A New Hampshire mother who was charged with viciously assaulting and neglecting her 5-year-old son, who was discovered dead with fentanyl in his system, has agreed to plead guilty to killing him.
Danielle D. Dauphinais, 38, has entered a plea to second-degree murder, knowing, a lesser-included charge of the initial crime of first-degree murder. In addition, she will admit to two charges of witness tampering. She will face 55 years to life in prison on the homicide charge. She must also serve three and a half to seven years in prison on the tampering counts.
“While we can confirm that there is a plea hearing scheduled on Thursday at 9 a.m., we are unable to comment as to any potential plea,” Michael S. Garrity, spokesman for the State of New Hampshire’s Department of Justice, told Law&Crime in an email.
Authorities say they initiated a 10-day search in October 2021 to find toddler Elijah Lewis. On October 17, 2017, they apprehended his mother and her boyfriend, Joseph Stapf, 33, in New York City. Six days later, Elijah’s body was discovered at a state park in Abington, Massachusetts. They discovered, however, that he had been deceased for approximately a month.
He died somewhere between September 21 and 24, 2021.
According to Manchester ABC affiliate WMUR, prosecutors have received texts in which Dauphinais and Stapf discuss abusing Lewis and refusing to feed him. For example, Stapf reportedly told Dauphinais that they needed to feed the boy and let him sleep so he would look better and they could take him outside.
Prosecutors stated Dauphinais refused to do that. According to authorities, Stapf once threw the boy on a bed, causing him to hit his head, but he eventually began pleading with Dauphinais to stop what he called “torture.” The evidence shows that she declined again.
Stapf eventually discovered Lewis naked and bleeding from the head in a bathtub. Authorities say he did not seek medical attention. Lewis died somewhere between September 21 and 24, 2021. Dauphinais asked Stapf to assist him dispose of the body. Prosecutors said they drove a pickup truck to Abington and buried Lewis in a shallow grave.
Elijah died as a result of “violence and neglect, including facial and scalp injuries, acute fentanyl intoxication, malnourishment, and pressure ulcers,” according to the New Hampshire Department of Justice.
In September 2022, Stapf pled guilty to manslaughter, second-degree assault, manipulating physical evidence, and tampering with witnesses. He was sentenced to 22-45 years in prison.
“You are less than human,” Elijah’s father, Timothy Lewis, reportedly told him. “You could have stepped in to stop this at any time if you had been man enough. You might have returned him to us at any stage.
The Boston Globe earlier claimed that Dauphinais contacted a friend about Elijah, stating she wanted him “gone” and likened him to serial killers.
“I call him the next Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer,” Dauphinais wrote in a communication to her friend Erika Wolfe months before his murder. “It’s quite awful, but I have no relationship to this child. His father took him at the age of one and did not return him until May 2020. He’s been becoming progressively worse. I want him gone. “I can’t take it anymore.”
Wolfe told the Globe that she had forgotten about the letter until October 2021, when Elijah’s abduction made headlines. Wolfe was astonished by some of Dauphinais’ comments but felt she was merely venting her concerns.
She also stated that she believed the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) was checking in, based on what Dauphinais had mentioned about the agency in her texts. She told the Globe that she felt a knot in her stomach after seeing the reports.
“I remembered those messages,” Wolfe told The Globe. “And I was like, ‘Oh, no.'”