"I just can't understand why anyone would kill a 4-year-old boy who was a very sweet and intelligent boy," said Okee Wade, Myls' father.
Eyewitness News was the only TV station there when Okee Wade walked out of a South Jersey jail Thursday.
He'd been stuck there, facing racketeering charges, as cops say his transgender girlfriend Kryzie King burned, froze, beat, and starved his son Myls Dobson in her 48th Street apartment, when she was supposed to be watching him over the holidays.
"He was at a friend of mine's house, but that wasn't that person," Wade said.
Wade claimed he'd never heard of King, but did admit to leaving his little boy with a friend named Jane Monroe, who also lives on 48th Street.
"I don't know none of these people dude. You know what I'm saying? At the end of the day, I don't know who these people is. All I know is that I expected to have been going to work and then going and picking my son up on the 19th. Didn't know I had a court date and they locked me up," Wade said.
Cops say Monroe is King, who they say admitted she agreed to watch Myls for just a few hours. But when his father never returned, she tortured the child for three weeks until he died.
"He may have violated the criminal laws of which he's plead guilty, he's a parent also," the judge said.
In a Jersey Shore courtroom Thursday, Wade pleaded guilty to the racketeering charge in exchange for a three-week furlough to bury his son. The second degree racketeering charges involve illegal withdrawals of money from Atlantic City casinos.
It set off a fight with Myls' biological mother, who lost custody to Wade three years ago, but has already claimed the body with the help of The Reverend Al Sharpton, who plans to eulogize Myls next week.
For his part, Wade seemed torn between sorrow for Myls and for himself.
"I'm like 37 and I had like one kid. So I don't know if I'll ever get the opportunity to ever get another. And personally, I don't know if I want another especially if I have to go through this again," Wade said.
Wade will serve five years behind bars. If he does not return to Atlantic County to surrender himself to the county jail by 4 p.m. Feb. 6, the judge said Wade's plea would be vacated and he would face the maximum prison sentence.
The indictment against his Wade's girlfriend Kryzie King is sealed and it is not yet known if murder is one of the charges.
King is already charged with endangering the welfare of a child and assault.
A spokeswoman for Rev. Sharpton said the funeral will be 7 p.m. Tuesday at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem.
