When a Las Vegas mother sent her daughter to elementary school on Tuesday morning, she slipped the girl a stack of sticky notes to give to her teacher. The messages, police said, were a cry for help.

The mother wrote that her boyfriend was holding her against her will and that she feared her 4-year-old son, whom she hadn’t seen for months, was dead, according to her attorney.

After the school reported the letter to law enforcement, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers arrived at the house and arrested the boyfriend, 35-year-old Brandon Toseland. He was charged with two counts of kidnapping.

The following day, as detectives searched the home, they found a freezer in the garage. Inside, authorities said, were a child’s remains. Family members later identified him as the 4-year-old boy, the mother’s attorney, Stephen Stubbs, told The Washington Post.

Toseland now also faces a murder charge, police said.

Scott Coffee, Toseland’s public defender, said in an interview with The Post that he will seek a mental health evaluation for his client and that it is “too early in the case to know what happened.” He also accused law enforcement of being too quick to determine the facts of the case and said he has not yet reviewed the evidence against Toseland.

“His criminal history is minimal,” Coffee added.

Toseland was arrested in 2018 and charged with two counts of domestic battery, court records show. He pleaded no contest the following year. Coffee said that “domestic violence is not an uncommon charge” and “if what the state is alleging is true, it is certainly out of (Toseland’s) character.”

During interviews with detectives, the mother said that Toseland had abused her and that “she was not allowed to leave the house alone or enter the garage,” according to a Wednesday news release from Las Vegas police.

The mother last saw her 4-year-old son in December, she told detectives. She feared he was dead and could not get a straight answer from Toseland, Stubbs said.

After the child’s body was found in the freezer this week, detectives discovered a large hole in the backyard, the police department confirmed to The Post. Lt. Ray Spencer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal his team believes Toseland planned to use the 8-foot-deep hole to bury the boy. Spencer also told the newspaper that police found dirt in a U-Haul parked in the driveway.

Toseland and the mother met through her late husband, who died in January 2021 from an unspecified respiratory illness, Stubbs said. After the death, Toseland allegedly comforted her, and the two grew close. They started dating in March 2021, according to Stubbs.

That same month, the mother and her two children moved in with Toseland and “little by little, (he) started exercising more and more control,” Stubbs said.

The mother told Stubbs that Toseland sexually, physically and emotionally abused her for months. Stubbs said Toseland alienated the mother from her family, confiscated her phone and car keys, controlled her social media and quit her job on her behalf. Toseland also allegedly installed padlocks, video surveillance and motion sensors he could monitor on his phone, according to Stubbs.

“It just got worse to the point where, finally, in December, there was one day she tried to exit a room and it was locked,” Stubbs said. “And from then on, she was held captive.”

Toseland allegedly kept the mother restrained and threatened to kill her children if she tried to leave.

“From the time she was held captive in December to when she was rescued, there was never a time when she could have fled the home with her daughter,” Stubbs said. “He made sure of that.”

Coffee, Toseland’s attorney, said he could not comment on the abuse allegations because he has not yet received documents from the investigation.

“I certainly understand why she’d want to get in front of the investigation,” Coffee said, referring to the mother. “Until we get a chance to look into things, everything is a possibility.”

The mother started planning her escape weeks ago, when, during weekday trips with Toseland to drop off her 7-year-old daughter at school, she found a pad of sticky notes and a pen in Toseland’s car, according to Stubbs. During the minute it took Toseland to walk the girl to the crossing guard, the mother, while allegedly handcuffed in the car, would quickly jot down notes.

Monday night was the mother’s first chance to act on her plan, according to Stubbs.

“For some reason, the daughter was allowed to sleep in the same bed as (her) mother,” Stubbs said. “Then the mother coached her daughter on what to do. And on the day that they were rescued, the mother was able to hide the notes on her daughter’s person.”

When the 7-year-old got to school, she handed her teacher the notes, police said.

The mother and daughter, though dealing with the trauma of their experience, are “grateful to school officials and the law enforcement that rescued them,” Stubbs added.

Law enforcement officials have not yet identified the boy’s cause of death. An autopsy is being conducted by the Clark County Coroner’s Office, police said.

Toseland, who is being held in protective custody in county jail, according to his attorney, is due back in court on Monday.