Mother admits guilt in murder of son Elijah Lewis

By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org

The Merrimack woman who murdered her five-year-old son and left him in a shallow grave plans to plead guilty this week and accept a prison sentence of 55 years to life.

Danielle Dauphinais's attorney filed an intent to change her plea from not guilty to guilty in Hillsborough Superior Court South in Nashua as part of a negotiated agreement.

According to the document, Dauphinais will plead guilty Thursday to two counts of first-degree murder of her son and witness tampering. Dauphinais, 38, will serve a prison sentence of three and a half to seven years for each count of witness tampering after she completes her sentence for the murder.

She is effectively accepting a higher maximum sentence in exchange for avoiding a life sentence without the hope of parole.

Prosecutors announced in August that the state would seek harsher sentences at the trial scheduled for October. Dauphinais faced life imprisonment without parole if convicted of premeditated murder. If convicted of premeditated murder, prosecutors would have sought a prison sentence of at least 35 years to life.

Her boyfriend, 33-year-old Joseph Stapf, was scheduled to testify against her in the upcoming trial. Stapf pleaded guilty in 2022 to manslaughter and other charges for his role in Elijah's death. He is serving a prison sentence of 22 to 45 years.

As part of her agreement, Dauphinais will not sell her story or profit in any way from her son's murder.

Dauphinais allegedly killed Elijah in a fit of rage on September 21, 2021, after he had been starved and beaten for weeks. Stapf reportedly found the boy naked in the bathtub, surrounded by broken, blood-stained tiles. Stapf still did not provide the boy with medical attention. Instead, he bandaged the wound on his head and took him back to his room, court records show.

After the boy was dead, Dauphinais had Stapf take Elijah's lifeless body to a forest in Abington, Massachusetts, where he was buried, according to court records. Stapf is portrayed in court records as a coward whose indifference toward the boy enabled Dauphinais' abuse.

Dauphinais starved her son, left him standing in his room in her basement apartment for hours without clothes or blankets, and she beat, bruised and burned him, court records show. Throughout, Stapf was on Dauphinais' side. When she sent Stapf a text message complaining that Elijah wanted food, Stapf alluded to her abusive parenting.

“Yeah, he's a real bastard. Wow, I can't stand that boy,” Stapf replied.

But Elijah's worsening condition and extreme treatment began to worry Stapf, according to court documents. Stapf decided that Dauphinais would feed and clothe the boy. According to the text messages, the goal was to get Elijah healed enough so that the couple could safely leave him with another relative.

“Maybe let him sleep and feed him,” Stapf once wrote. “No more you-know-what with him, he has to look good so we can go out,” Stapf wrote.

Elijah's mother was unwilling to show her son mercy or kindness.

“This (swear word) child doesn’t deserve anything,” she wrote back.

Elijah weighed 19 pounds when he died. The average 5-year-old boy weighs 40 pounds. The boy also had a rotting hole in his back, a result of torture, court records show.

Elijah's cause of death was violence and neglect, including facial and scalp injuries, acute fentanyl intoxication, malnutrition and pressure ulcers, according to the Massachusetts Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

When authorities began asking questions about Elijah weeks later, Dauphinais and Stapf fled the state. They were arrested by New York City Transit Authority officers in the Bronx, New York, on October 17, 2021.