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national
Identity thieves torture boy, murder lesbian mother
Boy says he is son of lesbian whose lover murdered her
Published Thursday, 28-Jun-2007 in issue 1018
PORTAGE, Wis. (AP) – The 11-year-old boy sat locked in the closet, knees pulled to his chest. He was hungry. His body was a mess of burns, cuts and scars. A front tooth had been knocked out. His feet were burned so badly he couldn’t walk. Police didn’t know it yet, but his mother was buried in the yard after being murdered by her former lesbian lover.
After officers rescued him last week, a doctor catalogued the boy’s multitude of injuries and interviewed him about how they happened. He finally told her, “I don’t want to hurt no more.”
His story is only part of the tale of horror unfolding in this town of about 8,000 about 40 minutes north of Madison that touts itself as “Where the North Begins.”
The day after finding the boy, police found his mother, 36-year-old Tammie Garlin, buried in the backyard of the rented home they shared with two other women, a man, a toddler, two infants and the boy’s sister.
A criminal complaint filed Wednesday charged the women, the man and the boy’s 15-year-old sister with murdering his mother, hiding her corpse and beating the boy to within inches of his life. Detectives believe the group was a roving band of identity thieves who had been on the run from the law for months, Columbia County District Attorney Jane Kohlwey said.
“We could have victims from all over in different parts of the country. Fortunately, it ended here,” said police Detective Lt. Mark Hahn.
Charged were Candace Clark, 23; Clark’s boyfriend, Michael Sisk, 25; Michaela Clerc, 20; and 15-year-old Felicia Mae Garlin.
Police discovered the 11-year-old boy and his mother’s body after receiving information from Florida authorities last Thursday that Clark’s 2-year-old daughter, abducted from her foster parents, could be at a rental property in town.
At the home, officers discovered Clark, Clerc, the missing 2-year-old, Clark’s two younger children and Felicia Garlin. As they investigated, they found the 11-year-old in the closet. The next day, they found the buried body.
The boy, identified in the complaint only by his initials, told police his sister, his mother, Clark, Sisk and Clerc would scald him with hot water as punishment. His sister would laugh as she burned him, he said.
The others would hog-tie him and put him in the bathtub, where they would scald him and threaten to drown him. He said he was whipped almost daily with a belt and extension cords, strangled until he passed out, forced to drink water until he threw up and forced to sleep naked in his sister’s closet.
Kohlwey said she didn’t know why the boy was tortured and the sister was not.
At some point, the group turned on Tammie Garlin, too, the boy said, burning her and forcing her into the closet with him. She was the only one who helped him, he said, putting cream on his wounds.
Clark told police Tammie Garlin died on June 4. Felicia Garlin and Clerc had kicked her earlier that day, and she was sick.
Felica Garlin and Clerc carried her into the bathroom, where Clerc dropped the woman’s head on the floor. Sisk went into the room, closed the door, and remerged a few minutes later, saying Tammie Garlin was dead, the complaint said.
The group hid her in the trunk of their car before burying her in the dark that night, the complaint said.
The complaint said Clerc and Tammie Grolin were once lesbian lovers but had broken up. Clerc thought Tammie Grolin was cheating on her.
Kohlwey said detectives believe the group made its living by stealing people’s identities and using them in fraud schemes. They moved to Portage in February, renting the house using false names, but in the past year had lived in Florida, Maine, Tennessee, Kentucky and Colorado, the complaint said.
Judge Alan White on Wednesday denied bail for Clark and Sisk, whom Kohlwey called the group’s leaders. He set bail at $500,000 for Felicia Garlin and $350,000 for Clerc.
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