“She was drunk a lot, and she would scream at him all hours of the day and night,” says Valerie Scales, a neighbor who lives right across a common yard from Kathie and Terry’s apartment. “One-thirty in the morning, she’d still be screaming at him. I never heard him say anything to her, but I heard her screaming at him.

I don’t know what it was about.”

Sandy Chapman, another neighbor who lives in the apartment building adjacent to the Paytons, reports hearing Kathie yelling at Terry numerous times in the two years that Chapman has lived there. Chapman says she and Kathie used to work and party together several years before they became neighbors.

“Kathie was a very heavy drinker,” Chapman says. “She drank Jim Beam by the gallon. She was very abusive to him. She drank and always cut him down, made him feel lowlife. He acted like he was scared and afraid to open his mouth. He’s a good kid, but she verbally abused him a lot.”

Another neighbor, who asked not to be identified, says the abuse sometimes went beyond words.

“One day we saw her with him in a headlock, beating him on his head,” says the neighbor. “They fought a lot. He’s had the cops out here quite a few times, and they’ve never done anything about it. I thought he was a nice, polite kid.”

Several neighbors report seeing Kathie passed out drunk on the sidewalk, while Terry tried to pick her up and move her back inside.

Kathie also locked Terry out of the house on multiple occasions, Scales notes.

Once, while Terry was locked out for a period of about a week, he stayed with neighbors Shanna and Kevin Lawrence. Shanna Lawrence recalls Kathie taking Terry’s birthday money, which was sent to him by his grandparents in England to pay for new clothes, to buy alcohol for herself.

“Even after she kicked him out, he never had anything bad to say about her,” Shanna Lawrence says. “I just hope he gets the help he needs.”

Terry’s father, Stephen Lye, lives in England.

Lye says Kathie Payton often changed phone numbers to cut off contact between him and Terry. Money that Lye sent to Terry for school fees was used to change Terry’s last name from Lye to Payton, Stephen Lye says.

“This was extremely hurtful to both Terry and myself and was a coldhearted attempt to sever the bond between father and son,” Lye wrote to Illinois Times in an emailed statement. Lye says he tried to get Terry to come live with him in England after realizing the extent of the abuse he allegedly suffered, but Lye says Kathie wouldn’t sign the paperwork necessary for Terry to obtain a passport.

“It is breaking my heart that I cannot be with Terry at this time,” Lye says, adding that he is working in England to raise money for Terry’s defense. “Terry is, and will always remain, my clever, sensitive, loveable and wonderful son. No child should have to endure what my vulnerable son has had to cope with throughout his short life. We all look forward to the day, hopefully in the very near future, when it is recognized that Terry is the real victim here.”

“THE SYSTEM FAILED HIM.”

Sabrina Cooley, Terry’s 17-year-old half-sister with the same father, says Terry’s family, friends, neighbors and teachers called the police and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services repeatedly in the months prior to Kathie’s death.

Staci Garzolini-Skelton, a counselor at Paris Cooperative High School, contacted DCFS after a phone conversation with Kathie, in which Kathie threatened to cut off Terry’s legs with an electric knife while he slept. Kathie also told the counselor that she would slit Terry’s throat if he stole her medicine. It’s unclear what kind of medicine Kathie may have been taking.

DCFS visited the Paytons’ apartment on at least two occasions in March and April this year, but Kathie refused to talk with DCFS caseworkers in person or over the phone. The caseworkers spoke only to Terry, who denied having been abused or threatened by Kathie, and DCFS concluded that Terry was in no danger.

Jakob Shumaker, one of Terry’s close friends, says he counseled Terry to seek help from authorities after Terry told him the full extent of the alleged abuse. Shumaker says Terry likely denied those same allegations when asked about them by DCFS caseworkers because “he was scared of his mom.” The repeated ineffective visits by police and DCFS caseworkers on Terry’s behalf show that “the system failed him,” Shumaker says.

“They took him back so many freaking times to her,” he says. “Of course, at some point, you’re going to be scared because you know you’re going to go straight back.”