STOCKTON – Four people charged with holding a teenager hostage and torturing him for more than a year at a house in Tracy doused the youth with a chemical in an effort to burn and disfigure him, according to an indictment handed down by a San Joaquin County grand jury.
The 17-count indictment was made public Wednesday as the defendants appeared in San Joaquin Superior Court Judge Cinda Fox's courtroom in Stockton.
The grand jury, which meets in secret, indicted Michael Luther Schumacher; his wife, Kelly Layne Lau; neighbor Anthony Vincent Waiters; and former Carmichael resident Caren Ramirez on charges ranging from aggravated mayhem to torture.
Three of the four defendants, who sat with legs shackled in the jury box Wednesday, pleaded not guilty. Schumacher has not entered a plea, but may do so during the next court date, set for April 28.
The case has attracted national attention since the youth, 16, stumbled into a Tracy health club in December with a chain padlocked to his ankle. Detectives have said he was held captive more than a year, shackled for long periods to heavy objects. They also said he had been deprived of food, beaten, slashed and drugged, and rarely was allowed out of the house. Many of the allegations are in the indictment.
The relationship between the youth and the four defendants remains unclear. Schumacher and Lau lived in the Tracy home from which the teenager fled, and Waiters was their neighbor. The youth, now in protective custody, previously lived in the Sacramento area with Ramirez.
San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Angela Hayes took her case to a grand jury rather than present it at a preliminary hearing in open court. The approach, unusual in state criminal cases in California, gives prosecutors more leeway in laying out evidence and protects victims from having to testify in public.
With county grand juries, which have 19 members, only the prosecutor can present evidence, and defendants have no right to legal representation. The approach also allows prosecutors broader powers to subpoena records and people without defense challenges.
A long transcript of the proceedings is to be released within a month, after all lawyers have reviewed it, Fox said.
Schumacher, Lau, Waiters and Ramirez are charged with crimes that could put them in prison for life. Each is charged with torture – inflicting "great bodily injury" for a "sadistic" purpose; aggravated mayhem, for causing the teen "permanent disability or disfigurement"; corporal injury to a child, for beating the youth with a belt and a baseball bat; child abuse; false imprisonment; criminal threats that left the victim in fear of his safety; and assault with caustic chemicals, which they threw on him "with the intent to injure the flesh and disfigure the body."
Ramirez is also charged with child abduction, and Schumacher and Lau face charges of abusing their four biological children.
All four are held in the county jail in lieu of bail ranging from $2.3 million to $3 million.
http://www.sacbee.com/crime/story/1748526.html
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