By Timothy Flathers
First Assistant District Attorney in Midland County
A case recently handled by our office took turn after turn that no one could have predicted, reaching a conclusion we never expected. This isn’t a tale about a great courtroom triumph or feats of legal wizardry, but rather a particularly memorable example of those human dramas that we witness in this profession time and time again.
Inside the city of Midland, in the heart of the oil patch, behind the houses on most residential blocks, there is a secondary network of largely unpaved alleyways running parallel to the streets in town. It was in one of these alleys, on a cool Sunday afternoon in January 2023, that the mysterious situation of Cordarius Pegues first presented itself. A resident of Fannin Terrace neighborhood had reported a child roaming in the alley, walking with his pants down, and pushing a toy car. When an officer with the Midland Police Department arrived to investigate, she found someone who looked by all appearances to be a young teen, or possibly even a child, and who was utterly unable to tell the officer anything about who he was or where he belonged.
The boy was checked by paramedics. It was unknown how long he had been roaming the streets or what he might have been through before being discovered. Though dirty and disheveled, he appeared in relatively good health and didn’t need medical attention. Short and slightly built, the boy’s childish face seemed even younger under the pink bicycle helmet, complete with cat ears, nose, and eyes, perched atop his head. He was turned over to Child Protective Services (CPS) while Midland police tried to locate whoever was responsible for him. Still unable to communicate verbally with him, officers were finally able to get a name that they could read when he scrawled “Cordarius” on a piece of paper.
A social media post and news release seeking possible leads to Cordarius’s identity turned up nothing. Fingerprints and buccal swab DNA samples were collected. Checks with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUS) were conducted but uncovered no new information.
Cordarius was an absolute mystery, as if he had somehow dropped out of the sky into that central Midland neighborhood. The news about him had gone viral, seemingly gaining national attention. And yet there was not a single clue to point in the direction of family or a guardian.
It was clear that Cordarius had many needs and developmental deficits. In addition to being nonverbal, he was also not well bathroom-trained and he was in need of significant help with basic activities. Someone had clearly been caring for him, yet there was no indication that any living soul knew Cordarius or even knew of him.
Days turned to weeks and weeks to months without any new light shed on the mystery of Cordarius. Due to the level of help he needed, it had been necessary for CPS to move him out of the area to a suitable foster home. Midland authorities continued hoping for any new information that might answer everyone’s questions, but nothing came. It seemed as if the frustrating puzzle of this young man’s existence might go unsolved.
The break in the case
Finally, on August 9, 2023, the break everyone had been hoping for arrived: A woman from out of state claiming to be Cordarius’s grandmother called the Midland Police Department. She informed them that her grandson was supposed to be living in Midland with her daughter, Charlotte Pegues. Alerted by a friend who had seen Cordarius’s picture in the news, the grandmother had contacted her daughter, who assured her that Cordarius was with her and was fine. Unsatisfied with that answer, Cordarius’s grandmother called Midland authorities.
Before that conversation had even finished, investigators were notified that another woman was trying to call them. Officers talked to her on the phone initially, as she claimed she wasn’t ready to meet in person. Her name was Charlotte Pegues, and she said she was Cordarius’s mother. She also revealed a surprising piece of information during that call: Cordarius, despite his youthful appearance, was born in January 1999. He was not a child or even a teen. He had been found, it turned out, just weeks after his 24th birthday.
Investigators arranged a meeting with Charlotte Pegues the following day at the police department. She appeared voluntarily and agreed to talk. Her home, where Cordarius had lived with her until earlier in the year, turned out to be fewer than three blocks from where her son had been found.
Charlotte and her son had lived in Midland for two years at the time he was found in that alleyway. After years in Tennessee and Oklahoma, Charlotte had come to Midland to work for a company that owned fast food franchises in town. Her job on the corporate side of the business paid decently and she seemed to be well-liked within the company. No one in their quiet, middle-class neighborhood knew Charlotte, and they definitely never remembered knowing or even seeing Cordarius. The tidy, nondescript ranch-style house they lived in was owned by the franchise business and was provided to her as part of the job.
According to Charlotte, Cordarius had somehow gotten out of the house earlier in the day on January 29. She had searched for him for a couple of days and then given up. She stated she looked for Cordarius on missing persons websites. Implausibly, she claimed that she was only now finding out that Cordarius had been found. While his story had been an online sensation all over the country, she stated she did not watch the news and had never seen anything about him until hearing from her mother shortly before calling the police herself.
Charlotte’s story was that she had not reported her son’s disappearance out of a combination of shame she had lost him, mistrust of law enforcement due to experiences in her past, and fear that she would be in trouble if something bad had happened to her son. Her explanation was obviously met with skepticism by investigators. It seemed much more likely that, upon learning that Cordarius had been found wandering the neighborhood, Charlotte waited for the inevitable knock at that door that would return him to her as his caretaker. When that knock did not come immediately, she kept waiting. When more and more time passed without any hint that Cordarius had been traced back to her, and with media reporting that he was safely in state custody, she probably began to hope that the burden of caring for her son, which she had borne for years, would now be taken on by someone else. Maybe she could, against all hope, get on with living her life. Now that her discovery had become inevitable, she was desperately trying to get out in front of things.
Shortly after that initial meeting at the police department, Charlotte consented to a search of her house. The house’s furnishings were spartan, with a few exceptions. Charlotte’s own bedroom was stocked with all the furniture and entertainment options of modern living. Another room, which Charlotte said had been Cordarius’s, was nearly empty except for an old, dismantled bed. She said she had cleaned it out after he didn’t come back. A third room was smaller and more disturbing. It was packed with trash to the point where it was difficult to open the door. The top layer of garbage was strewn with junk food packages and wrappers. It reeked, even over the deodorizers that had been applied to mask the smell. Clearly, Charlotte hadn’t yet undertaken cleaning up that mess. Investigators shuddered to think how much time Cordarius might have spent closed in that room.
What could the law do?
As the story continued to unfold, the whole city remained heartbroken by the circumstances of this vulnerable young man, unclaimed and seemingly alone in the world. There was no mistaking the attitude vocalized in the community toward Charlotte Pegues: She needed to be locked up, and it didn’t really matter how or what for. The thought of a mother turning her back on a vulnerable child, even one Cordarius’s age, was tough to stomach.
Our office’s initial consultations with investigators about the case had to put aside the easy emotional reaction and focus on what evidence there was and what crime, if any, had been committed. It was not an easy task. When everyone was under the initial impression that Cordarius was a child, the assumption was once his parents or legal guardians were found, there were obvious criminal charges to consider. That Cordarius had been an adult since long before coming to Midland upended that assumption.
First, it did not appear that Cordarius had suffered any bodily injury. It was impossible to say if his diminutive size could be due to historic malnutrition or if it was just his natural condition. By all measures he was relatively healthy when he was found, except for some poor dental hygiene. He would need dental work, but nothing that we felt would give rise to an Injury to a Disabled Person charge, either by act or by omission.
Further, a charge of Abandoning or Endangering a Child had initially been a strong possibility that evaporated upon learning Cordarius’s true age. As most are aware, Penal Code §22.041 is today titled “Abandoning or Endangering a Child, Elderly Individual, or Disabled Individual.” The “elderly individual or disabled individual” language, however, was added by the 88th Legislature and didn’t take effect until September 1, 2023. The new elements added by that change, protecting disabled adults in the same way we had long protected children, came about seven months too late to apply to our situation.
The mystery of Cordarius had become a cooperative multi-agency effort consisting of law enforcement, prosecution, and CPS and Adult Protective Services (APS) personnel both in West and South Texas. That investigation made one interesting discovery that proved critical to our case. Many years earlier, while Cordarius was a young special needs student in Tennessee, Charlotte Pegues had secured disability benefits on his behalf. She had been collecting those benefits ever since. To state it more accurately, Charlotte’s mother, due to a past conviction on Charlotte’s record, had been receiving those benefits for Charlotte and then providing them on a debit card, along with monthly care packages for her grandson. For months, Charlotte had been falsely assuring her mother back home that Cordarius was with her and fine, and she continued to receive what they both called “Cord’s packages.”
According to Charlotte’s bank records, from the time of Cordarius’s discovery in January until August, when she had not provided for him in any way, she had collected nearly $7,000 in benefits on behalf of her son. There were no lavish trips to Vegas, but there was plenty of evidence of a veritable parade of Uber Eats deliveries and spending sprees at Ulta Beauty in the Midland Park Mall.
Wiser heads in my office and with Midland PD recognized this to be a violation of Penal Code §32.53, Exploitation of a Child, Elderly Individual, or Disabled Individual, a third-degree felony. The statute, in the code’s fraud chapter, criminalizes improperly using the resources of a disabled individual for personal monetary gain. It wasn’t the direction anyone expected the case to go, but it seemed squarely on point with Charlotte’s conduct and gave us an opportunity to address with strong consequences a situation that everyone knew was unjust, even before we knew exactly why it was so.
After securing an indictment, it was then time to decide what kind of punishment to seek. We had to consider multiple factors. First, it was clear that Cordarius could never articulate how his mother treated him over the years, let alone ever testify about it. We were keenly aware that exploitation was likely the lone criminal charge possible in the case. This was in no way analogous to taking down Al Capone’s criminal empire with tax evasion charges, and it wouldn’t have been justice to treat it as such. Also, we knew the challenges that a trial would bring. Any competent defense counsel would not have to work hard to paint Charlotte Pegues as a woman beaten down by years of grueling care for her son and facing years more. When presented with an escape and the possibility that someone else would care for him without facing the indignity of having to ask for that help, she took the out. We knew that the online keyboard warriors calling for her head would not be the same people on our jury.
Taking all of that into consideration, we decided to offer the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison but probated for five years and with the condition that she repay Cordarius the benefits that she had falsely received over the months he was gone. Somewhat to our surprise, she jumped at the chance. The guilty plea went smoothly and the case was resolved.
The rest of Cordarius’s story
Cordarius was initially placed with a gracious and loving foster family far from Midland who did saintly work tending to his many needs for as long as they were able. Once it was discovered that Cordarius was nearly 25 and came under the authority of APS, it was necessary to move him into a group home in the Rio Grande Valley that could handle his special circumstances. Today, he is healthy, and he participates in speech, physical, and occupational therapy. He loves to swim and play basketball. He has been able to go to church and his caregivers describe him as “joyful.” Thanks to the work of many caring professionals both here and in South Texas, he is in a better place. Uncomfortable as it may be to contemplate, I cannot help but believe that both Cordarius and his mother are better off now than they were before.
Conclusion
Dealing with human tragedy is a daily affair in our business. Sometimes, we are confronted with real evil. In a way those situations are easier to process, precisely because they are so extraordinary. Most of what we deal with, though, amounts to nothing more than humans behaving in predictable human ways to one another, but often with horrifying results. It’s stories like Cordarius’s, the tragic human drama of a mother–son relationship that is simply beyond the com- prehension of most, that illustrate so well those situations that are often the hardest to make sense of: not evil, just human.