Ravaged by meth: The terrible toll of drug on mother who 'stomped her son, 9, to death' after abusing drugs since she was 15

Omaree Varela

Synthia Varela-Casaus' 

A 14-year string of mugshots reveals the harrowing decline of a meth-addicted mother accused of stomping her nine-year-old son to death.

Synthia Varela-Casaus' problems began when she was 15 and soon spiralled into a full-blown drug addiction which her family said consumed her life.

Aged just 38, she is charged with killing her son Omaree in her Alburquerque home in December, six months after he made a desperate 911 call to police who did little to help.

She originally claimed he injured himself falling off of a bouncy horse but later admitted kicking the child, according to Alburquerque Police.

Local media reports claimed she told them she had 'kicked him the wrong way' while disciplining him, and he fell over and hit his head.

Now this series of police mugshots show Varela-Casaus' involvement with the authorities has gone back at least 14 years. 

   

She has been arrested more than 20 times on suspicion of offenses from meth possession to prostitution - something her family said dated to her teenage years.

Speaking to the Alburquerque Journal, her stepmother described Varela-Casaus' destructive lifestyle in one word: 'meth'.

'It just ruined her life,' she said. 'She hung around meth dealers and pimps. That became her whole life.'

Varela-Casaus began living with a known drug dealer and hardened criminal when she was still a teenager, her stepmother added.

Often the children would end up staying with relatives and Varela-Casaus gave up custody of one child entirely to her stepmother.

'There were a few months when she’d get sober and we’d be in contact again, but then she’d go back to using meth and disappear,' she said.

Varela-Casaus is being held on a $100,000 cash bond and is next due in court in August for a pre-trial hearing.

She is charged with intentional child abuse resulting in death, five other counts of intentional child abuse and tampering with evidence.

Steve Casaus

Last night her partner Steve Casaus - allegedly heard shouting 'f**k you Omaree! F**k you' in a tearful 911 call the boy made six months before his death - was also indicted over the case.

He is charged with six counts of child abuse, one of tampering with evidence and two of bribing a witness.

Casaus is also charged in a drug case with two counts of trafficking, possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia, DWI and reckless driving.

Two police officers were put on leave after it emerged they visited Omaree's home six months before his death, but did not follow up the visit or file a report.

That was despite the boy's tearful 911 call in which a man and a woman, reportedly his mother and stepfather, can be heard firing off an expletive-laden rant at him in the background.

In a recording of the call, the boy complains about a bruise and both adults mock him. 

‘He's a s***, everything f*****g hurts you,’ says the man. 

‘How can it hurt you one day and not the next day Omaree? It doesn't, does it?! You just want attention right!?’ the woman adds. 

The abusers then begin threatening violence on the boy. 

‘Yeah, f*****g beat the s*** out of you Omaree,’ the man says. 

Now crying, Omaree shouts ‘stop, please.’ 

‘Shut the f*** up before I really pop you hard man,’ the man fires back. 

‘You caused this on yourself Omaree, cause you don’t want to f*****g change do you?’ the woman shouts.

And the man says: ‘You want me to be your dad? F*** you! I ain't gonna be s*** to you. Don't you even f*****g look at me as your dad. F*** you Omaree! F*** you.

‘I never hated nobody like you in my life, ever... You know that Omaree. I hate you more than I ever hated anybody in my whole life. And I've been on this earth 41 years, and nobody made me feel the way you do Omaree.’ 

Job 39:16

She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not her's: her labour is in vain without fear;

Lamentations 4:3

Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

EXODUS 22:

18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

DEUTERONOMY 18:

10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,

11 Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.