Authorities have finally ended a four-month manhunt in search of the suspect connected to a terrifying and heartbreaking discovery: the decomposing remains of an abandoned 12-year-old boy.
Milwaukee police visited a home on Oct. 10, 2023 and found Jacarie Robinson wrapped in a blanket on the living room floor. Upon entry, police said the smell of mold, feces and decaying flesh was overwhelming. He appeared to have a t-shirt covering his head and was covered in maggots and dried blood, police said. The rest of the house was a mess, littered with trash and old food.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s office found he was malnourished and had fractures to his ribs and arms, per NBC’s report.
After detectives interviewed Jacarie’s two siblings, they identified their prime suspect: 45-year-old Romuan Jovaes Moye, Jacarie’s father.
Read what the children told police from NBC News:
One of Jacarie’s brothers, who found the 12-year-old’s body after entering the home, told police that Moye had been acting strangely about four days before during a visit, per court records. Moye had kept the child away from family for months, he said. Jacarie’s brother reported last seeing him alive in August 2023 on the child’s birthday. He recalled Jacarie looking “extremely skinny,” he told detectives.
Moye had three of his children living with him at the time, including Jacarie, but sent two of them to stay with their mother for two weeks so he could “take care of something,” one of the children told a detective. All three children share the same mother and father.
The children told detectives that Moye would punish Jacarie for stealing food and that he “was not eating and sleeping a lot,” court records state. Jacarie was not allowed to go to his mother’s house with his siblings because he was grounded.
Jacarie’s mother told police she grew suspicious after not seeing her child in three years but told authorities she spoke with him on the phone a few weeks before he was found. The medical examiner suggested he was missing since Labor Day, per TJM4 News.
Moye was caught by Milwaukee police Sunday evening after being on the run since October. He’s charged with first-degree reckless homicide, failure to report the death of a child and three counts of chronic child neglect for nutritional neglect, bodily harm/failure to seek medical care and the condition of his residence.
His bond is set at $500,000. He faces 82 years in prison if found guilty.