CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. (AP) — The demolition of a suburban Chicago house where authorities say a couple beat their 5-year-old son to death has begun.

Chicago-based Green Demolition Contractors Inc. is donating its services to demolish the the dilapidated Crystal Lake house where Andrew “AJ” Freund was killed last April. Demolition began Wednesday. In November, a judge gave the community of Crystal Lake permission to demolish the house that had sat boarded up for months.

Andrew Freund Sr. and the boy’s mother, Joann Cunningham, were charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of the boy, whose body was found last April in a shallow grave near the home.