A New Hampshire mother was sentenced to more than 50 years in prison Friday for murdering her 5-year-old son.
As part of a plea deal, Danielle Dauphinais, 38, pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder and witness tampering in the death of her son Elijah Lewis.
Elijah was reported missing in 2021 and was found dead later that year in an unmarked grave in Massachusetts.
In court last month, we learned the boy was neglected, starved and tortured before his death. Prosecutors on Friday said Elijah's death came after many months of "continuous torture" and called for the maximum sentence, emphasizing that Dauphinais deserves a sentence that fits the crime.
Family members gave victim impact statements questioning why Dauphinais made the choices that she did and never asked for help.
"At any moment, all of this could be completely different if you’d just brought him home," said Timothy Lewis, Elijah's father, via video conference during the hearing.
Prosecutors said Dauphinais, through Facebook messages and other means, expressed hatred for her son and expressed a desire to be rid of him in the months before his death.
"Not an ounce of love I have for him," she once wrote in a Facebook message, according to the prosecution. She made these comments, prosecutors allege, despite being the one who initially reached out expressing a desire to spend time with her son, requesting a visit that stretched into the final months of his life.
Defense attorney Benjamin Faulkner argued that Dauphinais' behavior was, in part, because she had been the victim of abuse in her own childhood and that events did not play out exactly as the prosecution claimed.
“I would suggest that she has complete and deep remorse for what she has done. She knows your honor, that the things that were done to her were the things that she did, except for worse," he said.
More on the Elijah Lewis case
Dauphinais also addressed the court, attempting to read a letter she wrote before the judge. At one point overcome with emotion, she had to have an attorney finish reading it on her behalf. She said she deeply regrets her choices
“I was dealing with so much at that time that my judgment was extremely overwhelmed by my own trauma and untreated mental health issues. I was pregnant and on bedrest and I was still using drugs. I’ve been sober for three years. I will live with the guilt and sadness that I participated in allowing my son to die," the letter read.
Judge Charles Temple sentenced Dauphinais to 50 years to life in prison for the murder charge and three and a half to seven years in prison, served consecutively with the murder charge, for the witness tampering charges.
Dauphinais’ boyfriend, Joseph Stapf, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, second-degree assault, falsifying physical evidence and witness tampering in 2022 in connection with the boy’s death and was sentenced to 22 to 45 years in prison
