A Minnesota elementary school teacher and his husband died in a murder-suicide after a teen boy reported that they had sex with him, documents showed.
South St. Paul teacher Aric Babbitt, 40, and Matthew Deyo refused to discuss the allegations when police searched the couple’s home last month, according to court records obtained by The St. Paul Pioneer Press.
The couple were found dead nine days later on a beach thousands of miles away in Washington state. Deyo, 36, fatally shot Babbitt before taking his own life on Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands, according to an autopsy report.
The teenage victim told investigators he suffered a breakdown and went to the police Aug. 14 after the couple had preyed on him and other teens, according to Dakota County court records cited by the Star Tribune. The school district suspended Babbitt and opened its own investigation.
Police discovered in an Aug. 16 search of the couple’s home that a clock on the back of a toilet in a bathroom had a hidden camera, the court records showed. The investigators also uncovered a computer folder named “kiddies,” officials said.
The teen showed police Polaroid pictures of himself naked with Babbitt, who has taught at Lincoln Center Elementary since 2002 and was slated to teach fourth grade this year, according to records referenced by WCCO-TV.
Babbitt began acting as the teen’s mentor when he came out to his family, the boy said. The couple plied him and other teen boys with pornography, alcohol and marijuana at their house, their cabin in rural Crow Wing County and even at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis during Gay Pride weekend, investigators said.
They had given the teen, whose parents are family friends with them, underwear and yoga shorts, according to the court documents. Babbitt told the boy’s mother that the gifts were just “a gay thing” when she asked about them, the documents showed.
The victim said the couple took him to a jazz concert and had sex with him in a hotel afterward, police said. The boy told investigators he didn’t want “to do this, but felt unsure about how to say no,” according to the documents.
South St. Paul School District Superintendent Dave Webb told the Star Tribune that the district has identified even more possible victims during the course of its review. The district had placed Babbitt on administrative leave Aug. 17, after learning of the South St. Paul police investigation.
“We continue to make counseling services available to both students and staff, and that won’t stop,” Webb said. “We sent out letters to families to make them aware of the situation.”
Police said a kayaker in Washington state found the bodies of Babbitt and Deyo next to a suicide note on the beach in the San Juan Islands Aug. 25. They had borrowed a gun and ammunition from Deyo’s brother, telling him they were going camping and needed it for protection from bears.
The couple “felt like they didn’t have an out and ending their lives was best for them,” Babbitt’s sister said in a text message to family and friends, the Press reported.
“We received a letter from them in the mail yesterday,” she wrote. “We are all devastated and in a lot of pain.”
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