Charlie Bothuell: Missing Boy Found In Basement May Have Been Held Captive

Charlie Bothuell was missing for two weeks before he was found hiding in his own basement, and now sources say the 12-year-old may have actually been held captive.

An attorney for the boy’s father, Charles Bothuell IV, said Friday that the man is being accused of forcing Charlie to go into the basement and stay there. The attorney cited documents from a custody hearing, where it was also alleged that the father and stepmother Monique Dillard-Bothuell physically abused the boy.

“I read this petition. It says that Monique took (Charlie) into the basement and hid him and told him not to come out,” said Mark Magidson, the attorney for Charlie Bothuell’s father. “Why would she do that? I don’t understand that. It makes no sense. This is the same woman who then got the police involved and brought all of this on. None of this make sense.”

Police found Charlie Bothuell this week while they were searching his father’s house as part of the investigation into his disappearance. The boy was reportedly crouching behind a makeshift barrier in the home’s basement.

Police also had cadaver dogs searching the house earlier in the week, and it was not clear if Charlie had been in the home the entire time.

Magidson added that Charlie’s father and stepmother are good parents, though admitted “certain things are expected of him.”

But sources say the demands Charlie’s father placed on him were unreasonable.

Click on Detroit reported:

“Sources said home-schooled Charlie was on a strict regimen and his father had been on him about his weight. He was required to do 4,000 strides on an elliptical trainer without a break.

“Police said the 12-year-old was in the middle of his exercise routine when he desperately had to go to the bathroom and got off the machine. His stepmother reported that transgression to his father, and allegedly the boy was afraid of what was going to happen to him.”

Though he maintains that the parents are innocent, attorney Mark Magidson said he expects abuse charges to be brought.

Charlie Bothuell was taken to a hospital for evaluation, then questioned by police. He is now with his mother.