Published: Friday, December 03, 2010, 6:21 PM ??? Updated: Saturday, December 04, 2010, 5:59 AM
MOBILE, Ala. -- Mobile police will begin searching Saturday for the bodies of two children — Jonathan Chase DeBlase and Natalie Alexis DeBlase — after their father, John Joseph DeBlase, blamed their stepmother for their suspected fate.
As two officers escorted DeBlase from police headquarters tonight, he accused the children’s stepmother when asked who killed them, and responded, “Don’t’ know,” when asked why.
DeBlase, 27, remained in the Mobile County Metro Jail late todaycharged with two counts of aggravated child abuse and two counts of abuse of a corpse.
Mobile police Chief Micheal T. Williams said tonight that police will bring in cadaver dogs to search an area that’s within 100 miles of Mobile.
“We are not sure exactly, but he has given us an indication of a location where they may be, or where he remembers burying the children,” Williams said, adding that police believe the children are dead. “Based on what he told us, we believe that.”
Williams said that DeBlase could face additional charges.
“We want to make sure we find these children and that they are buried properly with the dignity and respect they deserve,” Williams said.
The children’s stepmother, Heather Leavell-Keaton, remains jailed in Louisville, Ky., charged with two counts of willful child abuse.
Williams said he did not know when Leavell-Keaton would be brought to Mobile.
DeBlase was apprehended in Milton, Fla., late Thursday by a Santa Rosa County sheriff’s deputy responding to a report of a suspicious person, according to a police report obtained by WKRG-TV Channel 5.
DeBlase was brought to Mobile, where he was being questioned this afternoon, according to police.
Jonathan, 3, and Natalie — whose birth date is given as Nov. 24, 2005, according the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website — have not been accounted for since July, police spokesman Officer Christopher Levy said.
The search for DeBlase intensified this week after Leavell-Keaton, 22, was arrested in Kentucky and charged with two counts of willful child abuse in connection with an incident that occurred while she, the children and their father were living in west Mobile.
On Thursday night, the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Department received a complaint about a suspicious person living at a home on Charles Circle, according to WKRG.
When the deputy arrived, the homeowner told him that DeBlase had been staying at the house for two days. The homeowner told the deputy that he called the Sheriff’s Department after hearing about the investigation into the children’s disappearance and DeBlase’s potential involvement.
According to the report, the homeowner had confronted DeBlase, who yelled, “I didn’t do it!” and fled.
The deputy took DeBlase into custody at an intersection just blocks from the home. The deputy wrote in his report that DeBlase “made a spontaneous statement of ‘I didn’t do it.’”
Mobile police moved DeBlase to police headquarters this afternoon, where he was questioned.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children posted online pictures of Natalie and Jonathan on Tuesday, listed them as “endangered missing.”
Anyone with information in the case should call Mobile police at 251-208-7211.
(This report was updated with additional information at 8:35 p.m. Press-Register reporter Jillian Kramer contributed to this report.)
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