Father gets 92 years for murder of 3-month-old son, attack on wife

Judge calls how Eliasard Moneus left his 3-month-old son to die ‘one of the most grotesque murders’ he’s ever seen.

Eliasard Moneus looks down as he’s sentenced Tuesday in the murder of his son and attempted murder of his wife. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

As police frantically searched a Lafayette apartment and beyond for 3-month-old Jacob Moneus on Aug. 10, 2024, his father, Eliasard Moneus, drove to Indianapolis and got a haircut, prosecutors told a judge Tuesday morning.

When police caught up with Moneus – accused of beating his wife over the head with a tire iron, hoping to kill her – the 29-year-old told officers he didn’t know where Jacob was.

Family members groaned and Moneus stared down at the defense table in Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 as details were recounted about how police eventually found Jacob, left to drown and sealed in a large bucket of laundry detergent in the apartment’s kitchen.

“I’ve seen my share, but I have to say this is one of the most grotesque murders I’ve ever had to see,” Judge Steve Meyer told Moneus through an interpreter speaking Haitian Creole during a sentencing hearing Tuesday. “The thought of putting a 3-month-old upside down into a bucket of laundry detergent is unimaginable. … I can’t think of a worse crime.”

Moneus was sentenced Tuesday to 92 years in prison – 62 for the murder of Jacob and 30 for the attempted murder of his wife. As part of a plea agreement reached in May, prosecutors dropped related charges of aggravated battery and domestic battery with a deadly weapon. The plea agreement also laid out that Moneus, who had been living in Lafayette under a temporary protected status as an immigrant from Haiti, could be deported if he’s released from the Indiana Department of Corrections.

The maximum prison term for the two counts was a combined 95 years. Meyer reduced the possible maximum 65-year sentence on the murder count by three years, given that Moneus had pleaded guilty in the case, sparing Jacob’s family and potential jurors from enduring photographs and other evidence from the crime scene at trial.

“These are visions that a person cannot unsee,” Meyer said.

The words, alone, about what happened were bracing enough during the one-hour sentencing hearing.

Jacob Moneus (Photo provided)

According to court filings and accounts in court Tuesday, police started investigating the afternoon Aug. 10, after his wife drove herself to IU Arnett Hospital for wounds she told officers came from Moneus, the father of Jacob and her husband of 11 months.

According to court filings, she told police that Moneus got upset with her on Aug. 5 and left, and that the two hadn’t spoken until he arrived at the apartment on Lexington Court on Aug. 10. She told police she was in a bedroom in the apartment watching a church service on TV with Jacob when Moneus came in and took the child. She said she returned to worship.

After about five minutes, Moneus returned to the bedroom to get a feeding bottle with some milk in it, his wife said in a statement read Tuesday in court by deputy prosecutor Elyse Madigan.

“At least, that’s what I thought,” his wife said in the victim impact statement. She was in court with her mother, brother and a friend, but did not personally testify Tuesday.

“But all of that was a distraction so he could show me that Jacob was in a good hand,” she said in her statement. “Who would have ever thought that a child wouldn’t be safe on his own father’s hand?”

In her statement in court, she said Moneus returned about a five minutes later, coming into the bedroom and beating her with a tire iron. She wound up with a fractured skull, brain bleeds and other injuries she hasn’t fully recovered from over the past 11 months, according to prosecutors.

“He never communicated he had issues with me,” she said. “He never gave me any signs that he had something going on with me that day.”

She said she gave police everything she could from the hospital, as they searched that day for Jacob, who she called “my miracle, a gift from God,” and “my little bundle of joy.”

According to court records, Indianapolis police found Moneus in an apartment complex in Lawrence later that day. At the Tippecanoe County Jail, according to the court filing, Moneus admitted that he’d hit his wife two or three times with the tool from his vehicle and had hoped she’d die from the injuries.

After issuing a Silver Alert for the missing child on Aug. 10, police the next morning checked an orange, snap-seal bucket next to a kitchen trash can in his family’s apartment. That’s where they found Jacob.

Madigan’s account, based on Moneus’ statements, pointed to a premeditated murder. She said Moneus took his wife’s mother to a church service so he could be alone in the apartment with his wife and child. Madigan told the court that Moneus had said he believed his wife had been unfaithful to him. Despite a diagnosis of PTSD revealed after his arrest, Madigan said what Moneus did on Aug. 10 was not a triggered reaction, rather something that had been building over months as he felt his wife getting more distant from him.

“So, he was going to teach her a lesson,” Madigan said. “The defendant wanted (his wife) dead. And if she didn’t die, she’d have to live with Jacob, their 3-month-old baby, dead. The defendant said he didn’t care what the consequences, but he’d teach (his wife) through his actions never to do this to a man, again.”

The lesson Moneus delivered, Madigan said, “doesn’t really get worse than this.”

“A father put his 3-month-old son face down in a bucket of laundry detergent, sealed the lid, left his son to die and then went to the next room and viciously attacked the baby’s mother,” Madigan said.

Madigan said Jacob drowned in the bucket, swallowing 100 milliliters of liquid detergent.

She said that Moneus left the scene, drove to Indianapolis, got a haircut and, once found, denied having any knowledge of Jacob’s whereabouts.

Meyer said it was his turn that weekend to be the local judge on call, there to deal with emergencies. He said he monitored the search as it unfolded, working with police officers with requests to the court and hoping the child would be found safe. Meyer said he couldn’t imagine at the time what it was like to be on the scene when an officer decided to check the laundry soap bucket sitting in the apartment’s kitchen.

“For those hours of that afternoon, many people, including myself, were concerned about Jacob,” Meyer told Moneus. “They were more concerned about Jacob’s welfare than his own father.”

For most of Tuesday’s hearing, Moneus sat slumped in his chair, shackled and wearing a blue jail scrubs, offering nearly inaudible responses of “Oui” and “Non” in Haitian Creole to questions from the judge.

In a statement read by an interpreter, Moneus apologized “to all of you in the community reading and hearing about this situation.” He said he came to the United States hoping for an easier life than the one he had in Haiti.

“Every time I think about the problems I had to endure in my life, it makes me very sad, especially what happened on Aug. 10, 2024,” Moneus said in his statement. “I'm living with remorse, with pain, stress that will never go away as long as I'm alive. I never thought that I, Eliasard, could have been a prisoner for one day. My apology for what had happened.”

With time for good behavior, Moneus could be released in 67 years, according to information shared in court. He would be 96 years old.

Moneus indicated to Meyer that he did not intend to appeal the sentence.

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