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Mother of 'Baby Grace' Told Police She Tortured, Beat Daughter to Death, Court Documents Show
Tuesday , November 27, 2007

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.

"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 "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."

I am still waiting for someone to give me the job of handing out long, slow, methodical forms of punishment and death to scumbags like these!!!:behead: So I guess the line forms behind me! Very sick and very sad.

If you saw a picture of the father and mother, you'd vote for mandatory sterilization.

The story unfolds like a horror movie. Unbelieveable someone could do that to anyone , let alone a baby. Making me sick to even think about it.

If you read this and don't feel a small crack develop in your heart you are not human. I often think that somehow a "justice system" that would respond more swiftly and publicly in cases like this where the perpetrators are know and the facts undeniable might be a better deterent. Execution, by whatever means in a case like this is the only true resolve. Not for revenge, not really for justice but the iradication of a human element for which thier is no proper place in society.

If, in the human condition, there are people who are just down right dangerous and a threat to peace, stability and security of the majority, who are law abiding and compassionate. And whom, once found to be in this category, instead of being locked up for life or recycled over and over again through the system, whereupon they repeatedly cause grievous harm and fear to the general population and become a drain on the system and it's institutions, should be eliminated.

Sounds scary but it might be the only answer to a safer community and nation.:huh:

Sad thing is, the mother will cut a deal and plead to non-capital murder, get life with the possibility of parole, and will lay the whole thing on the boyfriend, with the "he abused me too" card up her sleeve if need be.

Me? I'd like to see them both sitting in a two-seater electric chair :af:

Doesn't Texas have an Electric Bench so they can handle the volume???

Doesn't Texas have an Electric Bench so they can handle the volume???

They wimped out and went to lethal injection :laughs:

Ditto to all of the above. I only hope that their deaths are slooooow and painful.

Hopfully if she does turn on the boyfriend and convicted of non-capital
murder that the inmate population takes care of the rest :behead:

Disgusting to say the least.

and they set a bail on these people.There is something really wrong with our court systems.These people need to be sentenced to death.Eye for an Eye.I'm sure a lawyer will find a t not crossed or i not dotted and the whole case will get dropped.Sad day when I as an American would say that in alot of cases the Saddam Hussein judicial system was better than our own.May look sound inhumane but let the punishment fit the crime.This whole story disgusts me.

To say that criminals control the system is an overstatement, but not much of one. With all the reports I have seen filed against people it is only in the last couple of years that I have seen those reports validated with a true finding by D.S.S. employees a few times. And it is still only a fraction of those cases that I have seen children taken away. Two to be exact. What is amazing is that this type of avoidable travesty doesn't happen more often. It simply amazes me at how someone could kill a child.

There is a case winding its way through Plymouth County now where that daughter was purpossely overdosed by her parents, I think she was four. Her parents must have treated her horribly before she died. Ah its sickening. And you have to make available to these people rights or we are the ones accused of being animals.

Personally I think they should be Beaten with leather belts, have their heads held underwater in a bathtub and then thrown across the room and have their heads smashed against a tile floor.

Lethal injection or the electric chair is to good for them

how can you do that to a child. reading this ruined my day.

Reading that put a big lump in my throat, I can't even think of a fitting punishment. If there is a heaven and hell I am sure who ever controls them has special plans for these two.

There is a case winding its way through Plymouth County now where that daughter was purpossely overdosed by her parents, I think she was four. Her parents must have treated her horribly before she died. Ah its sickening.

If I'm not mistaken the father in that case is currently or was recently on trial for sexual assaulting another 13 yo family member, which occured before the overdose. Maybe if he was where he belonged (in jail awaiting trial) the 3 yo might still be alive.

If I'm not mistaken the father in that case is currently or was recently on trial for sexual assaulting another 13 yo family member, which occured before the overdose. Maybe if he was where he belonged (in jail awaiting trial) the 3 yo might still be alive.

In many states, you have a state constitutional right to bail in any non-capital case.

In Massachusetts, you can only be held without bail for first degree murder (still defined on the books as a capital crime), or, if you are charged with a certain designated felony and are found to present a danger to the safety of either another person, or the community at large, after a hearing. MGL ch. 276 sec. 58A

Indecent A&B on a child under 14 probably doesn't qualify under 58A, because use of physical force isn't an element of the crime. Physical force is more than mere touching.

Indecent A&B on a child under 14 probably doesn't qualify under 58A, because use of physical force isn't an element of the crime. Physical force is more than mere touching.

There lies the problem. We need to treat crimes against children a lot differently than we would two drunks assaulting each other in a bar room brawl.

The other issue with 58A is that you can only hold someone under it for 90 days, absent "good cause" for an extension. The Commonwealth can rarely bring a sex abuse against a child case to trial that quickly. Often there are confidential records that have to be obtained and made available to the defense attorney, and getting those records to a clerk's office usually takes longer than 90 days.

Also--the chances of a case proceeding to trial within 90 days in, say, Brockton District Court, or New Bedford District Court, or the Boston Municipal Court, are right up there with winning the lottery. Volume. Defendants being held in custody have a priority for trials, and many defendants wait 6-9 months for District Court trials. In Superior Court, cases rarely if ever get tried within 6 months.

There's legislation now pending on Beacon Hill that would extend the detention without bail to 120 days and expand the list of 58A designated crimes. Whether it passes or not is another story.