John Jefferson
Left to right: Avantae Deven, Blake Deven, London Deven (Fayetteville Police Department).
An adoptive mother in North Carolina became a killer of children, according to law enforcement. Now, one of her adopted daughters says she was enlisted into the carnage-fueled cover-up.
In June 2024, Avantae Deven, 63, was charged with two counts each of murder in the first degree, concealment of death, and felony child abuse, and one count of kidnapping in relation to the deaths of Blake and London Deven, the Fayetteville Police Department announced.
Now, another member of the Deven family has come forward with grim and gruesome claims about the role she played.
In September 2024, Raleigh-based NBC affiliate WRAL obtained a recording of a shocking April 2022 phone call. In that phone call, someone admits to helping dismember the body of Blake Deven.
“She literally had me buy a f–––ing trash can dude, to f–––ing keep him in there for a month,” the caller told the person on the other end of the line. “I had to watch his f–––ing body burn … It’s been on my f–––ing mind and I don’t know what the f––– to do.”
In the recording, which is voice-modulated so no identifying features can be made out, the caller also reveals how the boy allegedly died.
“She starved him so much that she killed him, and then she didn’t call the ambulance,” the caller says. “She didn’t call the police. She didn’t try to make up a story to tell them ‘Oh, he passed away.””
The TV station, however, declined to release the name of the person making those claims because police did not charge them with a crime.
Cherish Deven has since identified herself as the voice on that chilling phone call, WRAL reported in an update earlier this week.
In a recent interview, the woman said she recalled being 16 or 17 when her adoptive mother allegedly forced her to dismember her brother. In the original recording, she said she was 18 at the time.
“She literally had me buy a f–––ing saw to cut his [] open and f–––ing disintegrate the f–––ing body,” Cherish Deven says in the recording.
The TV station asked how her mother allegedly forced her into complying with the awful request.
“There was no asking,” Cherish Deven told WRAL. “There was just, ‘You do it. You’re doing it. If not, you’re getting in trouble.’ I’m sitting there as a young child just thinking, ‘Oh, my God. What do I do?’”
No charges have been filed against the sister. And she suggested that any such law enforcement action is unlikely.
“It wasn’t that I was, like, I wanted to do this on my own,” Cherish Deven continued in the recent interview. “Again, I was forced to do it. Detectives know this. Everybody knows this already … It disgusts me that I can live with myself knowing what I’ve seen, what I’ve done, because someone led me on and forced me to do something as a child myself.”
Investigators believe Blake was abused and starved to the point of torture — and that, eventually, his young body simply gave out.
“We believe he was mentally abused and starved,” Sgt. Jeff Locklear said at the time of the defendant’s arrest. “His body could not sustain the inhumane treatment. Then, Avantae developed a plan to hide Blake’s remains. She forced another person in the household to participate.”
Blake was last seen alive in 2017 when he was 10. London, investigators say, was a teenager when she died and had special needs that necessitated a caregiver.
Both of their remains were found burned inside of a barrel.
“I hate you,” Cherish Deven recently said — speaking in apostrophe. “You told me that you were my mother, you told me that you loved me. You told me that you would be there for me and you never were.”
Avantae Deven adopted five children in total, authorities say. Those adoptions totaled three boys biologically related to one another and two girls neither related to the boys nor each other.
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