Police charge mother of decapitated girl

CNN:

More than four years after her headless body was found, a child known nationally as "Precious Doe" has been identified and her mother charged, authorities in Kansas City, Missouri, said Thursday.

Erica Michelle Maria Green was just days away from her fourth birthday when she died. Officers were searching for a missing elderly man when they found her body on April 28, 2001, in a wooded area. Her head, wrapped in a trash bag, was found nearby a few days later.

Police, unable to identify the child, named her Precious Doe. Law enforcement and the community banded together to solve the case.

Missing child advocate and Kansas City community activist Alonzo 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."

Police have arrested the girl's mother, Michelle Johnson, who they said has confessed to being involved in her daughter's death.

Johnson is charged with second-degree felony murder and endangering the welfare of a child.

She remained jailed in Oklahoma on Thursday, with bond set at $500,000, said Michael Sanders, a prosecutor in Jackson County, Missouri. He said that additional charges are "very likely, very shortly."

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 taken out by Washington, 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 the 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, said Sanders.

"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 two-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."

News and Blogosphere:

Kicked in head, Precious Doe lay unconscious two days before dying, court records say

Okla. Mom Charged in Girl's Decapitation