UPDATE: 00:22 EST 11-27-07 AP: Zeigler attempted suicide last week:
Zeigler attempted suicide last week and wrote a note saying, "My wife is innocent of the sins that I committed," according to the court documents, which were filed Saturday and first reported Monday by Houston television station KTRK.
"Little Riley Sawyers never had a chance".
That was one staff reaction after reading the gruesome details of the last days of 2-year-old Riley Sawyers and the trauma she underwent.
A picture of a mother beating and torturing her 2-year-old toddler with help from the step-father has just emerged from police records.
The last days of the little girl were not pleasant ones.
The mother, Kimberly Tenor, originally told investigators that the girl was handed over to "someone with papers from Ohio".
The latest story told investigators how the the little girl was handed over to Death.
From the AP's Documents: Mom Describes Killing Girl, 2:
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.Clyde Zeigler II: Accomplice in gruesome death of toddler
"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.
"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.
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 Sawyers: Never had a chance
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."
From CNN, "Mother describes beating of 2-year-old, hiding her body":
Before dying, 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers was beaten with belts, picked up by her hair, thrown across the room and held under water, according to an affidavit from the Galveston County Sheriff's Office.
Kimberly Trenor's testimony raises some troubling questions.
Why?
Was Kimbler Trenor like this prior to moving to Texas?
Why did she fail in any mother primary job: that of protecting her offspring?
How can a mother kill a defenseless, little girl who couldn't fight back? A little girl whose only protection was her mother?
After the violent beating death of the two-year-old, why carefully lay the baby in a cooler, wrapped in plastic?
Why did the pair stay in place in Harris County instead of attempting to flee?
Probably more information will come out in the weeks to come and in the trial. For now, however, the details are enough to anger or sadden any parent.
More charges should be forthcoming, as it is evident that more than tampering with evidence and injury to a child occurred.
For those who have followed the story, the mysterious case of establishing the identity of Baby Grace appears to be over and, like most stories will be forgotten at some point.
For a family in Ohio, it will take longer and the story will not be forgotten.
The gruesome details of the death of Riley Sawyers stick in one's mind.
by Mondoreb
notes by Little Baby Ginn
The thoughts and prayers of DBKP go out to Riley's father and his family
MORE ON RILEY SAWYERS, BABY GRACE in upper left-hand corner of page.
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.
