Parents Held After Boy’s Body Is Found in Car

The body of a 3-year-old boy was left in the trunk of his transient parents’ car for five years, said Kern County sheriff’s deputies who found the tiny skeleton and arrested the parents.

De Ette Stewart, 31, and William Bell, 36, the boy’s stepfather, were booked into Kern County Jail for investigation of manslaughter. The county coroner performed an autopsy Wednesday, and authorities were awaiting results before deciding on charges against the two, Colton Police Lt. Randy Heusterberg said.

No one outside the family noticed Brandon Stewart was missing, probably because the couple moved around so much, Heusterberg said.

“These people are not stable,” he said. “They don’t have a permanent home or have roots. They don’t have ties that are that strong.”

Sheriff’s deputies found Bell and Stewart at a Bakersfield motel Friday after an anonymous caller said one of the couple’s five children had died five years ago. The other four children, ages 1, 2, 4 and 7, are being cared for by county Child Protective Services.

Stewart and Bell told deputies that Brandon died in May, 1988, in the bathtub of their apartment in Colton, in San Bernardino County. They led Colton police to the Lytle Creek area, in a remote part of the San Bernardino Mountains, where they said they had buried the body.

But under questioning, Bell said: “Well, maybe I never really removed the child from the trunk of the car after all,” authorities said.

Deputies searched the trunk of the couple’s 1965 Ford Mustang and found the skeleton under a mound of clothing and blankets.