 Story highlights Police say the missing 13-year-old thanked officers after they found him 
 
 He was inside a hidden compartment, behind the linen closet, police say 
 
 Police arrest boy's father and stepmother on false imprisonment, other charges 
 
 The boy contacted his mother by phone, helping officers find him, police say 
 
 A missing 13-year-old boy escaped from a hidden compartment in a Georgia home, crawling through a narrow opening behind the shelves of a linen closet to reach police. The first thing Gregory Jean Jr. told officers, police said Monday, was "thank you." (Photo: WXIA-TV, Atlanta) 
 
 JONESBORO, Ga. — It was just past midnight Saturday when Clayton County Police Sgt. Joanne Southerland, Clayton County (Ga.) Police Department 
 
 Police had received information that the child did not want to be there and had been physically abused. Thirty minutes later, using more specific information the boy was able to pass to his mother, they finally found the hidden compartment. Before his rescue last week from an Atlanta-area home, the boy had been physically assaulted that day, Clayton County Police Chief Gregory Porter said. Porter said the boy's mother told police he had been missing for four years, and she had been trying to reunite with him during that time. She pushed it in, discovering the boy who looked "absolutely afraid," she told reporters on Monday. He declined to provide specific details, saying he didn't want to jeopardize the investigation. The boy's father, 37-year-old Gregory Jean Sr., and stepmother, 42-year-old Samantha Joy Davis, were arrested and charged with false imprisonment, cruelty to children and obstruction, Porter said. A judge denied them bond at a court appearance Sunday, CNN affiliate WSB reported. Three teenagers, children of Davis, also were arrested early Saturday morning. The hidden compartment where the boy was found, police said, was an area filled with wooden beams and insulation between the garage and attic of the home in Jonesboro, Georgia. "It was an area where no person should be living or held. ... No one should have been in that area where we found the victim," Porter said. He wouldn't go into specifics about how long and how often the boy was kept there, but there was a bedroom he shared at the home with the other children. The boy's father and stepmother didn't do anything to physically stop police from searching the house, she said, but "there was a lot of deception." Police said all five had denied knowing anything about another child living at the home, and the police report says they turned lights off and were slow to answer the door each time officers arrived. Clayton County Police Chief Gregory Porter said the boy's biological mother, who lives in Orlando, Florida, called her local 911 and was routed to the 911 center in Jonesboro just before 11 p.m. Friday. The report says the boy was assaulted by a juvenile in the house at the direction of the boy's father, apparently in retribution for contacting his mother. "When we get a call like that....we won't leave until we make sure that any child is safe," Southerland said. The missing boy's mother, Lisa Smith, says she did not know exactly where her son was located, and neither did the court in Allen County, Ind.
– "Thank you. Thank you." Those were the first words Gregory Jean Jr. spoke to police on Saturday when they peeled back a wood panel in an upstairs closet and found him crammed in the space between the garage and attic, WXIA reports. But the officers had help from Gregory himself, because it was the texts and photos he sent to his mom that helped police track down where the missing 13-year-old was hidden in his father and stepmother's house, the AP reports. And although Gregory Jean Sr., 37, and Samantha Joy Davis, 42, didn't bar police from searching the home, "there was a lot of deception," Clayton County Police Sgt. Joanne Southerland told reporters, as per CNN. In fact, the first officers on the scene—sent after a 911 call from the boy's mother—came up empty-handed and left after Jean and Davis said they knew nothing. After the police left, young Gregory contacted his mom again through the magicJack app and she redialed 911; when Southerland, who had worked in a Crimes Against Children unit for several years, heard that call, she made police go back and search again. "We weren't going to leave until we found him," she tells WXIA. The space Gregory was crammed into had nothing but wooden beams and insulation—"a space where no person should be living," the local police chief told reporters. The next court appearance for Jean and Davis, who have been charged with false imprisonment, child cruelty, and obstruction of justice, is scheduled for Dec. 9, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. (A girl missing for 12 years was recently found in Mexico.)