A ‘wicked’ father locked up his two young children inside their home and severely neglected them while using drugs and playing video games
A five-year-old girl starved to death inside a ‘house of horrors’ after months of neglect at the hands of her father, who locked his children away so he was free to take drugs and play video games.
Robert Buskey Jr., 35, pleaded guilty in January to second-degree murder and criminal sale of a controlled substance to a child. He has now been sentenced to 27 years to life.
The authorities were called to Buskey’s home on April 14, 2024. When they arrived, they found the body of an unresponsive and severely emaciated little girl locked in a bedroom, his daughter Charlotte. The dining room of the “deplorable” house contained a makeshift cage in which Buskey’s three-year-old son was being kept.
According to a statement from the Schenectady County District Attorney’s Office, Charlotte and her brother had been neglected and malnourished for months, and were completely closed off from the outside world. The siblings no longer saw family, did not attend doctor’s appointments, and had never been enrolled in school.
“Their world shrunk to the confines of Mr. Buskey’s deplorable home, and ultimately, for Charlotte, the confines of her bedroom in which Mr. Buskey kept her locked, and Jackson, in his cage, so Mr. Buskey could do drugs, play video games, and not be bothered by his children,” the statement said. “Mr. Buskey’s children did not even have the comfort of each other in the end.”
Authorities further noted that Buskey had installed a lock on the outside of Charlotte’s bedroom door, which he later reinforced with tape after he discovered that Charlotte was able to escape by jiggling the door. She did not have a proper bed to sleep in – instead she had been given a ‘pack n play’ which was so small she had to curl up in the fetal position.
“That’s where Charlotte spent her final days, abandoned and locked in her room by her father,” the statement read. “She had no food, no water, no contact with anyone, in a pack n play, left there to die, and she did. And she died in a house that was stocked with food, including boxes of food right outside of her locked bedroom.”
When Charlotte was found, she was so dehydrated that her eyes had sunken into her skull. Her autopsy revealed that not only was she in a state of severe dehydration, but her body was completely devoid of any food.
Buskey was also charged with sale of a narcotic drug after both children tested positive for cocaine – under state law, ‘sale’ of a drug includes giving a drug. In addition to his plea of guilty to murder, Buskey also pled guilty to giving a narcotic drug to his three-year-old son.
At his sentencing on April 3, Buskey apologised for his actions and took responsibility. “I deserve it,” he said in court, per WGRB. “I understand why I am being prosecuted here. I understand the reasons why everyone looks at me as a monster.”
District Attorney Robert M. Carney stated: “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.”
