A Pennsylvania couple has admitted starving their three young children a year after they were found emaciated in their home, days from death and covered in filth.
Joshua Weyant, 33, and Brandi Weyant, 38, were arrested in December 2016 after police received an anonymous tip that they were abusing their children who were aged between four and six.
Two of them were girls aged four and five and the third was a six-year-old boy.
All weighed under 30lbs and were so hungry when deputies rescued them they had begun eating paint.
On Thursday, their parents pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, conspiracy, false imprisonment, endangering the welfare of children.
They will return to court in May and both face a minimum of ten years behind bars.
Brandi and Joshua Weyant (above in their 2016 mugshots) have pleaded guilty to neglecting and abusing their three children
The children were covered in bruises and abrasions when they were discovered and they were living in filth in a locked room.
They had lice and were covered in animal hair along with human urine and feces.
At the time, Pennsylvania prosecutors said the couple no longer wanted to look after the kids so had decided to put them in a room to starve them.
A doctor who examined them said the two oldest children were just days from death when they were saved.
‘They looked like they had walked out of a concentration camp,’ Chief Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Gettle told Penn Live.
They were so thin, doctors could see their bones through their skin.
The children were aged four to six and were so thin when they were found at their Halifax home in Pennsylvania (above) doctors could see their bones through their skin. Authorities had received an anonymous tip about the state they were in and found the children locked in a room inside the animal-ridden home where 10 people were living in total
Brandi and Joshua at first denied the abuse and even claimed the children were not theirs
The children were all taken into foster care where they remain and where they have thrived over the last year.
The woman later told police her husband had decided he no longer wanted to care for the children. They will be sentenced in May
When their parents were arrested, they gave confusing statements about whether or not they were actually related.
Brandi told police none of the children were hers or Joshua’s biologically. Neighbors who were interviewed contradicted what she said, insisting that she was their mother.
Joshua had been in prison previously for an unrelated charge. According to his wife, the worst of his treatment of the children began when he returned home from that sentence in 2015.
There were 10 people living in the home at the time the children were found.
Along with the three children and their parents, five others were there including a teenage girl who police believed was Brandi’s daughter from a previous relationship.
In May 2017, police charged Joshua’s sister Erin Eickstadt with aggravated assault and endangering a child.