Putting two and two together, I think that I’ve solved the mystery. The third child was the smallest of the three, and was sharing the bedroom with the other two brothers. :eek:
Just going from memory, Jacque le Snake Guy owns a creepy two-story reptile store but converts the second floor to living space. He regains custody of his son, and puts double locks on the dangerous reptile cages downstairs. His son has a sleepover with the two victims. Downstairs, the snake somehow escapes its double locked cage, makes its way up a ventilation shaft (really??? Isn’t that so cliche?) into the boys room and kills them.
I don’t remember Jacque’s real name.
Are you all sure there was a third boy? I’ve read a couple articles about this today and both said that the reptile guy was a family friend, but I haven’t seen any mention of him having a kid.
According to CNN, the third kid (son of reptile guy) was sleeping in another room. Convenient. I would say this sounds like Bullshit, but I think I’m going to go with “someone is trying to sell me snake-oil”. 
Sorry.
I’m seeing the mention of the third boy now…I missed that before. One article said that they had been at a farm earlier in the day and a reptile expert speculated that they may have smelled like goats that they had been playing with, which could have drawn the snake to them.
All you people talking about the alleged third kid in the past tense :eek:
\
That makes some sense. And now there’s a lesson for other kids: take a bath before bed or snakes will eat you.
Just noticed this article (from Australia!) with an additional detail or two that I hadn’t seen before.
As mentioned above, third kid was store owner’s son, but it doesn’t say where he was.
It seems to say the snake was in an enclosure on the same floor as the kids. Using terminology that I believe is common everywhere but in America, it refers to the shop being on the “ground floor” while the snake was on the “first floor” (apparently, meaning the floor above the ground floor). As the building has only two floors (there’s a photo), that puts it on the same floor as the residence.
The enclosure was a glass aquarium, not a cage. Apparently a large one, that went all the way up to the ceiling, where there was an opening at the top connected to the ventilation duct. So the snake went out there.
Smelled like goats? Was this snake routinely fed goats? Did it recognize goat as potential prey? And that faint smell on the boys was attractive enough to entice the snake through a ventilation system? So much so that it broke its way through the “registers” (grates over the ducts)? Likely not. Most large pythons in captivity are fed more easily obtainable animals like ducks and rabbits. But even if the kids smelled like a barnyard, I’m still seeing BS in the double kill. Being struck, bitten, and constricted by a snake that size hurts like hell. (Personal experience here.) The first kid had at least one really good scream in him, even if the snake got a fortuitously perfect first strike. Probably several. The second kid, the same. I’m astounded that the first didn’t wake the second. And that neither woke other people in the house – or next door. Lots of things just aren’t right – or complete, anyway – with the story as reported so far.
And by the way, I actually AM a reptile expert. 
Here are some links that shed some light on the danger of large snakes. The second two are taken from links in the first one.
Thirteen Foot Burmese Python Kills Owner
I’m not a reptile expert, I’ve merely kept several lizards, snakes, and other herps, spent some time in contact with several herp experts, and once had to help bathe a 9 foot anaconda. None of the behavior described about this case is surprising to me. If the news about this incident is very inaccurate I wouldn’t be surprised either.
The snake getting both boys makes me wonder, too. Why no screaming? Only thing I can think of was if they were sleeping in the bed right next to each other and the snake wrapped up both of them together. Snake experts- is that possible?
If the snake wrapped up the kid & started to constrict before he awoke, there’d probably only be one scream as he wouldn’t be able to get more air in his lungs. If kids can sleep through smoke alarms for minutes on end (cite), then I can see the other child(ren) sleeping through one scream. If the kid was facing the wrong way & had it’s mouth blocked, possibly by said snake, & depending upon the bedroom layout, the scream might be muffled enough that adults asleep down the hall might not hear it either.
That being said, the allegation that it killed two & ate neither seems unusual…unless it was a mafia hit-snake. :rolleyes:
Well, there goes the witness.
Okay, I’m going out on a limb and making a bold, reckless and out-of-my-ass prediction:
The Snake guy (whose building this took place in, and whose kid survived, in another room) has a hard-on for snakes and likes to get off on watching snakes “do what they do”. He set this whole thing up and kinda did a “murder by snake”, while watching and getting his groove on. Whatever that may mean to him or anyone else, who knows? Not making any solid accusations, just speculation.
Just my crazy opinion. “Murder by Snake”
And that poor python? He was a “snapegoat”! Or would it be “snakegoat”?
At any rate, somewhere, there is a bass-player who is not going to get a new pair of boots.
I can possibly see a snake being able to crawl NEXT to a sleeping child without being detected. But how does a snake encircle a non-drugged, non-ambulatory, non-mute, live human being in prone position, without detection? Not once, but twice. So improbable.
And even if the sound of the snake crashing through the ceiling didn’t waken them, reptiles smell. How would they miss the smell of such a thing?
Call me a cynic, but I’m getting a squicky feeling that the pet owner drugged the boys and let the snake loose on them.
These two things are what make me suspicious. Ventilation systems should have grates over them, usually screwed in and not easily removed. Also, “sleepovers” usually mean all the kids sleep together.
Snakescape? No, that’s a whole other thing…
A couple of the stories I have seen suggest that the heating system of the building was ducted directly into the snake’s cage. One of the details of keeping tropical reptiles is the need to keep them warm. Rock pythons need an ambient temperature that is warmer than most people keep their houses. It sounds like this guy was solving that problem in a pretty strange way. Most people use under-cage heat sources like pads or tape for non-basking species, and incandescent or infra-red heating sources for basking species.
And about the smell of reptiles: their cages may stink, but the animals themselves are pretty aroma-free to human senses, unless they spray some musk defensively.
The theory now is that the boys smelled like farm animals, thus triggering the snake’s hunger instinct.