Seven-year-old William Evans-Ellis died from blunt force trauma to the head, Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco announced Aug. 11, delivering the official autopsy ruling in a case that has shaken the Oakley neighborhood.

Sammarco released the findings at a morning press conference, according to Local 12. In addition to the fatal head injury, she said William had a fractured arm and "too many bruises to count." She confirmed he had been bound with duct tape, consistent with what police described when they found his body in a closet at a home on the 2800 block of Madison Road on Aug. 6.

"This is a hard case for everybody," Sammarco said.

William was not malnourished, and no other children were living in the home, Sammarco said. Her office will conduct additional testing. She noted the case bore similarities to the Marcus Fiesel case, which occurred almost exactly 20 years ago. Fiesel, a 3-year-old nonverbal autistic foster child, died in August 2006 after his foster parents bound him and locked him in a closet at their Union Township home while they attended a family reunion. That case led to sweeping changes in Ohio's foster care system.

William's mother, Kaitlin Evans, 38, and her two roommates, Nessa Keaney, 23, and Kirby Rankin, 33, are each charged with murder and child endangering. Prosecutors say the three lived together and co-parented William at the Madison Road home. All three have pleaded not guilty and are held on $1.1 million bonds each.

A grand jury is scheduled to hear the case against all three defendants on Aug. 17, according to WLWT.

Police found William's body after Evans walked barefoot into the Mercy Health Rookwood emergency room claiming her partner was trying to kill her and had taken her son. At the Aug. 7 arraignment, a Cincinnati Police Homicide Unit detective called the case "one of the most disturbing examples of child abuse" in his 21-year career and testified the abuse had been ongoing for more than two months, as we reported Aug. 7.

William's grandparents, Mike and Tina Evans, have called the home a "house of horrors." His grandmother Gina Ellis said in an Aug. 8 statement to Local 12 that the family had hired a private investigator and met with an attorney the week before William's death because they had been cut off from seeing him for about six weeks.

Sammarco's office said more test results are pending.