I can't even say anything. I don't know what to say. But to me, this is one of the most disgusting, sickening things I have read about in a long while.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/05/precious.doe/index.html
Kansas City police: 'Precious Doe' is Erica
Tipster gives name of girl found decapitated in 2001; mother arrested
Thursday, May 5, 2005 Posted: 12:35 PM EDT (1635 GMT)
CNN) -- The decapitated body of a little girl discovered in 2001 has been identified through a newspaper advertisement, authorities in Kansas City, Missouri, announced Thursday.
Police have arrested the girl's mother, Michelle Johnson, who they said has confessed to being involved in her daughter's death.
Police said the girl -- who became known as Precious Doe -- was 3-year-old Erica Michelle Maria Green. Her naked body was found lying in weeds alongside a dirt road in a wooded area on April 28, 2001.
Three days later, her head was found nearby, wrapped in a trash bag. She had been dead between 12 and 48 hours, police said at the time.
The break in the case came when a man who said he had not seen his granddaughter for several years responded to a newspaper ad placed by Alonzo Washington, a Kansas City-based missing child advocate and community activist, said Kansas City police Capt. Rich Lockhart.
The ad sought tips in the Precious Doe case and offered a $33,000 reward from community sources, Lockhart said. Since the body was found, police have logged more than 1,000 tips in the case.
The man provided photos he said were of the child and information about her parents, and Washington passed the information on to police in Kansas City and Muskogee, Oklahoma, where the couple lives, Lockhart said.
The couple was taken into custody on unrelated charges in Muskogee on Monday, and Kansas City police traveled there to question them.
During questioning, Michelle Johnson said she was Erica's mother and confessed to being involved in her death while family was in Kansas City in 2001, Lockhart said.
Authorities allege Johnson's husband kicked Erica in the head, and the girl lay in the house for about two days without medical attention before she died, said Michael Sanders, a prosecutor in Jackson County, Missouri.
"Roughly on April 28th, the stepfather in this case kicked the poor young girl Erica in the head," Sanders said. "After kicking her in the head, she essentially laid in the house for a roughly 2-day period. It was after she quit moving, after I think it was fairly certain ... that she was no longer with us, that they decided to take her to the church..."
"At that point he takes her out of the car, takes her back into the wooded area, and obviously we find her later."
Johnson is charged with second-degree felony murder and endangering the welfare of a child, Sanders said. She remained jailed in Oklahoma on Thursday, with bond set at $500,000, he said. Additional charges are "very likely, very shortly."
"The death of this little girl has touched our community in a way that I think is absolutely unprecedented," Sanders said. Members of the community set up a Web site and formed a committee while continuing to seek information about the case.
"It's good to finally be able to give a name to the child," Sanders said. "It really gives us in the community and us in law enforcement a sense of purpose. We know who we are going to be fighting for."
The same tipster gave investigators information a year ago, but "it was not the same information," Lockhart said. "The detail this time was much more so than last time."
On July 15, 2003, Erica's body and skull were exhumed so a fourth reconstruction of her face could be done by a forensic anthropologist. The case has received national attention and been featured on television shows such as "Cold Case Files."
Three years ago, investigators considered the possibility she was Rilya Wilson, a missing Florida 5-year-old. DNA testing eventually proved that theory wrong.
Washington said he spent four years working to get attention for Precious Doe because as a father he did not want people "to forget there was a child discarded like trash."