She Said She Was Homeschooling Kids. The Truth Was Awful

Eleven-year-old Roman Lopez disappeared in January 2020, and detectives who came to his family’s Placerville, California, home after he was reported missing ultimately found him curled up in a 55-gallon storage bin, his 42-pound body dressed only in a diaper, a trickle of blood coming from his nose. It was later determined the boy had been poisoned with table salt; hypernatremia, or excess sodium in the blood, can cause seizures and delirium before turning fatal. His father and stepmother were arrested, and are now both serving time on charges of second-degree murder (his stepmother pleaded no contest; his father pleaded guilty)—and the story behind the little boy’s murder, as recounted by the Washington Post, is devastating to contemplate.

Roman was seven years old when his eventual stepmother, Lindsay Piper, came into his father’s life. She had four kids of her own, and by the time Roman died, three other children had also been placed in the family’s care by a struggling friend. The Post’s story about the case is part of its series on homeschooling, and the piece looks at the lax regulation on homeschooling in Michigan, where the Piper family lived until a few months before Roman’s murder. Lindsay Piper claimed to be homeschooling the eight children in her home, but the Post spoke to other children who lived in the house and they say their days were spent sleeping, fighting, and playing video games while Piper stayed in bed watching TV—or tortured and abused Roman. The full, awful story is at the Post. (Read more Longform stories.)