Detroit woman Mitchelle Blair could not hold down a job, so she struggled with finances as a single mother of four children. She often called upon relatives and friends for help covering her rent or to help put food on the table. Going without never seemed to bother Mitchelle, which probably didn’t, considering she abu*sed the children before mur*dering two of them.
Mitchelle gave the kids—Stoni, Stephen, Gabrielle, and Matthew—terrifying punishments when they were bad. Mitchelle didn’t think that way because she thought that kids would be kids. In the Blair home, even small mistakes were punished severely.
Mitchelle caught Matthew playing with dolls in a bad way one day. Afterward, she told the police that Stephen told her right then and there that he had been raping his brother.
Mitchelle had been s*exually abu*sed as a child, which happened so long ago that she never told any friends or family about it, and she never went to therapy to get over it. Even with treatment, it’s hard to get over se*xual ab*use. Think about how badly scarred Mitchelle must have been before she got help.
Stephen, who is nine years old, was to be punished, she decided. Mitchelle beat the boy nonstop for a week with sticks, shoes, books, and anything else she could get her hands on. She also scaled his body with hot water while making him stand naked in the shower. This caused the terrible de*ath of the boy.
Mitchelle put Stephen’s body in a deep freezer after k*illing him.
“I went upstairs and I said, Stephen, Matthew said you were humping on him. He stood up and looked at me like he had lost his mind. He said yes…So I started punching Stephen… I put a bag over his head, he lost consciousness, I did that a couple of times….” —Mitchelle
Matthew had also been s*exually ab*used by Stoni, Mitchelle says she found out nine months after ki*lling Stephen. Matthew also said that Stoni would put her period pad in his mouth and squeeze blood out of it.
Mitchelle said that Stoni had abu*sed Stephen s*exually before she ab*used Matthew, which made Stephen molest Matthew as well. She said that the 13-year-old was “the devil.”
She chose to hit the child again as a way to punish her for hurting Matthew. She hit her with her hands and other things, poured boiling hot water over her body, and finally strangled her to de*ath.
When Mitchelle kil*led Stoni, she told her daughter Gabrielle to put the body in the freezer on top of Stephen’s body.
Admitted to ki*lling Stoni:
“She raped my kid.” I did ki*l her on purpose. It was nine months after I learned about Stephen that I learned what Stoni was doing to Matthew. In other words, she raped my child the whole nine months us living together. That’s something I didn’t know.
When I first found out, I punched her several times. A lot of the time. I punched her, put a bag over her head until she passed out, threw hot water on her, and hit her on the head over and over again…” —Blair Mitchell
The sheriff of the county found the bodies when he went to the house to give the tenants a notice to leave. Mitchelle was at the neighbor’s house when the police showed up and arrested him. He was then taken into custody. She told the court that Stoni and Stephen had raped her younger son and that she was guilty of ki*lling them. Each time she was found guilty, she was given a life sentence without the chance of parole.
Mitchelle has consistently caused problems since she was locked up, getting more than 50 disciplinary actions in that time. Mitchelle has been involved in a number of incidents, including kicking a correctional officer who tried to break up a fight between her and another inmate and throwing feces and urine on same.
Where are the Kids Now?
When the event happened, the youngest child was 10 years old. His maternal aunt and uncle took him in and raised him as their own. They had one child, and that child graduated from high school at age 19. They then went to college and got a degree. Judge Edward Joseph, who was in charge of the case, said that the kids are doing amazingly well given what they’ve been through.
