Child Forced to Sleep on Plywood. She's Killed when Abused Brother Sets Home on Fire.

Child Forced to Sleep on Plywood. She's Killed when Abused Brother Sets Home on Fire.

I'm going to give you a heads up. This is a horrific story.

A Georgia jury convicted 51-year-old William Linn McCue of Loganville on felony murder and other serious charges tied to years of abuse that left his 10-year-old daughter Zowey unable to escape a house fire.

Zowey had been forced to sleep on a piece of plywood laid across the bathtub inside a windowless bathroom that her parents treated as her locked bedroom. Her mother got two younger sons out during the fire but couldn’t reach Zowey in time.

The fire was set by Zowey’s 15-year-old brother, who later testified he did it to escape the abuse he and his siblings were suffering at the hands of their parents. He walked about six miles afterward to get help at a church. Early on he faced his own charges but the focus shifted to the parents once investigators uncovered the full picture inside the home.

The kids were beaten, forced to stand naked on cinder blocks or milk crates for hours or days at a time, and made to wear shock collars. They couldn’t use the toilet and instead used Lowe’s buckets that got emptied only once a week. There was even a lock on the refrigerator. None of the children were enrolled in school or receiving real homeschooling, and they were years behind developmentally and educationally when they finally got out.

William McCue was also convicted of two counts of rape, three counts of aggravated child molestation, and two counts of incest connected to the sexual abuse of his older daughters. His wife Carina testified during the trial that he had confessed to raping their oldest daughter and that the abuse had gone on for years.

A judge sentenced William McCue to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, followed by a fourth life sentence and an additional consecutive 120 years in prison.

Carina McCue had already pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree cruelty to children, aggravated assault, and false imprisonment. She received a 90-year prison sentence.