Child Molesters, Child Abuse Effects: Bulimia, Eating Disorders, Addictions

The search warrant application was prompted partly by reports from witnesses who told police they had heard someone took out a life insurance policy on the boy before he died Jan. 2.

Police said Thursday that the search failed to turn up such a policy. But the affidavit says Trevor Lawrence Brown, 21, who is charged with first-degree murder in connection with Alexander's death, gave police different accounts of how the toddler was injured.

Detective J.C. Tierney, who applied for the warrant, also said Brown told a friend several weeks before Alexander died that the Cabarrus County Department of Social Services was blaming him for injuries to the child, according to the affidavit.

A magistrate issued the warrant Jan. 6, the day after Brown was indicted.

Alexander lived with Brown, 21, Johnson, 36, and her 9-year-old daughter at Johnson's Concord apartment. Police said Alexander's 9-year-old sister was not injured. She is in foster care now.

According to the affidavit, Dr. Michael Sullivan of the N.C. Medical Examiner's Office told detectives that Alexander died after a penetrating blow to his abdomen by either a kick or a punch.

Sullivan told police Alexander's injuries were "classic child abuse injury," the affidavit said.

In the affidavit, Tierney gave the following account of police interviews with Johnson, Brown and several friends and neighbors of each:

Johnson told police that while she was at work Jan. 1, Brown called her and told her Alexander was throwing up.

In an interview Jan. 2, Brown told police he had tripped over Alexander and accidentally fallen on his stomach a few days before he died, according to the affidavit.

But in an interview Jan. 4, Brown told detectives that on Jan. 1, the day before Alexander died, he was "upset with some of the things that were going on" between him and Johnson. Brown "had Alex in his hands and his mind slipped a little," according to the affidavit.

In that interview, Brown told police he threw Alexander into a couch, aiming for the pillows, but misjudged, and Alexander hit the armrest, according to the affidavit.

"He then started playing horsey with Alex and accidentally dropped Alex on (Brown's) knee hard," Tierney wrote in the affidavit. Brown said Alexander landed on his knee stomach-first, according to the affidavit.

When Johnson returned home that night, she told police, Alexander looked sick. Every time he tried to drink water, he would vomit. He would not eat, and he vomited often throughout the night, according to the affidavit.

Johnson fell asleep beside Alexander about 5 a.m., according to the affidavit. When she awoke about 8 a.m., she found Alexander unresponsive and called 911, she told police.

A neighbor told detectives that Johnson told her she had asked Alexander, "What happened to you? Did Trevor do this to you?" and Alexander said yes, according to the affidavit.

Johnson declined to comment for this story. Brown is being held without bail in the Cabarrus County jail.

Cabarrus DSS Director Jim Cook said social workers had not known that Brown had significant involvement with the family.

Before Alexander died, medical providers had told DSS about three injuries to Alexander, one in mid-November and two in December, Cook said.

Keith Christmas, 46, the boy's father, said the toddler suffered several injuries since mid-November, including a sewing needle lodged in his buttocks, cuts under his left eye and inside his lip, and a bed falling on his hands.

"... Our assessment of the injuries that the child had received prior to his death ... was that we had an active child for whom (the lack of) supervision and childproofing of the house would have been the likely cause of the injuries that we saw," Cook said.