Left inset: Richard Baptiste (Apache County). Center inset: Rebekah Baptiste (GoFundMe). Right inset: Anicia Woods (Apache County). Background: The rural Arizona property where Richard Baptiste and Anicia Woods allegedly subjected Rebekah Baptiste to deadly abuse and punishments (KNXV).
A 10-year-old girl in Arizona was punished by her parents with brutal beatings and torturous “discipline” — including “laps and planks” around their apartment, according to prosecutors. The child tried covering up the torment with “stories to protect their parents” before she eventually died from the abuse, cops say.
Prosecutors in Apache County are attempting to put Rebekah Baptiste”s biological dad and stepmom, Richard Baptiste and Anicia Woods, on trial together for her death last month, according to court documents obtained by Law&Crime. The couple is facing charges related to Rebekah’s alleged murder and abuse, along with abuse charges related to her two siblings, ages 8 and 6, per the documents.
Baptiste and Woods, who were both still in custody Thursday, are accused of putting Rebekah and the other children through grueling exercises inside their apartment and other twisted forms of punishment. The children’s teachers saw signs of abuse and reported it to state officials, according to prosecutors.
On July 27, Baptiste and Woods drove an “unresponsive and unconscious” Rebekah to a small medical center in the Holbrook area and she was transported to a hospital “based on the extent of her condition,” the court documents say. She died a day later after succumbing to injuries that doctors say were from “non-accidental trauma.”
Baptiste and Woods were both arrested on July 29 and booked on multiple charges for Rebekah’s death, according to police. The couple had been living in a remote area of rural Apache County with the children, police say.
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Rebekah’s abuse got so bad at one point that she “jumped out of the second story window at their apartment in Phoenix” to get away from it, prosecutors say. Her parents claimed “she was running away from us” and said she was “gonna run to the well because she would at least be able to get water and maybe find somebody there” who could possibly help her, according to prosecutors.
“In their statements, both Defendants admit to use of exercise as punishment, as well as spanking and hitting the children with a belt on multiple occasions,” the court documents say. “Baptiste described hitting R.B. with the belt approximately 10 times, with a pain level between 1-10 at a 7, and said he used ‘excessive force.'”
As police probed the parents over Rebekah’s death, investigators found that Baptiste and Woods’ children had appeared at school with “marks, scratches or bruises” on their bodies, and they complained about the “physical discipline of laps and planks, and not being fed” multiple times between November 2023 and May 2025, according to prosecutors.
When school professionals asked the children about the alleged abuse, they changed their stories to protect the parents, prosecutors said.
“For instance, [the 8-year-old] said he got scratched on the neck because he did not clean up, and the following day, the 6-year-old changed his story completely, stating ‘his mom didn’t scratch him because he wasn’t cleaning, it was because he was playing outside, and he was falling and mom tried catching him,'” court documents stated.
“My mom was mad at me and accidentally scratched me,” the 8-year-old allegedly told an educator. “Never mind, she didn’t do that, I just fell.”
DCS officials report that at the time of Rebekah’s death, the family was being investigated for an open complaint filed on May 19, the agency says in a fatality summary report.
“An investigation was initiated, and efforts were made to locate the family without success. The Department was continuing efforts to locate the family when the report of the near fatality incident was received.”
DCS says the May 2025 report was centered on abuse that Rebekah’s siblings were allegedly subjected to. The department has reports dating back to 2015 of alleged abuse and concerns that people had, but evidence was never found to “support” it, according to the DCS summary report.
The most recent report involving Rebekah was made on Jan. 16 and alleged that Baptiste would have her “run as a form of punishment, while not allowing her bathroom or water breaks,” according to officials. “The DCS investigation did not result in evidence to support the allegation. The allegations were unsubstantiated.”
