The live-in boyfriend of Mariah Woods’ mother has been arrested in connection to the disappearance of the 3-year-old – and police believe the child is dead.
Mariah Woods is believed to be dead, her mother’s boyfriend has been arrested
At 2.30am WCTI12.com announced that Earl Kimrey had been taken into custody and charged for concealing a death and the obstruction of justice.
There is no indication as yet that Mariah’s body has been found but police believe she is deceased.
The 32-year-old man was taken before a state magistrate and charged with concealing of death, Obstruction of Justice, Second Degree Burglary, Felony Larceny and Possession of Stolen Property.
He is being held under $1,010,000 bond at the Onslow County Detention Center
Earlier on Friday FBI forensic teams were testing ‘items of interest’ in their desperate search for Mariah.
They were sent straight to the FBI’s base in Quantico, Virginia, for testing on Wednesday afternoon.
Kristy Woods’s boyfriend Earl Kimrey has been arrested in connection to the disappearance of Mariah (pictured Kristy and Mariah)
Earlier in the day, agents were seen searching the trailer where Mariah lived with her 29-year-old mother Kristy, her older brothers and Kimrey.
It has been five days since the little girl vanished from her home in the dead of night.
Earlier this week, Mariah’s biological father, who has not seen her for more than a year, said he did not believe she was abducted.
A forensics agent is pictured searching underneath the trailer where Mariah Woods was last seen alive on Wednesday
‘Someone just walked right up in there, grabbed the 3-year-old out of the bed and she didn’t cry, she didn’t scream?
‘Nobody heard anything? Four people in the house, two adults and two kids, someone just comes up and snatches the baby and walks out?’, Alex Woods said.
Kristy, who this week disabled her Facebook account after posting the missing person’s appeal for her daughter, claimed that Mariah was taken by a stranger.
In a tearful television appearance on Tuesday, she said: ‘Please, bring her back.
‘I love her. I’ll do anything that I can, whatever you want. Please just bring her back safe and sound – she’s my baby, she’s my everything.’
Mariah’s father Alex (left) accused her mother Kristy and her boyfriend Earl Kimrey (right together) of lying about how the girl disappeared
Kristy made a tearful appeal to her daughter’s abductor earlier in the week and begged for her to be brought back
Mariah is pictured with her mother, mother’s boyfriend, and her two older brothers
Kristy called police to report her missing on Monday at 6am. She claimed she had not been seen since midnight, when she checked on her, and that her boyfriend Earl was the last person to see Mariah alive.
She claimed he saw her at 1am and told her to go back to bed.
At some point in the five hours between then, she said someone abducted the child – who has a walking impediment – from her bedroom.
Hundreds have since joined the search for the little girl.
The trailer in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where Mariah was living with her mother