Geraldine Perkins, mom of Zymere Perkins, 6, tortured to death by boyfriend, took time putting on makeup before calling for help
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY: The mother of six-year-old Zymere Perkins, who was tortured and abused for months before he was brutally beaten and hanged by her boyfriend, revealed how she cleaned him up, read the bible, and did her makeup before calling for help.
MEAWW had previously reported how Rysheim Smith and Zymere's mother Geraldine Perkins had gone on trial at the Manhattan Supreme Court over his 2016 death on December 2.
The jury had been shown graphic photographs of the six-year-old's battered body where they could see the extent of his horrific injuries, including 30 rib fractures, cuts, and bruises to his neck and head, and scratches and scars on his chest and belly.
This past week, Perkins took to the stand and testified that she had stood by idly as Smith beat her son to death at their apartment on September 26, 2016.
The day before, she said she found Zymere rummaging through the trash for food as he had been denied food or water as punishment for alleged misbehavior. "I heard him walking and going into the garbage bag, eating out of it," she said. "I thought it was a mouse."
She said she woke up the next day to the sounds of Smith yelling at her son for defecating in the living room and hiding it, and then when she ran to them, she found him towering over the young boy and poking him with the sharpened end of a broken broomstick.
She said she heard him cursing: "Why the f*** did you take a s***?" Why did you take a f****** s*** here? There's a bathroom. You could have used the bathroom."
Perkins told the jury that she thinks Zymere hid the stool in the living room because the apartment had no electricity and he was afraid to walk into the bathroom in the dark. She went on to suggest that the beating Smith meted out was justified, stating, "I felt he was wrong for doing that in the living room."
Assistant District Attorney Kerry O'Connell had previously revealed how Smith had picked up the young boy, "held him by the arm and began to beat him with a stick like a piñata."
He said, after beating the six-year-old, Smith "waterboarded him in the shower," dropped him on the floor, and beat him with a broken broomstick and a shower rod, before hanging him on the back of the bathroom door by his t-shirt. After he had already taken his "last breath," Smith threw him against a bedroom wall.
Perkins testified that, after all this, she and Smith thought the boy was "pretending to be unconscious" as he had done so before to escape punishment. She said they would try to "smack him just to see if he was faking, and he’ll get up."
She said that, this time, he didn't wake up and that he looked "like he was dead," but that she still waited hours to seek medical assistance. She said, as he lay dying, Smith went out to get them breakfast and she cleaned the living room and read the bible.
When she eventually decided to take the boy out of the building, she said she spent 10 minutes putting on a wig and makeup because she's "very self-conscious about how I look outside."
Perkins pleaded guilty to charges of second-degree manslaughter in 2017 and has already spent three years behind bars. In exchange for her testimony against Smith, she is expected to receive another two to six years in prison.
Smith, who has been charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter, faces life in prison if convicted.