Arrest made in missing boy case
Mother charged with 1986 murder of her son
More than three decades after a 3-year-old boy was reported missing in Las Vegas, his mother — now living in Dania Beach — has been arrested and charged with killing her son.
Amy Elizabeth Fleming, 60, moved to Florida the year after her little boy was reported missing in 1986 from a swap meet.
Police never found little Francillon Pierre’s body but long suspected his mother had played a role in his death, investigators from the North Las Vegas Police Department said at a news conference Monday.
Fleming, also known as Amy Luster, was arrested at her job in Boca Raton on Jan. 29. She waived extradi-
tion and is now en route to Nevada to face a murder charge, records show.
When Francillon reportedly vanished on Saturday, Aug. 2, 1986, Fleming told police she and the boy’s stepfather lost track of him while shopping for a bicycle at the swap meet.
But investigators don’t think Francillon ever went to the swap meet with his mom and stepdad that day. Witnesses there said they never saw the little boy, nicknamed Yo-Yo, with the adults. And neighbors told police the youngster hadn’t been seen for weeks.
“We believe they were at the swap meet as a diversion and he was already deceased,” an investigator currently working the cold case said at the news conference.
Fleming implicated the boy’s father, Jean Pierre, who lived in Haiti. He was cleared as a suspect in 1986. Police are now trying to locate him.
Eight months before Francillon went missing, the little boy was found covered in welts. His mother and stepfather, Mahaleel “Lee” Luster, were arrested on felony child abuse charges, police said. They were eventually found guilty and sentenced to probation.
“The parents have always been persons of interest in the case,” Officer Eric Leavitt, a police spokesman said. “At this point, evidence points to [Fleming], but the investigation is ongoing.”
Police did not reveal what helped them make an arrest after so many years. New witnesses have come forward, police said.
Torn-up jail letters sent between Fleming and Luster while they were jailed for several months on charges related to the child abuse provided some insight, Chief Pamela Ojeda said.
“What happened was totally unintentional. I hope you know that,” Fleming wrote in one of the letters that detectives pieced back together, Ojeda said.
“A lot of little things put together gave us the knowledge that Amy Fleming was involved in the homicide of her child,” the investigator at the news conference said. “We definitely believe that child abuse could have played a factor in this homicide.”
Francillon’s missing status was entered into the database kept by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which, several years ago, released an age-progressed image showing what he might have looked like at the age of 29.
Fleming and Luster, now 62, moved to Florida in 1987, according to an article from the Orlando Sentinel.
Since then, the couple have lived in Hollywood, Sunny Isles Beach, Lauderhill and Lake Mary, public records show.
The couple’s current neighbors in Dania Beach said Fleming kept to herself and didn’t talk with anyone. They said they had only seen her come and go from the duplex where she lived at 50 SE 6th St.
Posted on the door of that duplex when a reporter visited was a handwritten letter signed by Lee.
“My wife did her son,” it said. not murder
Information from The Associated Press and South Florida Sun Sentinel news partner WPEC-CBS12 was used to supplement this report.