GREAT FALLS – Jared Neal Mell and Courtney Lee Cain-Howell have been charged in Great Falls with aggravated kidnapping and assault with a weapon.
Court documents state the male victim told police Mell accused him of stealing a ring and threatened to beat him up if he didn’t follow Mell to a nearby apartment.
Once inside the apartment, Cain-Howell reportedly threatened him with a baseball bat and ordered him to take off his clothes and put on women’s pink underwear.
Mell and Cain-Howell then allegedly forced the man to clean the carpet and emptied trash on him as he did so. The court documents also allege the two beat him with their hands, leaving bruises and a black eye.
Mell then reportedly took a knife – approximately 7 inches long – and used a torch to heat it up and then forced the victim to hold on to the knife for about 10 or 15 minutes. Court documents note that the victim had burn marks on his hand.
Cain-Howell then allegedly "shot up" using a needle in her arm, and then used the needle to inject blood into the victim as Mell held a knife to the victim’s neck.
They then forced the victim to take a shower and Mell reportedly urinated on the man in the shower.
Mell then allegedly put a "ratchet strap" on the victim as a make-shift harness and forced him to walk across the Warden Bridge (10th Avenue South). Mell dropped the harness to smoke a cigarette and the victim was able to escape.
Police officers contacted Mell and Cain-Howell and Cain-Howell told the officers that the man had come to the apartment with stolen property, including ID cards (driver’s licenses, military), a checkbook, iPads and iPhones and an Airsoft gun.
Mell told the officers that he had gone to a "trap" house where the victim was located and admitted forcing the victim to go to Cain-Howell’s residence.
Court documents state Mell admitted he assaulted the victim by punching and kicking him in the face and body. Mell admitted that he was under the influence of meth at the time of the assault.
Cain-Howell then told police that Mell had shown up at her residence with the victim and she admitting "poking" the victim with a baseball bat several times and slapping him in the face in an attempt to get him to tell her where the stolen property was located.
She told police that as she was questioning the victim, Mell heated up a knife and made the victim grab the knife.
She also said that Mell had forced the victim to "be her (Courtney’s) bitch" by forcing him to put on her pink underwear, recording video of it, and and then sending the video to Cain-Howell and other people. in order to to obtain blackmail material on the victim.
When officers searched the premises, they found three baseball bats, a knife and a pair of scissors with burn marks on them, a canister torch, three pairs of pink underwear, prescription drugs with labels ripped off of the bottles, and a checkbook with a forged check.
