Al-Mutahan Mclean
Warning: this story contains disturbing details of child abuse and torture.
An Ohio judge sentenced Al-Mutahan Mclean to serve the maximum allowable sentence—51 years to life in prison—for torturing his 10-year-old son Takoda Collins to death in December 2019. The judge said the brutal facts surrounding the child’s death amounted to “the most horrific case of abuse and torture” the court had ever seen, according to a report from Dayton ABC affiliate WKEF-TV.
Mclean, 32, pleaded guilty earlier this month to one count each of murder, rape, and kidnapping in addition to three counts of child endangerment. Mclean’s fiancée Amanda Hinze, 30, and Hinze’s sister Jennifer Ebert, 27, both of whom also lived with Mclean and Takoda, pleaded guilty to charges including involuntary manslaughter and endangering a child and were also sentenced Wednesday.
The sentence handed down by Judge J. Dennis Adkins of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court followed the recommendation from prosecutors, who told the court that Mclean inflicted “unimaginable, constant torture” on Takoda, “whom he ultimately murdered with a final brutal beating and anal rape.”
“What you did was pure evil. You provided no mercy to your son and you deserve none from this court,” Judge Adkins told McLean, according to a report from Dayton CBS affiliate WHIO-TV.
Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division Lynda Dodd told WHIO that the death penalty was not an option in Mclean’s case but said that the sentence handed down Wednesday was the next best thing, as Mclean would be 83 years old by the time he would even be eligible for parole in the year 2072. If he ever is released from prison, Adkins ordered him to register as a Tier III sex offender and a violent offender.
Montgomery County Prosecutor Matt Heck Jr. praised the sentencing as justice for the slain child.
“Today we have seen justice being given to Takoda Collins. He represents all of the children who are abused and neglected in the community,” Heck said. “We now have now shown that we are going to get justice for Takoda Collins and any victim like Takoda Collins.”
Mclean’s attorney Michael Booher reportedly told the court that it was “wrong” to refer to his client as a “monster.”
“Things are not always as they seem,” Booher told WHIO. “We don’t believe [the abuse] went on for years.”
Booher did not immediately respond to an email from Law&Crime.
Hinze was sentenced to serve 22 to 27.5 years, depending on her behavior in prison while Ebert was ordered to serve eight to 12 years.
Hinze reportedly told the court, “If I could trade my life for his, I would,” but Judge Adkins didn’t appear moved.
“You are to blame in this case, you could have stopped this,” he responded.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, the details surrounding the final days of Takoda’s life were laid out in horrific specificity by prosecutors in a sentencing memo submitted to the court Monday.
The 28-page memo said Takoda lived in a “house of horrors” created by his father and abetted by Hinze and Ebert, who “encouraged” and “facilitated” Mclean’s torture of the child.
The memo says that on the night before Takoda’s death, Hinze and Ebert watched as Mclean repeatedly punched the child “hard in his stomach” until they “heard Takoda crying and saying ‘no more,’ just like he begged his father to stop all the time.”
The next morning, the child was wobbling while trying to come downstairs from the “filthy attic” where he was forced to sleep. The victim fell several times. His father’s response was to “elbow Takoda hard in the back, and order him upstairs” for punishment.
“Once back upstairs, Defendant Mclean gave instructions to put away his folding chair, and bend over for his punishment pose,” prosecutors wrote, referring to an awkward position the boy was forced to hold for “up to 20 hours a day.”
“Because Takoda did not move fast enough, Mclean punished him. As Takoda laid down on his stomach, Defendant Mclean stood on his back, forcing all of his weight, even reaching to the ceiling to push down his weight extra hard, crushing this 10-year-old’s slight body,” documents said.
He then made the child resume the punishment pose while he went downstairs and got “a bottle of hot sauce up to pour on Takoda’s buttocks,” a punishment he “readily admitted” was commonly administered “frequently even daily.”
“Still not satisfied that Takoda was sufficiently compliant, Defendant Mclean threw the child around some more, and grabbed him by the ears, and dragged him down the steps. Defendant took the child into the bathroom and told him to clean his shorts, when Takoda again did not move fast enough, he was told to move faster or he was going to be drowned. Defendant Ebert, from the living room, then heard splashing and Takoda gasping for air,” the memo stated.
Mclean then anally raped the victim with a broken chair leg, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors described abominable torture in the hours before Takoda’s death as “unimaginable.” The memo further said that Mclean’s “reign of terror” began in 2015 — when his son was only in the first grade — and continued uninterrupted until Takoda’s death.
[image via Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office]