New York Post
Half-naked woman was allegedly tortured and chained in Texas backyard for months by five ‘friends’ who didn’t ‘like her anymore’
By Richard Pollina
Published Nov. 6, 2025, 1:34 a.m. ET
A half-naked woman was allegedly tortured and chained up in the backyard of a Texas home for months — leading to the arrest of five people who allegedly starved and shot at the defenseless victim with BB guns.
The Austin Police Department responded to a home on the south side of the city around 9 a.m. Oct. 30 after a 911 call was made regarding a woman screaming for help and handcuffed to metal exercise equipment in the backyard, according to Austin officials.
Officers arrived to find the unnamed woman suffering from severe injuries, naked from the waist down, and shackled to a punching bag stand.
The first responders quickly attempted to free the woman, but “due to the conditions of the restraints,” they had to call in the Austin Fire Department to bring special equipment to cut through the metal.
“The woman showed signs of physical distress and had visible injuries consistent with prolonged restraint,” police said.
As they worked to free the woman, five adults inside the home noticed what was happening and tried to flee, but were immediately caught and detained.
Police also found two small children living at the home who were placed in the care of Child Protective Services.
The suspects — Michelle Garcia, 51, Crystal Garcia, 21, Mache Carney, 32, Juan Pablo Castro, 30, and Maynard Lefevers, 21 — had allegedly held the victim captive for months, police said.
The victim told investigators that she’d been friends with Michelle Garcia, but stated that “at some point, they [the group] decided they no longer liked her,” and the five decided to keep her as a captive, according to an affidavit obtained by the Austin American-Statesman.
She said she was forced to live outside for weeks and beaten whenever she tried to flee. It’s unclear when the victim was taken captive and exactly how long she was held.
Detectives said the woman was fed just one plate of food a day and shackled to a metal exercise stand — sometimes with both wrists locked behind her.
Michelle Garcia allegedly told investigators she limited the woman to one meal a day because she thought the victim had gotten “chunky.”
However, investigators said the woman appeared severely malnourished.
The victim also said that the night before being found, her pants slipped down and she “got in trouble.” She was then shot with a BB gun, cuffed to a backyard stand and left there half-naked overnight as “punishment” while temperatures plunged into the 40s, the affidavit revealed.
During her captivity, she sustained extensive injuries, including open wounds, severe swelling of the wrists, loss of tissue from her hands and feet, widespread scarring from BB gun pellets, and significant facial trauma.
After she was transported to a local hospital, doctors determined her injuries matched weeks of torture and restraint. Scans also found a BB was lodged in her right eye.
Castro allegedly told police he shot the woman with an electric rifle-style BB gun because he “didn’t want to touch her.”
He also allegedly admitted that when he would get home from work, he would grab the BB gun from his closet and “chase her around the yard,” expressing that he “f–king hates her,” according to the affidavit.
One of the children found at the home — a 4-year-old boy identified as Castro’s son — said his dad shot the woman whenever she was “bad,” and that his mom, Carney, usually stood by and watched.
All five suspects were arrested and charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, injury to the elderly or disabled, and unlawful restraint. They are all locked up at the Travis County Jail on $305,000 bail.
Carney and Michelle Garcia return to court on Nov. 18 and 21, while Crystal Garcia, Castro and Lefevers are set to appear on Dec. 15.
The case remains under investigation.
Updae 11/24:
Here are more details on this story I previously shared.
New York Post
exclusive details
‘Captors’ give sick excuse for chaining, torturing woman in yard for months: ‘Some people like getting frisky’
By Jared Downing
Published Nov. 21, 2025, 4:25 p.m. ET
A member of a family of sickos charged with handcuffing and torturing a woman for months said she thought the horrifying crime was alright because “some people liked getting frisky,” according to Texas cops.
Mache Carney, 32, was arrested along with her mother, sister, husband, brother and a family friend after Austin officers found the battered, terrified victim handcuffed to an workout rack behind the group’s trailer-style house.
The woman had apparently been starved and abused for “months” in clear view of Carney’s 4-year-old kid, according to an affidavit supplied to The Post by the Austin Police Department.
Carney said she didn’t think there was anything wrong with handcuffing the woman because “some people liked getting frisky in bed at night, and since it was night when the victim was handcuffed, it was alright,” according to the affidavit.
Family members claimed the women, who had known them for years, had mental health issues and that they chained her up “to prevent her from stealing things,” police said.
They said the victim had consented to being locked up as a condition for staying at their house, but a 911 caller reported hearing the woman screaming for help from the backyard.
The victim said she would try to free herself or call for help but that the family would beat her and shoot her with a BB gun as punishment.
Officers found the woman chained face-down, naked from the waist down and covered in horrific injuries, including a 6-inch scar on her belly, an eye swollen shut and wrists puffy and bruised where handcuffs dug into her flesh.
She also had “hundreds of round BB sized scars” across every inch of her body.
The victim told police she was only given one meal a day and left out in freezing weather.
Medical teams treating her horrific wounds found a “BB sized projectile lodged in right eye,” authorities said.
Three children were in the house when the woman was rescued, including Carney’s 4-year-old son. She told the tot the woman was being punished for “killing rabbits,” according to the affidavit.
It is unclear how long the woman had been kept outside. Carney allegedly told police the family had initially kept her in the house but moved her to the back yard “due to the smell of urine from Victim soiling herself,” the affidavit reads.
The other suspects are Michelle Garcia, 51, her daughters Mache Carney and Crystal Garcia, 21, her son-in-law Juan Pablo Castro, 30, and Maynard Lefevers, 21, a family friend.
They have been charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault, among other crimes.
Lefevers was once obsessed with creating a “bed of nails” for himself, his paternal grandmother told The Post earlier this month.
The man collected thumbtacks to create a pin-point bed, which is often used in magic tricks, the grandmother, Frankie Lefevers, revealed.
“When we were speaking, the only thing he ever asked me for was thumbtacks for a bed of nails that he would make himself, which I thought was strange,” the 64-year-old said.
The granny had been excommunicated from her family for several years and learned from The Post that Maynard was accused of the sickening crimes.
“Oh my God!” Lefevers exclaimed at the time. “I would never expect anything like that from Maynard.”
The suspects are awaiting indictment. The next court appearance for all except Michelle Garcia is scheduled Jan. 8.
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