Mother of four-year-old Jessica Mast who “had been beaten, submerged in a pond, then left to freeze on the bank” was seen laughing during her court appearance. The Sun reported that Mary Mast, who allegedly sexually abused her daughter along with her husband James Mast, smiled while leaving court in Warsaw, Missouri. The 29-year-old accused is facing charges of endangering the welfare of a child resulting in death and domestic assault.
The hearing on Tuesday, January 5, was attended by two members of Child Advocacy Against Pedophilia — Mel Pleasant and Tiffany Hill — who reportedly witnessed Mary Mast’s weird behavior. “Seeing them was very hard. The mom especially. She laughed. She laughed when she left the courtroom. I find nothing funny, not one thing funny about this case. About her daughter’s death. She turned around from her attorney, she smiled the whole way out. That’s disturbing,” the two women told KY3 News. They also stated that on January 16, their child advocacy group will also hold a peaceful protest at the courthouse. “There are some people that don’t think it’s a big deal. She’s already dead. She’s gone. But it is. At the last minute they stripped that little girl from her pride and that’s why we stand here today,” Pleasant added.
The little girl died in late December after she was “beaten, submerged in a pond, then left to freeze on the bank” before being brought back into the home. In connection with the alleged crime, Mary’s husband and two of their neighbors — Ethan Mast, 35, and Kourtney Aumen, 21 — are also facing charges. Investigators said that the neighbors, pressed with second-degree murder charges, allegedly murdered the child to “remove a demon”. James has been charged with first-degree endangering the welfare of a child, and first-degree endangering the welfare of a child resulting in serious physical injury.
Reports said that on the day of the crime, Ethan and Kourtney went to the victim’s family at eight in the morning and beat her while forcing her parents to watch. Later in the day, they even used a belt to hurt the child. According to a probable cause statement from Sgt. Chris Wilson, the neighbors sexually abused the girl and also forced her parents to use a foreign object to perform sexual acts on her. They allegedly beat Mary that day as she was found in a bedroom with her two sons, a two-year-old toddler and an infant by authorities who responded to the scene.
James also told detectives that Ethan and Kourtney said to him “Satan would come” if he did anything to protect his daughter. When Sgt. Wilson interrogated the father “how he could let people do this to his family and he stated they were told (his wife) had a ‘demon’ inside her and her children would end up just like her if it was not taken care of,” the probable cause statement added. “Based on what I know, I think this could be some kind of honest-to-goodness religious-type episode,” Benton County Sheriff Eric Knox earlier said.
