HORRIFIC

Kansas Man Found Guilty in Death of 3-Year-Old Found Encased in Concrete

Stephen Bodine was found guilty of first-degree murder, child abuse, aggravated child endangerment, and two counts of kidnapping.

Stephen Bodine of Wichita, Kansas, was found guilty Wednesday in the 2017 murder of 3-year-old Evan Brewer, who was found encased in concrete four months after his death. At trial, jurors saw videos and photos of the abuse prosecutors said Bodine and Brewer’s mother, Miranda Miller, inflicted on the child, including footage of the boy chained and naked in a basement. Bodine was found guilty of first-degree murder, child abuse, aggravated child endangerment, and two counts of kidnapping. He will be sentenced in December. Miller is also charged with murder, but was allowed to plead guilty to a second-degree murder charge in exchange for testifying against Bodine. Miller testified that Bodine had been punishing Evan for not eating back in May 2017, when he took the screaming boy into the bathroom, later emerging with her son’s wet and lifeless body in his arms. The boy’s body was so decomposed by the time he was removed from the concrete that an autopsy could not determine the cause of death. “I can’t really overstate what a difficult task it was to sit and absorb the kind of wretched details of how this little boy lost his life and the role this defendant had in it,” said Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett.