Arrest warrant: 911 call for attempted suicide tips off police that Blake Deven was missing
The Fayetteville Police Department first learned Blake Deven was missing after a boy at the Deven home called 911 and said he wanted to kill himself in November 2023.
The boy told officials, “He had not seen his brother Blake in five years and that the last time he saw Blake, he had a broken arm and that he is now dead,” according to the affidavit.
It prompted Avantae Deven to convince a family acquaintance to impersonate Blake Deven during a DSS visit.
The warrant also states investigators learned from the surviving siblings that the three oldest children were kept in small rooms in complete darkness with little to no food and a plastic container to use as a bathroom.
It states that in order to earn food privileges the children were forced to do “paperwork,” which “consisted of writing hundreds and frequently thousands of sentences and paragraphs apologizing for some misdeed they had supposedly done.
Avantae Deven is also accused of beating the children severely enough to require medical care, but only "applying things she deemed as natural cures llike applying honey to open wounds."
According to the documents, investigators recovered evidence that supports the allegations. It includes items that “corroborate statements about torture, starvation and isolation.”
One of the five siblings ran from the home and left the state, according to the documents. Upon returning to the house, the sibling asked about London Deven’s whereabouts “after knowing what happened to Blake Deven.”
The warrant states Avantae Deven responded, “I had to put her in a mental institution,” when asked about London Deven.
The documents state Avantae Deven developed a plan to hide Blake Deven’s remains until she could decide how to permanently dispose of them.
According to the warrant, Avantae Deven told one of the adopted children, “If this ever gets found out, you need to take the blame because I will get the death penalty and because of your age, you won’t get in trouble if you take the blame,” Avantae Deven told one of the siblings in the warrant.
Avantae Deven is accused of murdering two of her adopted children and forcing another child to help dismember one of the bodies. The arrest warrants also detail the horrific abuse suffered by the children.
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