Breaking: Mother Sentenced To Life In Prison For Murdering 4 Year Old Son She Thought Was Gay

Jessica Dutro, a 25-year old Oregon mother convicted earlier this month of murdering her four-year old son because she thought he was gay, was just an hour ago sentenced to life in prison. Dutro‘s boyfriend Brian Canady had pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, and was given a sentence of 12 and a half years. Dutro will be eligible for parole in 25 years.

In a heart-breaking story that swept the nation this month, Zachary Dutro-Boggess, just four years old in 2012, was repeatedly kicked in the stomach by Canady and left for two days without medical attention. When finally brought to the hospital, it was too late. He died two days later. Doctors testified that he would have lived had he been given medical attention sooner.

In a Facebook message read in court during the trial as evidence, Dutro had written to her boyfriend that her son, Zachary, at the time was “facing the wall” because he had made her mad, OregonLive reported:

Her son was going to be gay, she wrote, using a slur. “He walks and talks like it. Ugh.”

Canady would have to “work on” Zachary, she wrote.

The cause of death was blunt force trauma “to his abdomen that caused tears in his bowel,” OregonLive had reported.

Zachary “was covered in bumps and bruises,” OregonLove noted in a separate report, “but he died from two holes in his intestines caused by blunt-force trauma. Urine and feces seeped from the holes and harmed his vital organs.”

In still another report, OregonLive had detailed more of four-year old Zachary’s injuries:

Doctors concluded that abdominal trauma had caused the tears in Zachary’s gut. High-velocity car crashes or bike accidents could cause similar injuries, [Dr. Danny] Leonhardt said. Otherwise, it takes forceful, violent kicking or stomping to cause such injuries, he testified.

Bruises were all over Zachary’s body. They suggested that the child had pulled himself into a fetal position to protect himself from a beating, the doctor said. The various injuries indicated he had been abused multiple times, Leonhardt said.

Old, dead tissue from a deep cut hung off of Zachary’s lip. Leonardt, a child abuse specialist at Randall Children’s Hospital and CARES Northwest, could not recall another case where a child had that injury.

“That thing would have bled a lot,” he said. “You just let this flap of lip hang there?”

The doctor said most children with such a wound would have been brought in for emergency care.

Dutro has two other children, a three-year old and a seven-year old, both reportedly showed signs of abuse.

Image: Washington County Sheriff’s Office