A Vancouver couple accused of fatally starving their 15-year-old son while he was isolated at home during the pandemic denied in court underfeeding the boy and said they had no idea he was so sick.
A Clark County Superior Court jury heard testimony Thursday from both Felicia Adams-Franks, 54, and Jesse Franks, 58, who are facing charges of homicide by abuse and second-degree murder in the death of Karreon Franks on Nov. 27, 2020.
The state then began closing arguments in the afternoon. Defense attorneys are set to deliver closing arguments Friday.
Prosecutors have shown the jury autopsy photos of Karreon Frank’s emaciated 61-pound body and said he had lost 47% of his body weight after he stopped getting a free breakfast and lunch at school.
Diagnosed with autism and Down syndrome, he was nearly blind and largely nonverbal throughout his life.
Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Laurel Smith said the defendants doomed Karreon Franks to a slow and painful death, all the while portraying themselves in public as attentive parents.
“Behind closed doors and under the convenient cloak that COVID provided, they were able to carry themselves the way that they really wanted to,” Smith said. “They perpetrated the most extreme form of abuse.”
Adams-Franks, who formerly worked as a contractor monitoring offenders on parole for corrections departments, testified that her son was “food obsessed,” saying mealtimes required careful monitoring to make sure Karreon wouldn’t eat until he was sick or choke on unchewed food.
While educators said earlier in the trial that Karreon consistently appeared hungry and that Adams-Franks had instructed them not to give her oldest son snacks, Adams-Franks suggested she told teachers only that they shouldn’t use “food as a reward.”
“We wanted Karreon to be as normal a kid as the other kids. So if the other kids got one meal, he got one meal,” she said.
Adams-Franks said she hadn’t noticed her son’s dramatic weight loss because she was laid up by a heart attack and had been relying on her nephew, who served as a live-in caregiver.
Her husband, in contrast, started his testimony by tearfully saying he had just a sixth-grade education and relied on his wife’s judgment to determine how their sons should be raised.
Adams-Franks had adopted Karreon Franks and his two brothers from her half-sister in California in 2012 and given them Franks’ last name.
Franks downplayed the parents’ practice of locking food in their garage and bedroom, as well as locking all three boys into their shared room at night, saying they let the boys out to go to the bathroom and that Franks would give them more food if they asked.
He denied that the children were afraid of their mother, saying the punishments were warranted because they had stolen money, the parents’ computer tablet or his wife’s strawberry PopTarts.
“If they were afraid, they wouldn’t be stealing. They respect her more than being scared. There’s a difference,” he said.
Franks said he didn’t often see Karreon without clothes on because the teen’s brothers usually dressed him.
Franks said he rushed his unconscious son to the hospital on the morning of his death because he believed the 10-minute drive would be faster than waiting for an ambulance. Prosecutors said Karreon already had no pulse when he arrived at PeaceHealth Hospital.
“I’m so used to being out of the way — not having an education, too,” Franks said through tears. “I felt like I should have done something.”
Adams-Franks and Franks are also accused of second-degree criminal mistreatment of Karreon’s two brothers, who were 14 and 13 at the time.
The couple received $69,000 a year from the state of California to care for the three boys, but instead gambled away hundreds of thousands of dollars at ilani casino over the years, according to court records.
The couple drove to ilani hours after Karreon’s death and returned later that night, according to surveillance footage played during the trial.
The other siblings — Keyonte, now 17, and Kahlen, 16 — have filed a notice with state officials that they are preparing to file a $55 million lawsuit against the Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families for allowing the ordeal, KOIN 6 News reported Tuesday.
Prosecutors said the couple routinely denied food to all their boys as punishment, saying Adams-Franks strangled one brother with an electrical cord and Franks used a wooden paddle for spankings until it broke.
On the stand, both husband and wife said they only infrequently used physical discipline on their children or that they didn’t recall using it in particular circumstances.
The trial began last Monday before a jury of eight women and seven men, including three alternates.
