Mother of Baby Grace charged with murder

A Texas grand jury upgraded the couple’s charges to capital murder on Wednesday. It is undecided whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty.

Police dubbed Riley “Baby Grace” when a fisherman found her body stuffed in a plastic storage container on an uninhabited island October 29. Authorities nicknamed her Baby Grace after they could not find out who she was. A sketch was released of the child in a bid for the public to help identify her. Riley’s grandmother recognized the sketch to be her granddaughter. A DNA test confirmed that Baby Grace was Riley Sawyers.

Trenor, 19, left Riley’s father in Ohio and took the child to live with her and Zeigler, 24, in Texas. She admitted that she and Zeigler beat her daughter and held her head under water. She said Riley was thrown across the room, slamming her head into the tile floor before she died.

Trenor said she and Zeigler then hid Riley’s body in a shed for one to two months before stuffing her in the container and dumping her in the bay.

The couple were initially charged with injury to a child and tampering with evidence. The jury was asked to upgrade the charges and within three minutes decided the couple should face murder charges.

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