http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050818/ap_on_...HNlYwNzc3JlbA--

 

 

Slain Girl Buried

By DAVID TWIDDY, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 18, 5:49 PM ET

 

 

 

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A slain little girl, long known only as Precious Doe, was buried Thursday and mourned by the residents and investigators who kept the search for her family and her killers alive for four years.

 

The marble grave marker in a city cemetery bears her picture and more importantly, her name, Erica Michelle Marie Green.

 

"This time, she has her identity," said police Sgt. David Bernard, who led the investigation and was one of the pallbearers for her small, white casket.

 

Erica's decapitated body was found in a park in April 2001 and her head was found days later. Neighbors came to call her Precious Doe, and years passed before she was identified this spring and her mother and stepfather were charged with murder.

 

Hundreds of people gathered for her first funeral when Erica's identity was still unknown. A simple stone then marked her grave. The body was exhumed in 2003 so a lifelike bust could be made to show how her face may have looked.

 

Thursday's reburial, in the same plot, was smaller, as visitors lay flowers, balloons and stuffed animals at the grave.

 

"Erica tragically experienced death in the early morning of life. But this was not God's will ... but the will of wrong," said U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, whose district includes the neighborhood. Also a minister, he officiated at the burial.

 

Among the mourners was Betty Brown, a neighbor who had cared for Erica in Oklahoma before the girl's family moved to Kansas City.

 

"It was hard when I didn't know where she was," said Brown. "I always was hoping one day I'd see her again. I wasn't thinking about seeing her in heaven."

 

Erica's mother, Michelle Johnson, 30, of Muskogee, Okla., was charged with second-degree murder, and the girl's stepfather, Harrell Johnson, 25, was charged with first-degree murder.

 

Harrell Johnson was arraigned Monday and a judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

 

Police said Harrell Johnson admitted that under the influence of alcohol and the hallucinogenic drug PCP, he became angry with Erica when she refused to go to bed, grabbed her, kicked her and threw her to the ground, leaving her unconscious. After she died, he said he used hedge clippers to sever her head.

 

 

:headshake

I watched this story on Cold Case Files. I remember when it was solved I kept thinking that the little girl can finally rest now that she has her name back.