Gwinnett County police are searching for a Loganville couple facing child cruelty charges after their daughter was killed in a fire at their home and the ensuing investigation revealed “unsanitary and dangerous” living conditions for their five children, officials said.
William Linn McCue, 47, and his wife, 38-year-old Carina Wisniewski McCue, are both wanted on counts of first-degree cruelty to children, second-degree cruelty to children and false imprisonment, Gwinnett police spokeswoman Officer Hideshi Valle said in a news release Friday afternoon.
Though the whereabouts of the parents are unknown, their surviving children remain in state custody, Valle said.
The couple’s 10-year-old daughter, Zoe McCue, died in a fire at the family’s Beaver Road home early on Easter Sunday, police said. Hours after the fire, Zoe’s 15-year-old brother was found at a church in Rockdale County, where authorities said he confessed to intentionally setting fire to the house. The teenager was taken into custody on murder and other charges.
As arson investigators sifted through the burned house, they found signs of neglect and abuse, officials said. According to Friday’s news release, Zoe’s remains were located in a windowless bathroom where investigators also found a makeshift bed in the bathtub.
A separate investigation was opened against William and Carina McCue, Valle said, leading police to discover “improvised camping-style toilets” in the house. The residential toilets were inoperable and the septic tank was either full or not working, Valle said. The kitchen sink had been re-plumbed to direct water from the faucet into a five-gallon bucket on the floor, and none of the showers or bathtubs appeared to be functioning, according to police.
Aside from the 15-year-old boy in police custody, the McCues’ three other children remain in state protective custody, Valle said.
Since filing charges against William and Carina McCue, police have not been able to locate them, Valle said. Their last known location was the Hometown Suites at 1775 North Brown Road in Lawrenceville. Valle said the McCues were last seen driving a white 2017 Honda Accord with Georgia tag CHB7385 near the intersection of Oakbrook Parkway and I-85 North in Norcross.
Prior to charges being filed against the couple, records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services surfaced two prior investigations into the family. The first took place in 2015, when DFCS officials opened an investigation after a teacher at a Gwinnett school reported a suspicious red mark on the face of one of their children. The extensive investigation, which included a walk-through of the home that later burned down, was closed and no charges were ever filed.
The second investigation took place in 2019 and led to William McCue’s arrest in Tennessee. Someone called the Tennessee hotline for child abuse to report McCue, who was seen getting out of a truck with four of his children and walking into the woods. Police searched for hours for McCue and the children and eventually found them walking down a road, at which point they took William McCue into custody. Few details were included about the incident, but the documents said Carina McCue drove from Gwinnett to Tennessee to pick up the children.
After the fatal fire, an emergency hearing was held April 18, and the three remaining siblings were moved into protective custody, according to court records.
“The children have not been in school in years, the home has no sewage system, the children have been using buckets to relieve themselves, and none of the children have had a shower in possibly months,” a DFCS case manager wrote in an affidavit filed in juvenile court that day. Investigators believe the children had not been outside of the house in years.
Anyone who sees Carina or William McCue or has any information to offer in this case is asked to contact Gwinnett police at 770-513-5300. To remain anonymous, tipsters can contact Crime Stoppers at 404-577-8477 or visit www.stopcrimeATL.com. Crime Stoppers tipsters can receive a cash reward for information leading to an arrest and indictment in this case.
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