A terrifying case has unraveled in Chester County, Pennsylvania that has the District Attorney calling it an “American horror story.”

Gary Fellenbaum met Jillian Tait working at Wal Mart and decided to move in with one another just last month. However this decision might not have come at a good time, considering that Gary Fellenbaum was still living in a trailer with his ex-wife, Amber Fellenbaum, and their three children.

When three-year-old Scott Fellenbaum disobediently refused to eat some toast that Jillian Tait had prepared for him, the couple began a tirade of violence, involving beating the child with a frying pan, throwing him against the wall, tying him to a chair, and hanging him upside down from the ceiling of the trailer. The couple is being charged with murder and prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty.

Amber Fellenbaum is being charged with child endangerment and not acting to stop the couple from brutally murdering her son. There was a torturous element to the nature of the murder, making the District Attorney all the more motivated to see the people involved punished severely. Authorities reported that the abuse had been occurring in previous month but came to a head in these last two weeks.

With cases like this, many questions are raised regarding what steps are being taken to protect children from these dangerous situations at home. Rolling out upgraded mental health evaluation, more monitoring of problem cases, and increased social work in impoverished regions are all recommendations put forward by social scientists, but it is extremely difficult to intervene in families with violent tendencies without significant background research done first.

The District Attorney is moving forward with the case quickly in an effort to make an example of this couple, and hopefully the action taken will serve as a method of prevention moving forward.