Couple arrested in death of ‘Baby Grace’
Published 11:00 pm Monday, November 26, 2007
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 19-year-old 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.
An autopsy revealed three skull fractures, but the cause of death has not been determined.
Sheriff’s Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo said he could not discuss details of the little girl’s death, but Trenor said in her police statement, first reported by a Houston television station, 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.
Tuttoilmondo said Trenor told relatives that someone claiming to be a social worker from Ohio, where Riley’s father lives, took the girl in July, but Trenor never told police she was missing, Tuttoilmondo said.
