John Locher / AP
Elizabeth Odell-Quate appears in court Monday, June 12, 2017, in Las Vegas.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017 | 7 p.m.
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This Tuesday, June 6, 2017, photo provided by Metro Police shows Jason Quate, who was arrested Tuesday after his wife told police he had forced her into sex trafficking. She also accused Quate of killing their daughter and putting the body in the garage of a vacant home in Centreville, Ill. Police in Illinois found the body, but no charges have been filed in the girl’s death. Authorities believe the girl died in 2013.
One of two surviving daughters of a man and a woman accused of concealing the death of a third, whose body they hid in an Illinois garage several years, told investigators that she only knew her mother from photos her father showed her, even though the family seemingly lived together, according to a Metro Police arrest report.
The other girl only referred to the woman as the “other parent” whose name she didn't know and who was "mean" and "yelled" at her.
Both girls had scarring to their bodies consistent with beatings, one of them had a “large patch” of hair missing from her head. In one of them, the appearance of genitalia showed possible signs of sexual assault. One of them had a burn injury between her thighs, police said.
And when detectives showed up to investigate at the family’s central valley apartment on June 6 to probe allegations that Jason Quate forced his wife into prostitution, they found images and videos of men sexually assaulting at least one girl (between ages 6 and 8) on his cellphone, police said.
The new disturbing details emerged in amended arrest reports of Jason Quate made available this week. He’d originally only been booked in the prostitution case.
He and his wife, Elizabeth Odell-Quate, 35, are facing charges in a separate St. Louis, Ill., case, after investigators last week found the body of their 6-year-old daughter, Alysha, in a garage behind a vacant house, where it’d been for about four years, police said.
Detectives broke the investigation open last week when Odell-Quate showed up at a Las Vegas women’s shelter to report that her husband had forced her into prostitution, didn’t let her communicate with her daughters, ages 11 and 13, and had threatened to kill her, documents show.
According to the woman, the family fled their home and later from Illinois to Las Vegas after a child protective services investigator, she told police, approached her.
Upon further investigating, Metro directed Illinois authorities to the location of Alysha’s body. Prosecutors there later charged the Quates with concealment of a homicidal death.
Jason Quate last week told a St. Louis Dispatch newspaper reporter that Alysha died when he spanked her while she had — unbeknownst to him — a piece of steak in her mouth.
When a Metro SWAT unit showed up at the apartment last week, they found that one of the girls, who shared a bed with Jason Quate, was not wearing any underwear or pants, police said.
Allegations emerged after an Illinois school official reported to the state's Department of Family Services that Jason Quate had been seen open-mouth kissing one of the girls when he dropped her off at school, prompting officials to have the girls further assessed.
One of the girls had more scarring to her body than the other, but both "appeared pale, had multiple scars over multiple body parts, to include the face, arms, legs, torso and head (redacted) also had difficulty walking and has a large patch of missing hair and both children are not attending school," a detective wrote in the report.
Jason Quate admitted to Metro detectives that he'd been involved in the death of his daughter in Illinois, according to the report. He also said that he and his wife had disciplined the surviving girls using an extension cord to beat them on their butts, but that they sometimes would move, causing the cord to strike them elsewhere.
The bald spot on one of the girls came from her being hit when her sister threw something, which later caused an infection from which puss was excreted, Quate told police.
He denied sexually assaulting his daughter and terminated the interview once he was asked about it.
Jason Quate is being held at the Clark County Detention Center on the local charges (one count each) of sex trafficking, accepting the earnings of a prostitute, child abuse or neglect, possession of child pornography, and the warrant out of Illinois, jail records show.
As of this afternoon, he hadn't been charged with sexual assault.
Odell-Quate is awaiting extradition for the homicide case and a probation violation for an unrelated forgery case, according to court documents.
