Insets: Charlotte Buskey (Scott and Barbieri Funeral Home) and Robert Buskey (Schenectady County Jail). Background: Home in Schenectady, New York, where Charlotte died of neglect (WNYT/YouTube).
There was nothing particularly ominous-looking outside a Schenectady, New York, home, but on the inside authorities called it a "house of horrors" where a 5-year-old girl starved to death and her 3-year-old brother was locked in a cage.
Their father, Robert S. Buskey, Jr., 35, pleaded guilty on Friday to second-degree murder in the death of Charlotte Buskey, the Schenectady County District Attorney's Office said in a press release.
Cops responded to the home on Elmer Avenue on April 14, 2024, for an unresponsive 5-year-old girl. Authorities entered a "deplorable" home where they found Buskey's 3-year-old son locked in a cage in the living room. They discovered Charlotte's "emaciated" body in her bedroom with her eyes "sunken into her skull," prosecutors said.
The bedroom had been locked from the outside. Investigators determined Charlotte had been "neglected and malnourished for months" even though there were "boxes of food" outside her room, prosecutors said. Buskey shut his kids out from family and the outside world. He never took them to the doctor and instead did drugs and played video games so he did not have to be "bothered by his children."
"I let my daughter die," Buskey later told a cop, according to a courtroom report from the Daily Gazette of Schenectady.
Instead of a bed, Charlotte had to sleep in the fetal position in an old pack 'n play she had outgrown. It was where she spent her final days.
"She had no food, no water, no contact with anyone, in a pack-n-play, left there to die, and she did," prosecutors wrote.
An autopsy showed she was in a state of severe dehydration and "completely devoid of any food."
In pleading guilty, Buskey admitted to a "depraved indifference to human life" and created a "grave risk of injury" that led to the death of his daughter.
"The charge of depraved murder is reserved for those individuals who have an utter disregard for the value of human life," the press release stated. "It reflects a wicked, evil and inhuman state of mind as manifested by brutal, heinous and despicable acts, and it sums up Mr. Buskey's conduct in this case."
Both kids tested positive for cocaine. Buskey also pleaded guilty to criminal sale of a controlled substance to a child. He faces between 27 years and life in prison when he is sentenced on March 27.
District Attorney Robert M. Carney pointed out that Charlotte's death was the area's second kid to die in roughly a month under horrific circumstances.
Within the span of 36 days the community dealt with two horrific murders of small children. One, Halo Branton, an 11-month-old baby, was dropped into a drainage pit on the GE campus on March 9, 2024, and abandoned to die of hypothermia at the hands of her mother. On April, 14, 2024, police were called to the Elmer Avenue home of Robert Buskey to find his 5 year old child, Charlotte, whom he had entombed in her bedroom until she died of dehydration and starvation. Neither of these parents may have intended to cause the death of their child, but both exhibited the utter indifference and wickedness necessary to be convicted of depraved mind murder. Like all children, these two innocents undoubtedly loved a parent who, in each case, couldn't have cared less about them.
A jury found Halo's mother guilty of murder and manslaughter last year.
Charlotte's obituary said she loved princesses and "dressing up in beautiful outfits."
"Her favorite thing to do was to blow and pop bubbles," the obituary said. "She was a gentle soul with a kind heart that touched so many during her short time here on earth."