Three individuals were facing serious charges for the heartless and disturbing things they did to this one woman’s child. Now, the boy’s brother has come forward to expose what happened; once you hear what these three people did to this poor child, you’ll agree that the death penalty is far too kind.
It is a tragedy that Scotty McMillan, only three years old, had his life taken away from him in such a cruel and unwarranted manner. The boy was beaten to death at the hands of his own mother Jillian Tait and her 25-year-old boyfriend Gary Fellenbaum while Amber watched from the sidelines.
Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan reported that all three adults were living together in West Caln Township’s Hope Lane trailer park.
When EMTs arrived at the scene after receiving an emergency call about an unresponsive child, they found little Scotty’s lifeless body with bruises, lacerations and puncture wounds on it. Tait and Fellenbaum confessed to torturing the young boy with “homemade weapons” such as whips, curtain rods and aluminum strips.
They tied him to a chair using electric tape before suspending him upside down by his feet and beating him until he lost his life due to blunt force trauma caused by internal injuries that went untreated for days. This whole ordeal began when Scotty refused to eat breakfast one morning – leading two disturbed adults into acts of unthinkable cruelty against an innocent child.
What makes this case even more heartbreaking is that Tait had another son who suffered right alongside Scotty during this abuse. He also witnessed his brother’s death but thankfully survived himself after being adopted by new parents.
During court proceedings, he wrote a letter to his mother reading “You are the worst mother I’ve ever known…you just watched us get hurt”. However horrifying these words are, they do not come close to describing exactly what happened during those fateful few days spent under torture in their home on Hope Lane.
DA Hogan was seeking the death penalty for Tait but decided on 42-94 years sentence instead since she agreed to testify against Fellenbaum (which never materialized). Amber was sentenced 6½-16 years for endangering children welfare while Gary received life imprisonment plus 10-20 years after pleading guilty for first degree murder charges.
