By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
The Merrimack woman accused of murdering her five-year-old son, Elijah Lewis, and dumping his body in Massachusetts will soon be able to hear what her ex-boyfriend talked about in jail.
Lawyers for Danielle Dauphinais, 37, were seeking copies of the audio after receiving transcripts of the calls. She’s facing trial on numerous charges, including first-degree murder and second-degree murder.
Last week, Hillsborough Superior Court-South Judge Charles Temple ordered Valley Street Jail to release the audio recordings made when Joseph Stapf used the phone.
Stapf, 32, pleaded guilty in Nashua’s Hillsborough Superior Court-South to charges of manslaughter, second-degree assault, falsifying evidence and witness tampering as the result of a fully negotiated plea agreement. Stapf will serve between 22 and 45 years in the New Hampshire State Prison as part of the deal.
According to prosecutors, the couple tortured and abused the child for months before he was killed. When police started asking about his whereabouts in fall of 2021, they fled the state.
Dauphinais and Stapf were arrested Oct. 17, 2021, by officers of the New York City Transit Authority in the Bronx, New York, and both pleaded not guilty at the time of their arrests.
Last year, Stapf turned on Dauphinais and took the plea deal, setting himself up as a crucial witness in the trial slated for next year.
Stapf knew Elijah was in rough shape in the weeks before he died, but instead of protecting the boy, or even bringing him to a doctor, Stapf went along with Dauphinais’s torture, according to prosecutors.
Dauphinais starved her son, made him stand for hours without clothing and blankets in his room in their basement apartment in Merrimack, and she beat him, cut him and burned him, according to prosecutors.
Stapf eventually became concerned about the boy, according to prosecutors, and wanted Dauphinais to feed the boy and clothe him. The concern, according to the text messages, was getting Elijah healthy enough that the couple could safely leave him with another relative.
“Maybe let him sleep and feed him,” Stapf wrote in a text to Dauphinais. “No more you know what to him, he needs to look good so we can go out,” Stapf wrote.
Elijah’s mother was not willing to show any mercy or kindness to her son, according to her text response.
“This (expletive) kid deserves nothing,” she wrote back.
Elijah weighed 19 pounds when he died. The average 5-year-old boy weighs 40 pounds. At one point in September or 2021, Stapf grew concerned about a rotting hole in the boys back, prosecutors said.
On Sept. 21, 2021, Elijah suffered one last beating at the hands of his mother, according to testimony at Stapf’s plea hearing. Stapf found the boy naked, in the bathtub surrounded by broken tiles smeared in blood. Stapf still did not get the boy medical help. Instead, he bandaged the wound on his head and put him back in his room, according to testimony.
Elijah’s badly beaten body was found in the woods in Abington, Mass., after investigators started asking about his whereabouts. He was allegedly left in a shallow grave by his mother and Stapf.