Ghoulish Missouri foster mom admits to trading child for a monkey since they werent getting along
The ghoulish Missouri foster mom accused of shipping a young girl in her care to Texas for a friend’s monkey did the disturbing deal because she was “frustrated” with the kid.Brenda Deutsch, 70, who has fostered more than 200 children over the last 20 years, pleaded guilty to first-degree child endangerment for the bizarre exchange on Monday, Fox 2 News reported citing court records.Deutsch’s downfall began when a school resource officer at the girl’s Winfield school started probing a series of unexplained absences in February 2025 – only to hear a startling rumor that she had been traded to someone in Texas for an exotic animal, court documents said.The officer contacted Texas police and spoke with the person the girl was staying with, who allegedly said she was keeping her because the little girl and her foster mother “weren’t getting along.”Meanwhile, Deutsch claimed the child was safe and enrolled in school in the Lone Star State.“It was described to me early on that the defendant … became frustrated with this individual child and asked her friend in Texas if she would just take the child and keep her,” Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Wood told NBC News.“And at that point I think is when she says, ‘You know, why don’t you send a monkey and you can just keep the child?'”The friend told police she no longer wanted to continue caring for the child, who was often left alone for several days at a time, but claimed Deutsch refused to pay for a plane ticket home, court papers said.The girl eventually returned to Missouri, where she told authorities she had been mentally and physically abused under Deutsch’s roof, including being beaten with wood, shoes and a paddle.Child welfare officials had also received a tip months earlier that the girl was being abused.Deutsch was initially hit with additional charges, including two counts of child abuse or neglect, but prosecutors agreed to dismiss those in exchange for her guilty plea, ...