On April 18, 2019, Andrew Freund Sr. called Crystal Lake police to report that his five-year-old son Andrew, known as AJ, had gone missing from the family home at 94 Dole Avenue. He told dispatchers he had last seen the boy when he tucked him in the night before, around 9:30 p.m.
The call set off a week-long search that drew hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement agencies from across Illinois and Wisconsin. Within two days, Crystal Lake Police Chief James Black told reporters that investigators were confident AJ had not walked away on his own and had not been abducted. They had already declared the family home a crime scene.
AJ Freund had been dead for three days before his father picked up the phone.
Born Into the System
Andrew “AJ” Freund was born on October 14, 2013, at a Crystal Lake hospital. Before he drew his first breath, his life was already flagged. Both he and his mother, JoAnn Cunningham, 36, tested positive for opiates and benzodiazepines at birth, and a hospital social worker immediately notified the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. He was temporarily removed from his mother’s care.
The Department of Children and Family Services had been involved with Cunningham since June 2012, more than a year before AJ was born. At that time, she was investigated for allegedly abusing drugs and neglecting a foster child in her care. That report was deemed unfounded. Six months later, another hotline call came in, alleging environmental neglect involving an older child and prescription drug abuse. That report was also closed.
By 2015, AJ had been returned to Cunningham and his father, Andrew Freund Sr., 60. Over the following year, DCFS conducted more than two dozen scheduled and unannounced home visits. Officers repeatedly documented broken windows, no working power, and a pervasive smell of dog feces and urine so strong it was evident upon entering. No abuse was formally substantiated. In April 2016, DCFS closed the juvenile case entirely.
AJ was two years old when the state stopped watching.
Warning Signs Mounted
In March 2018, Cunningham was found unresponsive in a vehicle with AJ, who had what one report described as “odd bruising” on his face. DCFS opened an investigation. Caseworkers made multiple unsuccessful attempts to interview AJ and his younger brother in the weeks that followed, finally making contact more than a month later. No signs of mistreatment were found, and the report was again closed as unfounded.
Then came December 18, 2018.
Crystal Lake police were called to the Dole Avenue house after Cunningham reported her prescriptions stolen. When officers arrived, they found AJ wearing only a pull-up diaper. He had a large, unexplained bruise on his hip and visible bruising on his face. The home, according to police reports, had ceilings falling in, floors torn up, and the children’s bedroom reeked of dog urine. Cunningham was arrested on an unrelated suspended license charge, and both boys were taken to the police station before being transported to the emergency room.
At the hospital, Dr. Joelle Channon examined AJ. She asked him if he had been spanked or hit. He said yes. She asked with what. He said a belt. She asked who had done it.
“Someone not in my family,” AJ told her. Then, quietly, he added: “Maybe mom didn’t mean to hurt me.”
Cunningham had coached him before the examination. At the police station, Crystal Lake Officer Kimberley Shipbaugh later testified that she watched Cunningham lean down to AJ’s ear and say: “Lucy the dog did that to you, right?” AJ nodded. He said yes.
Dr. Channon could not determine the cause of the bruise definitively and documented that it could have resulted from a dog, a football, or a belt. DCFS investigator Carlos Acosta was called to the scene. He spoke with the investigating officer, interviewed Cunningham, and made a home visit. He did not request the 19 existing Crystal Lake police reports documenting years of calls to the Freund household. He did not refer the case to a child abuse specialist. He did not seek juvenile court involvement, which, according to a prosecution expert, would have triggered an emergency hearing within 48 hours and almost certainly removed AJ from the home.
On January 4, 2019, DCFS closed the case. The official finding: unfounded, due to lack of evidence for cuts, welts, and bruises.
Three months and eleven days later, AJ Freund was dead.
The Night He Died
On the evening of April 14, 2019, AJ Freund soiled his underwear and, according to prosecutors, attempted to hide it. Cunningham discovered what he had done. Andrew Freund Sr. told investigators that she believed the five-year-old was deliberately defiant, that he thought of himself as the leader of the household and lied to undermine her authority. She had told him once that it could not get any worse for him. That this was as bad as it gets.
As punishment, Cunningham placed AJ in a cold shower. He stood there for approximately 20 minutes. According to prosecutors, she berated and beat him during those minutes. Freund Sr. later told investigators that the night did not seem as bad as others, where it was, in his words, “just pure, ya know, physical punishment, hitting.” After taking AJ out of the shower, Freund Sr. put him to bed naked and wet.
At approximately 3 a.m. on April 15, Cunningham woke Freund Sr. and told him AJ was not breathing. Freund Sr. went to the boy and confirmed that his son was dead.
He told Cunningham he would “handle it.” He placed AJ’s body in a large plastic tote and moved it to the basement. Two days later, he wrapped the boy in plastic, drove to a rural field near Woodstock, approximately ten miles from the family home, and buried him in a shallow grave. Three days after that, he called police to report his son missing.
The Search and the Confession
The search for AJ generated a response that spread across two states. Law enforcement agencies from throughout Illinois and Wisconsin converged on Crystal Lake. Hundreds of volunteers joined organized searches of the surrounding area. K-9 units established within the first day that AJ had not left the house on foot, and investigators removed several items from the home, including a dirt-covered shovel, a mattress, two brown bags, and a storage bin.
Forensic analysts from the FBI, working through deleted files on Cunningham’s phone, recovered a two-minute video recorded in January 2019. In it, AJ could be seen lying on a bare, urine-soaked mattress, nude except for small bandages wound around his wrists and hips. Deep red bruising ringed his eyes and covered his neck and clavicle. Cunningham’s voice could be heard throughout, berating the child for wetting the bed. A second set of similar recordings from March 2019 was also recovered.
In one audio recording, Cunningham’s voice grew loud and sharp as she demanded to know why AJ had walked outside in the snow. “You walked in the snow to make me mad?” she said. “Why do you have to make me mad?” The only sounds from AJ were a quiet “umm” and “I don’t know.”
On April 24, confronted with the accumulated forensic and cell phone evidence, both parents confessed. Andrew Freund Sr. told investigators where he had buried his son.
Crystal Lake police, McHenry County sheriff’s deputies, and FBI agents traveled to a field near Woodstock in the early morning hours of April 24. They found AJ wrapped in plastic in a shallow grave. He was five years old. An autopsy determined that he had died from multiple blunt-force injuries to his skull and brain. At a press conference, Police Chief James Black addressed the boy directly. “We know you are at peace playing in heaven’s playground,” Black said, “and are happy you no longer have to suffer.”
Cunningham, who was seven months pregnant at the time of her arrest, and Freund Sr. were each held on $5 million bond. Both were charged with five counts of first-degree murder.
The Reckoning
JoAnn Cunningham stood trial in July 2020. A McHenry County jury convicted her of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison and is currently held at Logan Correctional Facility in Lincoln, Illinois. Her projected parole date is April 24, 2054. She will be in her early seventies if she is released.
Andrew Freund Sr. pleaded guilty to aggravated battery to a child, involuntary manslaughter, and concealment of a homicidal death. He was sentenced to 30 years. He eventually cooperated with investigators and led police to his son’s body, which prosecutors later acknowledged when negotiating his plea.
The reckoning for the state took longer and delivered less.
In October 2023, a judge found DCFS investigator Carlos Acosta guilty of child endangerment. At trial, Judge George Strickland outlined the ways Acosta had failed AJ during the December 2018 investigation: he did not pull the 19 existing police reports on file about the Freund household, did not refer the case to a child abuse specialist, and did not seek juvenile court involvement. He returned a visibly bruised five-year-old to a home where the bruises remained officially unexplained.
Acosta was sentenced to six months in jail, 30 months of probation, 200 hours of community service, and a $1,000 fine. His supervisor, Andrew Polovin, was acquitted, the judge ruling he could not determine what Polovin knew or when he knew it.
Prosecutor Randi Freese addressed the court during closing arguments. “This is not just a case of hindsight is 20/20 or two people who were bad at their job,” she said. “This has to be one of the most predictable, one of the most foreseeable, but one of the most preventable cases in DCFS history.” Had protective custody not lapsed on December 18, 2018, a prosecution expert testified, AJ Freund would not have been killed by his mother.
DCFS had received at least ten hotline calls about AJ’s family across his five years of life. The investigators assigned to his case in 2018 were carrying caseloads that exceeded limits set by a federal consent decree. One of them exceeded those limits for nine of the twelve months that year.
At his conviction in 2023, the verdict against Acosta came one day before what would have been AJ’s tenth birthday.
The house at 94 Dole Avenue has since been razed. The empty lot remains.
AJ Freund’s public visitation on May 3, 2019, drew thousands of people to Davenport Funeral Home in Crystal Lake. Blue ribbons hung from trees across McHenry County for months afterward. His younger brother was placed with relatives.
Andrew “AJ” Freund was born in October 2013 into a household the state of Illinois had already flagged. In his five years, at least ten calls were made to child welfare authorities on his behalf. He told a doctor in an emergency room, four months before he died, that maybe his mom had not meant to hurt him. He was found in a field near Woodstock, wrapped in plastic, in a grave his father had dug.
He would have turned six in October 2019. He never did.
