Monday, November 26, 2007

Who is Baby Grace?

For the past two weeks or so there has been a story out there about a little girl found in a cooler washed ashore in Texas. No one knew who she was until just recently. Authorities had dubbed her Baby Grace. I have been reading about this on the internet and on Nancy Grace. I haven't posted about it. This story has really hurt my heart something awful. According to recent reports she is an Ohio girl who's mother moved to Texas to marry some dude she met on the internet. Here is the most recent article.

  • The mother and stepfather of Riley Ann Sawyers, who Texas authorities believe is "Baby Grace," tortured and beat the child on the day she died, according to an affidavit filed with Galveston County authorities in connection with the case.
  • Kimberly Ann Trenor, 19, and her 24-year-old husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler, both of Spring, Texas, are held in connection with the 2-year-old girl's death on charges of injuring a child and tampering with evidence. The two remain in custody in Galveston County jail, each on $350,000 bond.
  • In the affidavit, Trenor describes how she and Zeigler beat the toddler with two leather belts and held her head under water in a bathtub on the morning of July 24. Trenor also said in the affivadit that Zeigler picked the child up by her hair and threw her across the room causing her head to slam against a tile floor.
I don't have kids, but I can tell ya one thing. I don't understand how a woman can just let her husband or boyfriend, whether or not he is the biological father, beat up on her child. If I was in the position of Kimberly Ann Trenor I would have beat on old dumbass, Royce Clyde Zeigler, not freakin join in.
  • After Sawyers died, Trenor said in the affidavit given to the Sheriff's Office, Zeigler covered the child in a purple towel and the pair then went to a Wal-Mart to purchase items to hide and dispose of the body, including a blue plastic container, bleach, a shovel and latex gloves.
  • According to the affidavit, Trenor said Zeigler hid the container with the remains in a storage shed for two months before the pair tossed the container into the water off Galveston Causeway.
WTF!!! How could anyone do this to a child? Especially their own child.
  • Meanwhile, Sawyers' father and grandmother publicly wept Monday as they demanded justice in the child's "heinous" death.
Truly, I feel for the Sawyer family. I want to know where little Riley's maternal grandparents are on all this. There is a lot I could say regarding them, but since I have not heard about them I do not know what is going on or what is in their heads. So for now I will keep mum.
  • Texas investigators announced on Monday that they are "fairly confident" the little girl found late last month, stuffed in a plastic box, is the missing child.
  • The pair could face additional charges, Tuttoilmondo said, including possible murder charges.
Possible murder charges? I may not know too much about fancy law terminology but I do know this one thing. They just admitted to killing the child. I would call that murder.
  • The arrests come nearly a month after a fisherman in West Galveston Bay discovered the locked box abandoned on a small island. Inside was the body of a child who had suffered a head wound. Authorities appealed to the public for help, releasing a composite sketch of a child they called Baby Grace. Hundreds of tips from around the world poured into the Galveston County sheriff's office.
  • Late last week, detectives requested DNA samples from eight families with missing children resembling Baby Grace. One of the samples was submitted by Robert Sawyers, who still lives in Mentor, Ohio, the town where his daughter lived until her mother left with the girl for Texas.
  • The tip that Baby Grace might be Sawyers originally came from her paternal grandmother, Sheryl Sawyers, who phoned investigators after she saw the Baby Grace sketch on the Internet.
  • At the afternoon press conference, Sheryl Sawyers said she hoped that additional charges were filed against the pair. "I'm hoping that they are upgraded from 'injury to a child,' because she's not just injured, she's dead," Sawyers said, clutching an Elmo doll she had hoped to give to her granddaughter for Christmas if she was found.
  • Trenor, who was just 16 when she gave birth to the baby, had lived with the Sawyers family for two years before moving to Texas to be with Zeigler, who she reportedly met online.
  • "I think, pretty much, he could be anyone he wanted to be on the Internet," Sheryl Sawyers said of Zeigler. "Maybe he painted a pretty picture, and that's what made her move down there."
It was pretty stupid to go meet someone she met online, but why did she have to take her baby with her? It seems that the child's father and grandparents could have given her a wonderful loving home. She should have left the child with them. According to some reports I heard she was planning on marrying him even before meeting him in person. This just don't sound right. Who in their right mind would go off to marry someone they never met?
  • It will take several weeks for DNA testing to prove conclusively that Baby Grace is Sawyers.
  • While Tuttoilmondo expressed thanks for the public's help in identifying the girl, and credited cooperative police work for the break in the case, he also said that tips that poured in have resulted in 22 additional missing girl cases they will continue to investigate.
Read the article here.

In conclusion, my heart goes out to the Sawyer's family for closure. But even after it proven that the body is that of Riley Sawyers can they really have closure?
My heart also goes out to the families of the missing children who thought "Baby Grace" could have been their family member. I truly want to see answers to what happened to their little ones.


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