5 Years Old and Only 30 Pounds- The Story of Jordan Bleimeyer

5 Years Old and Only 30 Pounds- The Story of Jordan Bleimeyer

And his parents, they’re in jail according to KOCH, his father and stepmother charged with felony child endangerment after allegedly keeping Bleimeyer locked under the stairs for weeks.

Welcome or welcome back! I’m Cassie, and this is A Wicked World. The story I have for you today is about a little boy who was kept locked up all day every day in what his parents called his Harry Potter room, and that was just the beginning of the awful things that he was going through at their hands. This is the story of Jordan Bleimeyer.

Jordan Bleimeyer was born on February 3, 2009, to his mother, Wendy Hall, and his father, Bradley, or Brad, Bleimeyer. Jordan loved Ninja Turtles, video games, and the Houston Texans football team. He was said to be a very happy, loving, and funny little boy. Jordan’s father, Brad, had remarried after separating from Jordan’s mother, Wendy. His new wife’s name was Tammy Bleimeyer, and after the wedding, Jordan and his dad moved into Tammy’s home with her and her five children in Spring, Texas. Tammy would have another child with Brad shortly after and then become pregnant again with her seventh child in the fall of 2013.

At Tammy’s home, Jordan would share a room with one of his new stepbrothers and he would even begin calling Tammy “Mom.” The family seemed to be blending well and the home appeared to be a happy one, but then one day in March of 2014, police were called to the Bleimeyer home to break up a fistfight between Jordan’s father, Brad, and Tammy’s oldest son, who was 6 at the time, Cody.

Upon police arriving to the home located on Castlemont Lane, they found Brad and Cody brawling in the front yard, but police would quickly realize that this was just an attempt to get them out to the home because Cody had something much worse that he needed them to see. In a padlocked crawl space in a closet underneath the home’s stairs, authorities found a small, dirty mattress, and it looked like a child had been sleeping there. The tiny crawl space under the stairs had cold concrete flooring, exposed nails, and exposed wiring. Cody told officers that 5-year-old Jordan was living in this little compartment underneath the stairs.

Prior to the police being called to the home, Cody and Brad had been arguing on and off all day, so Cody, knowing that he was already in trouble with Brad as well as his mom, Tammy, figured now was the time to try to rescue his brother Jordan. So, he opened up the tiny little closet where the boy was living, and when Cody saw the state that Jordan was in, he freaked out. Cody had known that Jordan was being abused, but he did not expect to see him in such an awful condition that day. He was in complete shock.

Jordan looked close to death. He had no clothes on, just a diaper, his face was caved in, he had bruises and marks all over his body, and he was foaming at the mouth. The older brother picked up little Jordan and gave him to their 14-year-old sister, Allison, so that she could hold and comfort him. Cody then went outside to yell at his mother and Brad about how awful of a state he had just found Jordan in.

But Tammy and Brad flipped it around, and they began to freak out at Cody, telling him that he should not have opened that closet because it had nothing to do with him and was none of his business. Things would then escalate between Cody and Brad, and they began shoving each other. Cody wanted to draw as much attention to the family as he could; he knew there was no turning back this time—he was going to save Jordan.

As Cody was calling 911, Allison was still cradling her little brother. She said he felt so light; it barely felt like she was holding anything at all. Jordan was completely out of it at the time; he didn’t even know what day it was, but Allison held him and told him it was going to be okay and that she loved him. Cody would later say, “If we hadn’t gotten him out that day, I don’t think he would have survived.”

As Cody had been calling the police, the six-month-pregnant Tammy had packed up her things, taken the younger kids, including Jordan, and fled the house. Using her cell phone records, police would track down Tammy, and they found her at a local motel. But she would tell them that she hadn’t fled that day—that before they had come to the house, she had just gone out to buy pizza and then to go visit her husband, who was living at the motel.

Tammy’s younger children were with the couple, and so was Jordan. He was covered in bumps and bruises and was severely underweight. Jordan was then rushed to a nearby hospital, where a pediatrician would say he had suffered severe physical abuse and habitual starvation. His liver had also started to fail. The little boy would have died within days, possibly hours, had he not been taken to the hospital when he had. He was so thin, in fact, that they were comparing him to looking like a victim of the Holocaust.

Jordan only weighed 30 pounds, which was 7 pounds less than he had weighed at his 4-year-old checkup 10 months prior. Jordan’s height had also been stunted by about 3 inches due to his malnutrition, and that’s three inches that he will never gain back.

Thirty-three-year-old Tammy Bleimeyer and her 24-year-old husband, Bradley, were arrested and charged with felony child endangerment. Tammy would be given a $2,000 bail, and Brad was held on $150,000. Only a day or so later, Tammy would bail out of jail—of course she did, because $2,000 is a pathetic amount of bail for what she did.

Child Protective Services had, of course, taken custody of Jordan, but upon Tammy being arrested, they had also taken custody of her children. And speaking of child services, they had actually opened up a case on the family and visited the Bleimeyer home just the month prior to Jordan being found, in February of 2014. The case had been opened when Cody began telling people what was going on with his little brother.

So, when CPS opened the case, in addition to a few social workers going out to the home, police would also be sent out there to check on things. However, each time they went out there, Tammy would either avoid them or convince them somehow that there was no problem, and say that Cody had only made the complaint because he didn’t get along with his stepfather, who was only 8 years older than him.

In addition to Tammy’s excuses, when police had tried to check on Jordan, he wasn’t even at the home at the time. This was because Tammy and Brad had sent Jordan to live with relatives out in Ohio—Tammy’s relatives, that is, and ones that Brad had never even met up until the day he left his son there. Jordan would return from this trip looking healthier, so when Child Protective Services went to visit in February of 2014, they would make the assessment that he was not in poor health.

Now, when police interviewed Tammy, she faked surprise and claimed to be unaware of her stepson’s horrific condition because she hadn’t seen him with a shirt off recently. Though, at the weight he was at, I think you’d be able to know even with a shirt on that he was way too skinny. Tammy claimed that she hadn’t noticed because Brad and Jordan had gone to live in Alabama when the couple had split up the previous summer. So, before she had gotten pregnant, right? I’m sure that you guys were broken up and you’re not just trying to get out of trouble.

Shortly after telling police this, Tammy would then file for divorce from Brad. Tammy also said that she doesn’t necessarily believe her estranged husband was the one who had caused the child’s condition either. The stepmother said, “I don’t know what caused him to look like that. I don’t know if it’s a health issue or something else like that. I don’t want to be like everyone else and assume the worst.”

So, as I had said, Tammy had made bail only a couple of days after her arrest, and a few days after that, she would go to court to try to gain custody of her children. But as hard as she tried to prove that she was a fit mother, the judge denied her any custody.

“I never even saw that. I didn’t see… I didn’t see him looking like that.” “Why was he wearing a diaper when he was found?” “Cuz he wore diapers at night. He had accidents. He was five.” “Did you ever see him lock him in the closet under the stairs?” “We didn’t even have a lock on the closet.” “Why did your own son tell the police that that was happening?” “I can’t answer a question… why did he say that, if I don’t even know that he said that? Your allegation is… this whole thing is completely fabricated. Jordan was never in that closet. I never saw that.” “Well, the police reports say that a 16-year-old and 14-year-old say that he was kept in there.” “There’s a lot of inaccuracies, but…” “You said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know what’s being said.’ I just told you what I don’t know what the police reports…” “That’s one version. You’re saying that never happened?” “I never saw that.” “Is there some version of it that has or hasn’t been said that involves Jordan and this closet?” “I can’t answer that. I’m not Brad.” “You were this child’s stepmother. He was living in your home. Did you let that little boy down?” “I think there’s a lot of people that let him down.” “Are you one of them?” “Yes.”

So, Jordan would tell a social worker at the hospital who had been helping take care of him that he had been locked in a very dark closet as punishment, and he had also been whipped with a belt and not allowed to eat. He indicated that both Brad and Tammy had inflicted these punishments. Tammy’s son Cody had also previously told police that he had seen Brad slam the little boy’s head into a wall as well as taser him with a stun gun for absolutely no reason.

Tammy’s two older children, Cody and Allison, would say that their mother was always in charge of the household and they went by her rules. They also said that she was very manipulative and would do anything to get her own way. They also said that Tammy was the one to instigate Brad to hurt his son, and if his punishments weren’t harsh enough, she wasn’t afraid to tell him.

Now, initially, Jordan had been treated fine, just like all the other children in the home, but then, starting with longer periods in time-out, things escalated quickly. Jordan’s parents began taking away his necessities—his pillow, his blanket, and then his clothes. He was forced to stay in only a diaper. Then, Tammy and Brad decided that Jordan should no longer sit with the family at dinner time, and they also began withholding food from him as punishment. In addition, the other children in the home were not allowed to engage with Jordan, and if they did, Jordan would be punished.

Jordan would then start getting disciplined more often, for more things, and in a more harsh manner. Brad would hit his son in the back of the head, hit him with his belt, throw him across the room, and tase him, which left marks. Jordan would eventually only be given one slice of bread a day, and when he was given this, if they deemed he wasn’t eating quickly enough, it would also be taken away.

In addition to the physical abuse, Bradley had no problem verbally assaulting his son as well. He would tell him to shut up quite often for pretty much anything that he would do. When he was only 3 and 4 years old, he would make him feel worthless, calling him stupid and a crybaby. He would also tell him to stop singing because his voice was terrible. If Jordan ever sang to music in the car, then the evil parents began sending Jordan to what they called his Harry Potter room—the tiny little room underneath the stairs.

Jordan’s siblings were prohibited from opening the door to the closet to check on their brother. It started as Jordan having to stay in there for hours, but that would slowly progress to days at a time. And when his older siblings could, they would sneak Jordan pieces of bread to keep him alive. For six months prior to him being rescued in March, Jordan was in trouble pretty much constantly and he lived underneath the stairs. The other children would only see him sometimes once a week for a very short period because he was always in so much trouble. And while they had previously heard Jordan’s sobs, in the last few months they had heard nothing because Jordan didn’t even have the energy to cry anymore. The little boy was also allegedly drugged by his father when they had guests over the house in order to keep him quiet.

So, even though Tammy had told police that she didn’t know how her stepson had gotten so skinny, she very clearly did. In the past, when Tammy’s older children had questioned her about what was going on with Jordan, she would either tell them that it was none of their business or she would simply say it wasn’t happening. She had even convinced Cody at one point that everything that was going on was completely normal.

One time, Brad had slammed Jordan’s head into the wall, and Tammy told Cody that it didn’t happen, and even if he told somebody, nobody would believe him anyways. Both Cody and Allison had challenged their parents multiple times about their treatment of Jordan, and when they did, Brad would threaten to beat Cody along with one of his other siblings, and Tammy would emotionally blackmail Allison, telling her that if anyone was caught, all of her siblings would be split up and then she would never see them again. But despite the threats against them, Cody and Allison had told teachers, police officers, and school counselors about the abuse, but nobody had been able to help them for some reason.

There was some conflicting information that both Brad and Tammy had told police. At one point, Brad had said that his wife was not responsible for bathing Jordan, but later he would say that she did occasionally bathe him, meaning that she would have seen just how skinny he was getting. And Tammy would tell investigators that she and Brad had a premarital agreement that she would take care of her kids and he would take care of his kid. So, for example, Tammy said she would buy a pizza for herself and her children, and Brad would have to buy food for him and his son. Jordan was not allowed to have any of the pizza. But then at another point in time, she said that she had bought food for Jordan because she didn’t want him to go hungry. Yeah, okay!

At a recent doctor’s appointment for Jordan, Tammy had actually told the doctor that Jordan was a very good eater and he often overeats. So the physician’s assistant, seeing how skinny he was, decided to order some lab work to see what was going on. But when she did not receive the lab work back, her office called Tammy, and Tammy told them at that time that Jordan had moved out to Alabama and she had no contact with him any longer. Which is why when Tammy had fled that day, she took Jordan with her—because she needed to keep up her lie that he was not in the state.

After his rescue, Jordan was reunited with his biological mother, Wendy Hall. When she first saw her son, she remembers how his skin was so thin, scabbed, and peeling. She also saw taser marks on his ear, shoulder, and back. His thinning hair was falling out, and he was so weak that he could not use the bathroom on his own for the first two days during his hospital stay.

Jordan was, of course, asking for food all the time, and whenever there was any food in his hospital room, it had his attention 100%. He remained on a calorie-restrictive diet so as not to refeed him too quickly, but little Jordan still began to rapidly gain weight back. While he was eating, at first he would constantly be looking around the room like somebody was going to come and take his food from him. Jordan did have some favorite foods in the hospital, which were spaghetti and grilled cheese.

From his hospital bed, the little boy also told his grandmother some heartbreaking stories about how he had been kept in a dark closet. He told her about his little mattress, about how his dad hit him, and about how his dad had given him something to make him sleepy on occasion. Jordan’s family says they think he lived in these conditions for about a year, and his family also made sure that they thanked Cody and Allison for getting their little boy help.

After Jordan was rescued, his mother, Wendy, tried to get custody back of him. Brad had kept her son from her for two years at that point; however, Wendy had previously lost custody of Jordan when her court-ordered drug test had started coming back not clean. But at the point that Jordan was in the hospital, she had been clean for quite some time and said she was ready to do whatever it took to get her son back. She says she dropped him off for a visit two years ago at his maternal grandparents’ house; she claims that Jordan’s dad picked him up from that visit and never brought him back.

“What I want people to understand is that your son didn’t just go missing two years ago and you go, ‘Well, darn that,’ that you worked and fought all along trying to get your son back.” “Yes, as soon as I got off the phone with him that day, I called the police, and I mean they instructed me that there was nothing that they could do for me.” “You had custody of your son?” “We had never gone to court for custody. There was nothing formal, even though you all had split.” “Yes.” “You know where your child was inside that house. Did you knock on the door? Did you say, ‘I want my son back’?” “I left notes on the door. I went over there with police officers. They wouldn’t answer the door. They wouldn’t answer my phone calls. They wouldn’t reply to text messages—nothing.” “Did you file a motion with the court for custody?” “Yes, I filed with the Attorney General’s office, and it took them almost eight months to get me a court date.” “And during all this time, you have no access to your son?” “None. I messaged Tammy on Facebook begging her to just let me have some time with my child.” “And what kind of response would you get?” “All negative. She messaged me on Facebook threatening to file restraining orders on me for threatening her children. I never threatened her children. All I asked was to see my own child.”

A judge would end up ruling that Jordan and his mother stayed with Wendy’s aunt for 45 days. At that time, CPS was also monitoring her; she had to take parenting classes as well and get random drug tests in order to gain custody back of Jordan. And as of December 2015, Wendy had full custody back of her son.

So Jordan had only been 30 pounds when he had been found—the weight of a 2-year-old—but after some time at the hospital and some physical and occupational therapy, he was looking and acting a lot healthier and was up to 36 pounds in a little over a week. A toy drive called “Toys for Jordan” was also held for the boy, and via social media, dozens of toys were given to Jordan, and money was also raised to help pay for his medical expenses. A photo posted on Facebook showed little Jordan smiling as he was surrounded by all his toys in his hospital bed.

So after about a week and a half in the hospital, Jordan was ready to be released, and the first thing he wanted was a Happy Meal from McDonald’s, now that he could have solid food again.

In October of 2014, Tammy, who was still out on bail, sparked an Amber Alert in regards to her newborn son, William. A judge had ordered her to surrender her baby to Child Protective Services, and she had fled. The little boy and Tammy, however, were found safe about an hour later, and William was placed into foster care. This time, Tammy would be held on a $30,000 bond, but she would still be released only a few days later. Bradley was still in jail, being held on a $150,000 bond.

In April of 2016, Bradley Bleimeyer took a plea deal and he pled guilty to his charge of child endangerment, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Tammy would go to trial in December of 2018, and her defense team would argue that the mother—who was an educated person and had worked as a paralegal—was, like her children, a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her husband. They also cited that Jordan’s mother, Wendy, had testified that Brad had previously abused her. Prosecutors, however, disagreed with the defense’s explanation, deciding that Tammy, the former paralegal, had actually used her knowledge of the law in order to thwart police investigations as well as dodge attempted intervention by CPS. It’s believed that Tammy likely resented Jordan because he was the only child in the household that was not her biological child; she also may have been jealous of the love that Brad at first had for his son.

During Tammy’s trial, a number of people testified, including one of her longtime friends. This friend would say that she had seen Jordan at the beginning of 2014, and he was very skinny. Tammy would tell her that Jordan had caused a lot of problems because he would wake up in the middle of the night, eat food, and make a mess. But the friend didn’t think that Jordan looked like he was eating any food at all, and she thought that he might die. She told Tammy that she needed to go to the hospital to get help for him, but Tammy told the friend that he was just fine. The friend then tried to take him herself, but Tammy wouldn’t allow it. Instead of taking Jordan to the hospital that time, that’s when Tammy and Brad had actually driven him to Ohio to stay with the godmother of some of Tammy’s children—the one that Brad had never met until that day.

All three of Jordan’s older siblings would testify against their mother, and they also said they never questioned speaking out against her because they knew it was the right thing to do. Brad also testified, and he said that his son Jordan was in pretty poor physical condition by the time of his hospitalization, but Jordan had gotten that way over a period of time. And although Brad testified that he was responsible for his son’s condition, he said that Tammy had also just stood back and done nothing about it.

Tammy testified on her own behalf, and she again was claiming ignorance, saying she had no idea how her stepson had become so malnourished and skinny. She said she would have been very concerned if one of her children had started to lose weight, and she also told the courtroom that she had never seen Brad withhold food from his son or ever lock him in the closet. But Tammy did acknowledge that Jordan looked skinnier at the beginning of 2014, and she had told Brad to bring him to the doctor, however she denied that her friend had told her to bring Jordan to the doctor and that she told her no.

The woman who had adopted three of Tammy’s biological children after CPS had taken them away also went up to the witness stand and spoke. She said that she had to re-teach the children when they first arrived in her home because they were very manipulative and lied a lot. She said that she believed they learned this behavior from their biological mother—very likely.

At the end of the trial, Tammy Bleimeyer was found guilty of injury to a child by omission and she was sentenced to 28 years in prison. As her sentence was read, she broke down into tears. “We, the jury, having found the defendant, Tammy Bleimeyer, guilty of injury to a child…” Her face buried in her hands as the judge read Tammy Bleimeyer’s fate, assessing her punishment in confinement in the institutional division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for 28 years.

Prior to her sentence being handed down, her son Cody took the stand and read a statement. He said: “It’s no mystery why we’re all here. You made a big mistake and ultimately have to face the consequences. I’m here to ask a rhetorical question of how… how could you put your children through all of that? The people who should be your pride and joy. You caused me sadness, anger, confusion, and emptiness. I can’t say I’ll ever be the same emotionally because of this.”

At the time of Tammy’s trial, Jordan was 9 years old and he weighed a healthy 118 pounds. Thousands of dollars were donated to the care of Jordan as well after his story was the topic of an episode of The Dr. Phil Show. His mother said that he is an amazing, intelligent, and funny boy. Since then, there have been no further updates on him, but I would assume that he’s doing well.

Well, thank you for listening to all of Jordan’s story today. This story was almost not a survivor story—Jordan was only days, maybe hours, away from death. But thanks to his brave older siblings, he was rescued just in time. Tammy’s children are amazing, and they’re heroes for rescuing him. It’s hard to believe that they came from such an angry, mean, manipulative person.