This is a terribly sad story. THESE KINDS OF STORIES ALWAYS BREAK MY HEART.Brought me to tears. Hope this mother and her husband get the death penalty.


MOTHER AND STEPDAD BEAT AND TORTURE 2 YEAR OLD TO DEATH
GALVESTON, Texas - A woman believed to be the mother of a 2-year-old whose body was found in Galveston Bay told police she and the girl’s stepfather beat and tortured the child to death, court documents show.
The details, in a statement Kimberly Dawn Trenor gave to police, paint a chilling picture of the last days of the girl investigators called “Baby Grace” as they worked for weeks to learn her identity.
Investigators are awaiting DNA test results but said Monday they are “fairly confident” that the body a fisherman found in a plastic box Oct. 29 is that of Riley Ann Sawyers. Trenor, 19, and her husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler II, were in custody on charges of hurting the girl.
“It was a few weeks ago I held up this little shoe and asked, ’Who is Baby Grace? Who does this belong to?”’ sheriff’s Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo said at a news conference. “We’re now fairly confident we know the answer to that.”
An autopsy revealed three skull fractures, but the cause of death has not been determined.
Tuttoilmondo said he could not discuss details of the little girl’s death, but Trenor said in her police statement, first reported by Houston television station KTRK, that she and Zeigler, 24, killed her July 24.
The girl was beaten with leather belts, had her head held underwater in a bathtub and then was thrown across a room, her head slamming into a tile floor, Trenor said in the document. She said they kept the body in a storage shed for one to two months before they put it in a plastic bin and dumped it into Galveston Bay.
Trenor’s attorney, Tom Stickler, said she has cooperated with authorities. He declined to comment about her statement to investigators.
'No doubt' on ID
“But from what she said, there is no doubt that the girl found is Riley Sawyers,” Stickler said.
Trenor and Zeigler were arrested early Saturday and charged with injury to a child and tampering with evidence, Tuttoilmondo said. Bail was set at $350,000 each. The couple’s next court appearance was expected to be scheduled on Tuesday.
Wendell Odom, Zeigler’s attorney, declined to comment on the case except to say Zeigler grew up in Spring, about 75 miles north of Galveston, and works as an instrument technician in the oil industry.
Trenor and Zeigler met a couple of years ago playing an online game, World of Warcraft, and she moved with her daughter from suburban Cleveland to Spring in June, Stickler said.
Riley’s paternal grandmother, Sheryl Sawyers, hadn’t seen her granddaughter in months when she saw a police sketch of “Baby Grace.” Thinking it might be Riley, she called authorities in Texas.
'Resting peacefully'
In Mentor, Ohio, on Monday, Sawyers wiped away tears at a news conference and held up the Elmo doll she had already bought Riley for Christmas.
“It’s hard to think that I’ll never see her again,” she said.
The Sawyers family’s attorney, Laura DePledge, said they take comfort in knowing that the girl is “resting peacefully and is no longer subject to abuse.”
DePledge said Trenor and Sawyers’ son, Robert Sawyers, also of Mentor, had been high school sweethearts. Sheryl Sawyers said she has not seen Riley since the girl and Trenor moved to Texas.
Robert Sawyers, who works in an auto-parts store, was never married to Trenor but lived with her and their daughter in his parents’ home for about two years. He and Trenor split up after March 31, when he was charged with domestic violence against her.
DePledge said there was insufficient evidence to support the charge, which was reduced to disorderly conduct. Robert Sawyers is now married and has a 3-month-old son.
Riley “had a very big imagination for such a little girl,” he said of his daughter. “She could play with anything and have fun with it.”
Tuttoilmondo said Trenor had told relatives that someone claiming to be a social worker from Ohio took the girl in July.
Tuttoilmondo said investigators became emotionally involved in determining the little girl’s identity.
“Any way you look at it, we carry a piece of her with us and will always carry a little piece of her with us,” he said. “She’s still our little girl.”

Granted this is a terrible case, no one should be put to death...

In a country as advanced as we claim to be, you would think we would have outgrown the death penalty by now. JMO

Omg such horrid horrid ppl what is wrong with this world its bad enough there is murder but to do something so hanace to a toddler these ppl should be let lose in the prison system to fend for them selfs see how long they survive

if u use the death penalty wat good would that do , u should let the person suffer for life

indeed why take someones life because of their mental disabilities, i mean granted they may function fine in socitey, but to have the will power to do such an act, theres somthing wrong, we need to find out whats wrong. No point in making people suffer, granted people sadly in this world need punishment for thier actions.

I don't think finding out what's wrong with that sick, disgusting woman matters. That innocent child is gone forever. Obviously, her mind is warped to do such a terrible thing.
To Dragoness point, we may be a society which should have outgrown the death penalty...but until the day comes that horrible crimes like this one...against the most defenseless and innocent in our world cease to take place.... I doubt we will see that.... at least not in Texas.
That woman can't have any redeeming qualities that would persuade a jury to let her off......

Two sides of a pro and con on the death penalty. They let people out on good behaviour. If their crime is severe enough for prison why should they get less time? They had a man I forget from what state and they released him and he came over here and killed two people randomly. Without a death penalty these prisons are getting filled. And they are letting murderers and rapists out for "good behaviour" but the neighborhoods dont want them so what then? But with the death penalty how do you truly know they are guilty and not a innocent man? just my two cents

In answer to your question, megan, we have to trust a very flawed judicial system to make sure they are not innocent, which has been proven over and over to be flawed at this determination so therefore, logically, we cannot use a punishment that has no reversibility We should have evolved past the death penalty a long time ago in my opinion.

In this case, the mother and the step dad admitted what they had done. No proving anything.

Even those admissions have been proven false and coerced so that is no guarentee either.

The evidence and manner of disposing of the body matches their story. This will be one of those trials that will get alot of publicity here. At the very least, this woman will get life in prison..... and prisoners themselves do not like child killers. She might as well just write off the rest of her life...
Yes, the death penalty is irreversible. So is the murder of the child.

I read that a little while ago. This sheit needs to stop! These poor babies. Did you see her pic? Another Kelsey Briggs.
This just makes me sooo sick.

Kat

There is no hope for these types of people.....the death penalty is actually doing them a favour....lethal injection....almost painless...

I say, let them out in general population in a highly violent jail and let the prisoners have a go at them!!!

That sounds like a plan.

While what these people did was completely and utterly horrible, I don't personally believe the government should be in the business of determining who lives and who dies. I've always thought the death penalty lets people off the hook.

well if you really dont want to let them off the hook.......send them to iraq and let them fight the war huh??? Since they are complete throw aways anyways.....may as well get some use out of them......or would that be too inhumane???

I saw on the news that the Mother was addicted to that WOW game .
It's really sad that a video game could consume your life so much that you would kill your child because they were a distraction from the game .

Another thing that makes this case so sad is that the Father was fighting for custody of the little girl .

This is a horrible crime I agree with all of you on that but I think nothing can justify the killing of someone else with the death penalty .

I dont think the game had much to do with it.....she had to be mentally unstable to do such a thing to her child.....can you say psychopath????

This reminds me of years ago in my home town a 15 year old boy,and foster brother killed his parents and little bro and sis with an axe while they slept and then stole the family car.......apparantly they played Dungeons and Dragons, and tried blaming that game too.....such shet.......

I don't know what to say.....


Somewhere in amongst all that is damage, sincerely terrible damage...broken beyond repair...

People don't just wake up and 'become' intensely savage and dangerous people... somewhere, there is a causative..... manifesting in violent symptoms..

Nor do I have solutions.