Author of children’s books, engineer husband exposed for a double life in a house of horrors
A children’s author from Florida – known for writing stories about friendship – has been charged along with her husband with abuse and neglect their adopted children, authorities said.
Jennifer Wolfthal, author of “A True Friend,” and her husband Joseph Wolfthal, a Lockheed Martin engineer, pleaded guilty Jan. 13 to aggravated child abuse and child neglect with serious bodily injury, according to plea agreements. from Fox News Digital.
According to the plea agreement, Jennifer Wolfthal will be sentenced to 12 years in prison, while her husband will receive 10 years behind bars.
“This plea agreement ensures that Wolfthali will spend a significant amount of time in prison while protecting the already traumatized victims from the stress of testifying,” a spokesman State Attorney’s Office in Florida’s 18th Judicial Circuit, he said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The state attorney’s office made sure the police and the children’s new guardian supported this sentence before she agreed to it.”
CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHOR AND HUSBAND ACCUSED OF ABUSING THEIR OWN CHILDREN
Joseph and Jennifer Wolfthal pleaded guilty to aggravated child abuse and child neglect with serious bodily injury on Jan. 13. (Seminole County Sheriff’s Office)
The investigation against the couple was launched in 2021 after their then 8-year-old adopted daughter was brought to the hospital with organ failure, unconscious and covered by injuries. The couple had two other adopted children – a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old.
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“Because of the height and weight [the girl]the swollen bruise on the back of her head and the wound on her lip and broken tooth are not likely to have been caused by an off-balance fall,” the police report said.
READ THE JENNIFER WOLFTHAL AGREEMENT: APPLICATION USERS CLICK HERE
READ THE JOSEPH WOLFTHAL AGREEMENT: APPLICATION USERS CLICK HERE
While the girl was in the hospital, investigators visited her family house and said they found two other children with “symptoms of malnutrition, bruises and lack of care”.
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Police said the children’s bedrooms had door handles set backwards, with locks on the outside.
During additional searches of the home, authorities found more than 1,100 written paragraphs that read: “My body remains flat on the bed the entire time. I was never given permission to move or say anything. Now I have to write about this along with everything else. I am fool.”
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Jennifer Wolfthal, the author of the children’s book entitled “The True Friend”, should be sentenced to 12 years in prison. Her husband faces a sentence of 10 years in prison. (Amazon.com)
The book is still for sale on Amazon, but reviewers have filled the comments with links to newspaper articles about the allegations against the author.
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The authorities also divided that all three of the Wolfthals’ adopted children were the subject of other horrific abuse stories. After the investigation, the children were moved to another family.
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Fox News Digital’s Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
