The surveillance video shows William McQuain, dressed in shorts on an October Saturday, rolling around the parking lot of a Germantown self-storage warehouse on the wheels in his sneakers.
“He was behaving like a typical 11-year-old,” said Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger. “Gliding up and down the pavement.”
Maryland police say they believe they've found the remains of a missing boy whose mother was found slain. Officers believe it is the body of 11-year-old William McQuain. (Oct. 18)
The Crime Scene
What the 11-year-old didn’t know, authorities said, was that his mother had been beaten and stabbed to death in their nearby apartment. William was at the storage center happily waiting with the man police say killed his mother — Curtis Lopez, his stepfather.
By the end of the day, Oct. 1, police said, Lopez would also kill William and toss his body in the woods.
For days, police and volunteers conducted a massive search in hopes the boy would be found alive. Friends gathered for a vigil, and his football buddies put stickers on their helmets: “William McQuain. We ♥ U.” But Tuesday morning, hope turned to mourning when police said the boy’s body had been found in a wooded area just off a Clarksburg road. Detectives had focused on that area after tracking Lopez’s cellphone use.
“This confirmed our worst fears,” said Jeff McDermott, who coached William on a Little League All-Star team. “He was a great kid, a great player. He did everything we asked him to do.”
Lopez and Jane McQuain had a long and troubled relationship, but only days earlier the two had taken William on a vacation to Ocean City. A friend said Jane McQuain called from the beach, saying that she and Lopez had argued and that she was scared.
Exactly what happened that weekend might never be known. Lopez, who was arrested Thursday in North Carolina, has refused to talk to investigators, police said. The police account of what happened to William and his mother is based on the evidence that had been gathered. Lopez has been charged with murder in the slaying of McQuain, 51, and police said they expect to charge him with murder in William’s death.
Montgomery police were first called to McQuain’s Germantown apartment last Wednesday by a friend who was worried after she had been out of touch. Officers who climbed a ladder and crawled through a window found McQuain dead in her bedroom. There was no sign of William, nor any sign that he had been hurt in the apartment.
But there were plenty of signs of him and accomplishments: Photos and certificates hung throughout, an indication of a single mother whose life revolved around a quiet, sharp kid with a sweet disposition.
“The apartment was like a shrine to him,” a law enforcement source said.
An acquaintance of McQuain’s told police about a man seen going in and out of her apartment, according to court papers posted online by WUSA-TV (Channel 9). A neighbor saw the man load a TV box into McQuain’s sport-utility vehicle. That man was Lopez, court papers said.
Police found Lopez last week after McQuain’s 2011 Honda CRV had been in an accident in Charlotte, according to the court papers. The woman driving the Honda said she was Lopez’s girlfriend and told police that she was driving her boyfriend’s mother’s car and that the mother’s name was Jane.
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