Toddler and Newborn Found Dead; Father Arrested

A North Carolina man has been charged with murder after his two young children were found "brutally stabbed" Saturday, WTVD reports. According to WRAL, 30-year-old Tillman Freeman III had already been charged with child abuse and child endangerment Friday after he allegedly refused to give any information to police regarding his missing children. The children—2-year-old Serenity and 4-day-old Genesis—were reported missing Friday following a fight between Freeman and his wife. Freeman's wife went to the hospital for reasons unrelated to the fight and called police after she returned and was unable to find her children, WNCN reports.

Police found the children's bodies Saturday in a car parked in a wooded area about 200 yards off a road in Hoke County. They had been stabbed multiple times. "Everybody's taking this real hard," Sheriff Hubert Peterkin tells WTVD. "Our heart goes out to the family, to the mother." Freeman, who a relative calls an "abuser," told police he believes his wife was seeing another man and that one or both of the children weren't actually his. "A lot of rage, a lot of anger, and unfortunately the kids were the ones that paid for it," Hubert tells WRAL. Freeman has been charged with two counts of murder. (More child murder stories.)