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11 months ago
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A relative has claimed she raised the alarm three years before two young brothers escaped naked and filthy through a broken window at their Milwaukee 'house of horrors'.
Neighbors called police on July 13 after seeing the boys aged seven and nine walking in the street like 'cavemen who had never seen the sun'.
Police who raided the home in Bluemound Heights described it as 'the worst they've ever seen', with piles of stinking garbage and feces on the wall of the boys' locked bedroom.
Parents Joel Manke and Katie Koch face up to 43 years in jail for neglect, but his sister-in-law told police she reported them to Wisconsin Child Protective Services back in 2020.
'She said she knew right away that something wasn't right because the children weren't in school, they were not potty-trained and were non-verbal,' police wrote in their report.
The mother of the boys who escaped from a 'house of horrors' last week - Katie Koch, 34, has admitted two felony counts of chronic neglect of a child and felony false imprisonment, while her boyfriend, Joel Manke, 38, is charged with four felony counts
Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Mallory Davis described conditions inside the house as 'like something out of a horror movie'
Koch had nailed a board over her sons' bedroom window 'to keep the children from bothering the nosey neighbor'
Koch, 34, and the children moved into the home in 2019 but Manke, 38, admitted the boys had never seen a doctor or been to school during their time in his house.
It has also emerged that Wisconsin CPS previously investigated Koch for neglect of their now 12-year-old half sibling in 2011, 2017 and 2018 before clearing her each time.
Manke's sister-in-law remembered Koch being 'rough with the children' and 'not very gentle', but said she had not seen the boys since Christmas 2021 when Koch was 'extremely anxious and nervously, chattering over and over and over, and just very uncomfortable in a social setting'.
The couple used Instagram to paint a picture of a happy family life where the boys spent time with their grandmother, played in the snow, enjoyed baking and decorating for Christmas, and went on fun road trips.
In reality the children's hair was matted with feces and their mother had nailed a board over their bedroom window 'to keep the children from bothering the nosey neighbor'.
One neighbor told police he had lived in his home for more than 30 years and never seen a child in or outside the couple's house near 71st and Stevenson.
Koch told police the human waste covering the house was 'clay, paint and chocolate', but officers found it 'on the floor and all over the walls'.
'I entered the living room and observed a terrible hoarding situation - it was hard to see the floor,' one wrote.
She has since written a three-page 'apology letter' to her children but could face 43 years in prison when she is sentenced February 8
The boarded up window's of the children's bedroom had paw patrol curtains covered in mold and feces
Katie Koch, 34, and her boyfriend, Joel Manke, 38, are seen in a photo posted to Instagram. Koch frequently shared images depicting a happy family life, while in reality her sons were imprisoned and lived in squalor
In another photo, the child is seen hanging garlands to celebrate Christmas
Neighbor Christine Eder said the children looked like 'they had never been outside'. 'They were just walking different. Their hair looked like it had never been brushed,' she said
'A smell of urine and feces stained the air within the residence', the officer added, with a 'mound of trash and garbage' next to the boy's bedroom door.
'The door was opened halfway, and a greater amount of the stench of urine and feces seemed to get worse as I approached the children's room,' he recalled.
Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Mallory Davis said the boys had been imprisoned in their bedroom and described the house as 'like something out of a horror movie'.
She told a hearing in July that the conditions were so bad that the children's heads had to be shaved because their hair was matted with feces.
'These children have been horribly damaged from their mother's actions,' Davis said.
'They are completely uneducated. They are not potty trained, even at their ages.
'They are, essentially at this point, unable to function in society.'
During a police interview, Manke said he knew the living conditions were not good for the children, but he had to 'pick his battles' with Koch to avoid arguments.
Koch was filmed looking upset in a subsequent court hearing as a prosecutor outlined the abuse and neglect she is accused of inflicting on her children.
Koch pleaded guilty to two felony counts of chronic neglect of a child and felony false imprisonment on Thursday.
She has since written a three-page 'apology letter' to her children and is due to be sentenced February 8.
Manke, who is not the boy's biological father has denied the charges and been released on $6,500 bail ahead of his next hearing on January 16.
'Joel tried his hardest to get the kids to go to school,' his mother Diane Manke, told WTMJ.
'What more can you do when you're not the dad? You can tell the mom, but she didn't want to do that.
'Those poor babies, we had no idea.
'Don't think for a second if we had an idea, we wouldn't have taken care of that. I don't know what went wrong or where it went wrong.'
Both boys are thought to be in the care of Wisconsin CPS.
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