Story highlights Their teenage adopted son had special needs and used a wheelchair, the sheriff says

Parents Ernest and Heather Franklin are charged with murder and arson

New York (CNN) Foul play was suspected from the first moments the disabled boy's body was discovered in the ashes of an upstate New York home.

Jeffrey Franklin, a 16-year-old adopted child with special needs, did not perish in an early-morning blaze that appeared to have started in the wood stove that heated the house in the town of Guilford, about an hour and half southeast of Syracuse, investigators said.

"Early on, almost immediately at the scene that night, some red flags went up," Chenango County Sheriff Ernest Cutting Jr. said Saturday. "We chose to kind of keep it close to the vest."

Jeffrey's adopted parents were indicted on second-degree murder and arson charges Friday -- weeks after the March 1 fire that authorities allege they started to cover up the killing.

Ernest Franklin II, 35, and wife Heather, 33, are also accused of tampering with physical evidence but could face additional charges, according to Cutting.

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