The adopted daughter of a woman accused of murdering two of her children claims she was forced to dismember her brutally abused little brother.
Avantae Deven, 63, was arrested and charged with two counts each of murder in the first degree, concealment of death, and felony child abuse, and one count of kidnapping in relation to the deaths of Blake and London Deven, the Fayetteville Police Department announced in June.
In September, the local NBC affiliate in Raleigh obtained a recording of a gut-wrenching 2022 phone call.
In the shocking call, one of the people on the line admits to helping dismember the body of Blake Deven.
“She literally had me buy a f***ing trash can dude, to f***ing keep him in there for a month,” the caller said. “I had to watch his f***ing body burn … It’s been on my f***ing mind and I don’t know what the f*** to do.”
The female caller adds: “She starved him so much that she killed him, and then she didn’t call the ambulance. She didn’t call the police. She didn’t try to make up a story to tell them, ‘Oh, he passed away.’”
Avantae’s adopted daughter Cherish Deven has now come forward, admitting she is the voice on the call.
She said she was just 16 or 17 when her adoptive mother allegedly forced her to dismember her little brother.
Cherish added in the recording: “She literally had me buy a f***ing saw to cut his body open and f***ing disintegrate the f***ing body.”
She told NBC there was no wiggling out of the macabre request.
“There was no asking,” Cherish Deven told WRAL. “There was just, ‘You do it. You’re doing it. If not, you’re getting in trouble.’ I’m sitting there as a young child just thinking, ‘Oh, my God. What do I do?’”
So far, cops have not charged Cherish as an accessory — and law enforcement sources told local reporters that’s unlikely to happen.
“It wasn’t that I was, like, I wanted to do this on my own,” Cherish Deven told WRAL. “Again, I was forced to do it. Detectives know this. Everybody knows this already … It disgusts me that I can live with myself knowing what I’ve seen, what I’ve done, because someone led me on and forced me to do something as a child myself.”
According to cops, Blake was physically and emotionally abused. In addition, he was starved to the point of torture and, in the end, his body gave out.
“We believe he was mentally abused and starved,” Sgt. Jeff Locklear said at the time of Avantae’s arrest.
“His body could not sustain the inhumane treatment. Then, Avantae developed a plan to hide Blake’s remains. She forced another person in the household to participate.”
Cops say that Blake was last seen alive in 2017 when he was 10 years old. His sister London had special needs requiring a caregiver. She was in her teens when she died.
The remains of both children were incinerated in a barrel on Avantae’s rural property.
Cherish Deven recently unleashed a torrent of invective on her stepmother: “I hate you. You told me that you were my mother, you told me that you loved me. You told me that you would be there for me and you never were.”
Avantae Deven reportedly had a penchant for collecting a menagerie of kids and adopted five children. She adopted three boys who were biologically related and two girls who are neither related to the boys nor each other.
@HunterTOSun