Young Writers Society

Okla. Mom Charged in Girl's Decapitation
Thursday, May 5, 2005 4:38 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By MATT SEDENSKY

For four years, she was known only as Precious Doe, a little girl whose headless body was found along a road. On Thursday, police identified the girl, arrested her mother on murder charges and pronounced the sad mystery solved.

The girl with big brown eyes and neat cornrows in her hair was identified as Erica Michelle Marie Green, just shy of 4 when she was found.

Her mother, Michelle M. Johnson, 30, was charged with murder and endangering the welfare of a child. Police said she told them her husband, Erica's stepfather, killed the girl with a kick to the head and used hedge clippers to sever her head.

Johnson and her husband, who was not identified, were being held in Oklahoma, where they live. No immediate charges were brought against the husband.

"We have closure," Police Chief James Corwin said. "The little girl that we've known for four years as Precious Doe has a name."

Police said a tip enabled them to identify Erica, but they would not elaborate. And they gave no motive for the little girl's slaying.

The girl's body was found near an intersection on April 28, 2001. Days later, her head was found nearby, wrapped in a trash bag.

In the months after she became known as Precious Doe, hundreds attended candlelight vigils, volunteered to answer witness hot lines and passed out fliers with an artist's rendering of the girl. The FBI took blood samples from family members of missing black girls, and the case was featured on television's "America's Most Wanted."

A makeshift memorial of poems, teddy bears and flowers was eventually replaced by a permanent memorial in a park near where her body was found. On Thursday morning, among flowers and balloons, a handwritten sign announced the news: "My Name Is Erica Michelle Maria Green."

Authorities said the little girl was killed in Kansas City. According to court papers, Johnson said her husband kicked Erica in the head, and they left her on the floor for two days. They did not seek medical help, she said, because both had warrants out for their arrest.

The child died, and the couple carried the body to a church parking lot, then through the woods, where the stepfather cut the girl's head with hedge clippers, police said.

The break in the case apparently came after community activist Alonzo Washington, who has long championed efforts to find out who the little girl was, placed another advertisement seeking leads in a local paper.

"There's something about it that just bothers me that a child could be thrown away and people forget about it," said Washington, who has worked to raise awareness of missing black children.

A man who had spoken to police before on the case came forward again, talking with detectives and Washington last weekend. Washington said the source sent photographs of the child as well as hair samples from the child and the mother.

Police and prosecutors refused to confirm specifics or identify the source, but Washington said the man "had a relationship with some of the people involved."

A photo displayed by police during a news conference, showing the girl with a slight smile and adornments in her braided hair, may have been a picture of the wrong child. Oklahoma police saw the picture and said it appeared to be one of the girl's cousins.

Johnson was being held on $500,000 bail in her hometown of Muskogee, Okla., and will be brought to Kansas City as soon as possible, prosecutor Michael Sanders said.

Oklahoma records show Michelle Johnson has convictions for theft and forgery. The stepfather has convictions for several offenses, including assault with a dangerous weapon and possessing a sawed-off shotgun.

In Kansas City, people who long had been transfixed by the case welcomed news of the arrests.

Billy Stegall, a retired post office worker and Army sergeant, discovered Erica's head in 2001 and has gone back to the site regularly to pray.

"This is a day I have been looking for," he said. "I just asked the Lord to say who she is so she could be at peace, because she wasn't at peace and I wasn't at peace."


http://www.charter.net/news/read.php?id=CP_3377&ps=1018

Woah.

Not much bothers me, but the thought of someone cutting off someone else's head with hedge clippers is disturbing.

A sacrilge to the very sense of humanity. She even deserves to be stripped from her own ability to have children. Lock these people up and never allow them see the brlliance of daylight. If I was on hte place of the police I would return the favor.

Ugh, thats just sick. They should be sentenced in Prison for life in a spechial cell where no sunlight shines, and anything else to make them misrable.

Why did they cut the head of? What exactly was the point?
All it did was give the public a morbid fascination with the story - and thus lowering the parents chances of getting away with it.


Still, glad to see that her parents have been caught.

She needs professional help.

Seriously

Yeah but why cut off the girl head, i suppouse it a bit like the Jack Ripper case. He took out their Internal Organs why?

You don't need reasons to cut off someone's head if you're mental. It is sick, I shivered when I found out what he did to her head. Poor thing.

*throws up*

It's morbid and disturbing to see parents throw away their children as such. I could never do that; I'd rather take my own life than kill my child. Some people are sick.