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In the short 2 years that Riley Ann Sawyers spent on earth, she experienced horrible physical abuse at the hands of her mother, Kimberly Dawn Trenor, and stepfather, Royce Zeigler. Before dying, 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers was beaten with belts, picked up by her hair, thrown across the room and held under water, according to an affidavit from the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office.
After the little girl died the couple covered her in a purple towel then they went to the local Wal-Mart and purchased a “blue colored Sterilite plastic container with hinges and wheels on one end”. They placed the body of the girl in the container and hid the container in a storage shed for about 1 to 2 months. Eventually they removed the container from storage, took it to the Galveston Causeway and threw it into the waterway, watching it float away.
After the death of her daughter, Kimberly Tenor would tell people that Riley had been taken away from her by the Ohio Department of Children’s Services and even produced a fake letter to back up her claim. The body of the then-unidentified toddler was found on October 29. A fisherman found Riley’s body stuffed inside a blue storage container that washed up on an uninhabited island in Galveston‘s West Bay. A medical examiner said the child’s skull was fractured, and a forensic dentist estimated her age at 2 to 3 years. Police dubbed the child “Baby Grace.” A police artist’s sketch of her was widely circulated in the news media and prompted a call to Galveston police from Riley’s grandmother in Ohio, who had not seen the girl in months. On Saturday, police arrested Trenor and Zeigler on charges of injuring a child and tampering with physical evidence, the sheriff’s department said. Their bonds were set at $350,000 each.
When police interviewed Trenor on November 23, she “gave a voluntary statement on video with her attorney present in which she describes her involvement, with Royce Zeigler, in the physical abuse, death and disposal of the remains of her daughter, Riley Ann Sawyers.”
Riley Ann Sawyers’ real father, Robert Sawyers, and her grandmother, Sheryl Sawyers, gave an interview describing what the little girl was like. See the interview here.
Laura DePledge, the family’s lawyer, said the family whose grief is described as “simply overwhelming,” wants Riley’s body returned to Ohio for a memorial service. “What Riley needs is to be brought home,” she said. “I think this family needs some closure.”
Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo, of the Galveston County Sheriff’s Department asked anyone who knew the child or her family to help detectives reconstruct the events of Riley’s short life.
The toddler’s case has touched even hardened police officers, he said. “Any way you look at it, we carry a piece of her with us, and we’ll always carry a little piece of her with us,” he said. He held up a small, pink-and-white shoe identical to those the child was wearing when she was found. “That says it all. A little-bitty shoe.”
