The Indiana Court of Appeals last month upheld convictions for a former couple in connection with a 10-year-old boy’s abuse death, court filings show.
April (Kuchta) Wright and Rachel Wright, now both 29, were each sentenced in January after signing pleas for April’s brother Leviticus “Levi” Kuchta, 10, who authorities found dead in their Merrillville home on Oct. 12, 2020. He had signs of rigor mortis and died at least several hours earlier.
Levi had makeup covering puncture wounds on his face, and was riddled with injuries in various degrees of infection and healing to his head, hands, arm, back, groin, leg and ankles, records said.
Two of the injuries — a dislocated jaw and spine — rendered him unable to walk or talk before his death, records said.
Officially, his grandmother had custody while his mother was in prison for drugs. But, when the grandmother couldn’t care for him anymore, he went to stay with April, despite her documented criminal history.
In both cases, Lake Superior Judge Gina Jones had leeway to decide their prison sentence. At sentencing, each woman blamed the other.
In her appeal, April Wright argued her 35-year sentence was “inappropriate”, because Rachel was more at fault.
In a 3-0 opinion, the appellate court rejected this.
“(April) Wright, along with Rachel, tortured and abused Levi for months, made him live in squalor away from others, and ultimately killed him in a particularly violent manner,” Appellate Judge Robert Altice wrote on Aug. 21. “Wright showed no mercy to her young brother, who suffered unthinkable brutality in her home.”
Rachel Wright, likewise, appealed to cut her 25-year sentence, saying she had expressed remorse at sentencing and argued she suffered a battery of mental illnesses that made it too harsh, or “inappropriate”.
When Levi died, even as she had almost completed her certified nursing assistant certification, Rachel herself abused the boy and did little or nothing to help when April hurt him, court documents allege.
His death was “extremely cruel,” Appellate Judge Patricia Riley wrote Aug. 23 in a 3-0 opinion.
“Wright’s home should have been a place of refuge for (him), a ten-year-old boy who essentially had nowhere else to go because his mother was in prison and his grandmother could no longer care for him,” she wrote.
Rachel called 911 and “acted surprised” when authorities found the boy long dead. She conspired with April to create a cover story that he had a dirt bike accident, court records show. She also lied to police, saying she never saw April hurt him.
Both women took family pictures with April’s adopted 3-year-old son the day before Levi was discovered. They lied to the photographer, saying Levi didn’t feel well, according to lawyers.
“(Rachel) essentially requests that we ignore the horrific circumstances of her offense, a request we refuse to honor,” Riley said.
Her plea deal was “extremely favorable,” the judge wrote.
She made “no effort to connect her mental health diagnoses to her offense” and her “expression of remorse” failed to take responsibility “for the harm she herself had inflicted” on the boy.
The women married in 2019, but defense lawyer John Cantrell said at sentencing that they had split up by then.