruled out, according to police.
Evans, Keaney, and Rankin were lovers and live-in roommates who co-parented the child, prosecutors said in court.
The boy’s father, who was not charged in the case and also appears to be transgender, addressed the mother in court, saying, “Willie was my life. I trusted you to care for him,” according to the Post.
“They kept him from me for the past nine months over lies,” he said while sobbing.
An attorney named Brandon Fox is representing the mother. He said evidence will demonstrate one of the others charged in the crime actually “caused the death of this child.” He said the state’s theory of the crime will be the mother’s “failure to act.”
The trio remain behind bars with bond set at $1 million each.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets , which documents one of the worst cases of child sex abuse in U.S. history, and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
