Tammi Bleimeyer, of Spring, Tex., denied she had anything to with the alleged abuse of her 5-year-old stepson, who was found bruised, bleeding and severely malnourished last week.
An alleged sicko stepmom accused of starving a 5-year-old boy and keeping him prisoner in a closet denied abusing the boy, saying she was "shocked" by photos showing his skeletal frame.
“I don’t know what caused him to look like that," Tammi Bleimeyer told KHOU-TV. "I don’t know if it’s a health issue or something else like that.”
“I don’t want to be like everyone else and assume the worse," she said.
The 33-year-old, who was arrested Saturday on a child endangerment charge, said the boy and his father, Bradley Bleimeyer, 24, lived in Alabama, not in her suburban Houston home.
She was clueless about the alleged prison camp-style abuse, she said, and had not seen the boy "with his shirt off recently," she told the station.
The accusations, she said, were "lies."
“I think the story has gotten very twisted," Bleimeyer said. "There have been things added to it. Things changed.
The horrifying case came to light on Friday after police found the boy with the couple in a motel near Bleimeyer's Spring home.
The day before, Harris County deputies responded to a domestic disturbance call at the house, where they found Bradley Bleimeyer fighting with his 16-year-old stepson.
The teen told deputies his younger stepbrother was being starved and kept in a closet beneath the stairs.
Police found the closet, but Tammi and the boy were not at the home.
Bleimeyer told KHOU-TV she was not hiding out at the motel where cops found her on Friday.
She and her husband are separated, and he was staying at the motel while in town on a visit, she said.
She had brought him a pizza, and the three of them were eating when cops arrived, she said.
Cops said the scene was far from a wholesome family pizza party.
The boy "was in bad shape, bleeding from the back," Assistant Chief Deputy Mark Herman told the Houston Chronicle. He weighed 29 pounds and was wearing a soiled diaper.
In her interview with KHOU, Bleimeyer also said the boy was never kept in a small crawl space under the stairs.
He slept in a bunk bed, she said.
Meanwhile, the little boy, who has not been named, was being cared for at Houston Hospital.
He was recently reunited with his birth mother, who is fighting to get custody of him.
Her lawyer said the Bleimeyers often took the boy out of state, making it hard for his mother to see him.
She had not seen the boy in more than two years.
"It was very emotional [for her] to find the child in such a condition," Frank Mann, the mother's attorney, told the Chronicle.
Tammi Bleimeyer, who has five children, including the 16-year-old, is out on $2,000 bond.
Her other children were staying with relatives, the station reported.
Bradley Bleimeyer was already out on bail for a burglary bust, was being held without bond.
The shocking case was not the first time the couple has come under suspicion for abuse.
Social workers investigating neglect allegations interviewed and photographed the boy on Feb. 20, the Chronicle reported.
But when they tried to follow up, the couple lawyered up and later claimed they had moved.
A spokeswoman for child protective services said the boy did not look like he'd been starved when they saw him.
"He was not in this state of malnourishment," CPS spokeswoman Estella Olguin told the newspaper.
"We still had more investigating to do on that case," she said.
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