At 10, He Saw His 48-lb. Brother, 12, Die Locked in a Basement. Now He's Testifying Against Their Moms at Murder Trial By Chris Spargo 26

A Canadian couple is on trial on a charge of murder after the dead body of one of the two brothers they were in the process of adopting was found locked in their basement.

Becky Hamber, 45, and Brandy Cooney, 43, appeared in court last week as the prosecution’s star witness took the stand: the victim’s brother, now 13.

He was just 10 when he allegedly watched his brother, 12, slowly waste away from “severe malnutrition,” before eventually dying on Dec. 21, 2022.

He first spoke to police the day after his brother’s funeral in January 2023, reports the Toronto Star, and alleged that Hamber and Cooney would frequently punish the brothers by putting them in restraints they fashioned out of zip ties, locking them in their basement bedrooms and forcing them to wear wetsuits to bed.

“Yesterday I saw my sibling and, you know, he’s dead. He’s the first dead body I’ve ever seen in real life,” the boy told officers with the Halton Regional Police Service, noting he vomited three times before the interview out of anxiety.

Hamber and Cooney were arrested later that month and charged with assault, forcible confinement, and criminal negligence causing bodily harm after police investigated the boy’s claims.

Police continued to investigate, and asked the boy to come in for a second interview in September 2023.

He spoke again about Hamber and Cooney’s alleged abuse, and the Star reports that he began to cry at one point as he told investigators that he would often avoid being punished because every time he did something wrong his brother would “step up for me, and say ‘you know what, I did it.’”

He testified in court that one of the many punishments he and his brother had to endure was not being allowed to speak for days, reports The Burlington Post.

The victim weighed just 48 pounds at the time of his death, testified Dr. Emma Cory, a pediatrician called as an expert witness by prosecutors.

That is less than the boy weighed when he was 6-years-old, Cory testified, per the CBC. The outlet reports that one of the defense attorneys even noted that the victim looked like a “Holocaust survivor.”

His brother testified that the victim had weighed as little as 43 pounds at one point.

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One therapist who had been working with the couple said that she objected to their practices years before the boy’s death, the Toronto Sun reports, alleging that they would zip tie the boy into his pajamas and later wet suits so that he was unable to remove the clothing when he had to use the bathroom.

That therapist also denied a claim made by defense attorneys that she had encouraged the women to use zip toes to restrain the brothers.

Most of her testimony came directly from her notes and had to do with the defendants, with one notable exception.

Just prior to his death, she wrote about the victim: ““He reports that he wants a forever family for Christmas.”

Hamber and Cooney have both pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder.