Madyson Middleton Murder Update (photo)

Aug 14, 2015

The teen killer of 8-year-old Madyson Middleton in Santa Cruz last month will face murder charges as an adult. 

The 15-year-old boy is accused of intentionally luring the young girl into his parents’ apartment when they weren’t home so he could rape and slay her.

A medical examiner disclosed this week that Adrian Gonzalez also duct-taped and stabbed Middleton multiple times in the neck, before strangling her and dumping her body in a community recycling bin on July 26th.

He was apprehended while apparently standing guard over the trash receptacle so that searchers would not discover her corpse in it.

Photo of yo-yo maestro Adrian Gonzalez, 15, accused rapist-killer of Madyson Middleton, 8.

The pudgy youth was said to be popular with children in his artist-subsidized neighborhood -- particularly those in Madyson Middleton’s age group -- because he was a yo-yo aficionado and often entertained them with tricks.

Even before his arrest for the cruel killing, though, Gonzalez’s questionable conduct had been noted by some in the Tannery Arts Center housing complex that he and his child victim both lived in.

According to investigators, the teenager had taken to obsessively asking others for updates on the quest to find her, although never actually looking for the missing child himself.

FBI agents assisted state police and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office in an intensive search-and-rescue effort for the murdered girl, who had mysteriously disappeared around suppertime while riding her brand new scooter.

Adrian Gonzalez has now been charged with lying in wait, kidnapping, raping, and murdering Maddy Middleton, and will be formally arraigned on those criminal counts toward the end of September.

He is but one of a slew of twisted teens in recent years who’ve perpetrated unspeakably violent crimes that, heretofore, were solely committed by experienced adult offenders; leading criminologists to explore what influences may be responsible for such a frightening trend.

No plea in his case has been entered yet.

Eponymous Rox

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