AJ Freund's mother admits to beating 5-year-old Crystal Lake boy to death, faces 60 years in prison
McHENRY COUNTY, ILLINOIS: The mother of AJ Freund, 5, whose battered body was found in a shallow grave days after his parents reported him missing in April has now pleaded guilty to beating him to death.
36-year-old JoAnn Cunningham admitted that she killed the child during a hearing on Thursday, December 5, while at the McHenry County courthouse in Illinois after prosecutors confronted the Crystal Lake mother with a mountain of damning evidence, including newly disclosed cellphone video footage of an earlier attack on the boy.
Cunningham is looking at 20 to 60 years in prison after making a deal with prosecutors to have the additional charges removed.
Cunningham and the child's father Andrew Freund had been charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in April. Andrew is yet to enter a plea.
According to prosecutors, the little boy had been beaten to death while in the family's home in Crystal Lake on April 15.
The incident took place around three days before his parents had told the authorities that he had disappeared from his bed in the middle of the night. Rescue teams and volunteers searched long and hard for a week until the child's body was found wrapped up in plastic and buried in a shallow grave in Woodstock.
As per an autopsy, AJ had passed away due to blunt force trauma to the head. He also had many other visible marks and bruises on his body.
Currently, both his parents are being held in the McHenry County jail on $5 million bail.
Cunningham's guilty plea comes around two months after she had flatly denied hurting her child. She had instead tried to blame the child's father Andrew.
During a jailhouse interview with CBS, Cunningham had shared, "I would rather kill myself than hurt my family. I'd rather kill myself than hurt anybody."
She also admitted that she had been using drugs when she had been pregnant with AJ, and added that it was something that she could not take back. When asked directly whether she had killed AJ, she responded saying, "No. I would never hurt my children."