BABY GRACE IDENTIFIED

Photo of child who looks like the murdered Baby Grace. Mom meets man online and it leads to murder. Imagine that. When will you guys learn?

Police Make Tentative Identification, Arrest Texas Couple
By GINA SUNSERI AND TED OBERG

Nov. 26, 2007 —

She was the little girl with the big blue eyes and the long, blond hair known as Baby Grace. Now, police have tentatively identified her as 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers.

The child's pregnant mother, 19-year-old Kimberly Ann Trenor, and her husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler, Riley's stepfather, who live in Spring, Texas, just north of Houston, are both charged with injury to a child and tampering with evidence.

Hundreds of tips from around the world poured into the Galveston County Sheriff's Office after a fisherman discovered the little girl's body stuffed in a plastic trunk in late October and abandoned along a Texas waterway.

One of those tips involved Riley Ann Sawyers, a little girl who had been last seen in July when Trenor reportedly gave her to someone who presented her with custody documents that appeared legitimate, ABC News' Houston affiliate KTRK first reported last week. The child was never, however, reported missing to police.

Late last week, detectives requested DNA samples from eight families with missing children resembling Baby Grace. One of the samples was submitted by Riley's father, Robert Sawyers of Mentor, Ohio.

The tip that Baby Grace could be Riley came from Riley's paternal grandmother Sheryl Sawyers, who phoned investigators after she saw a sketch of Baby Grace on the Internet.

"There isn't a day that does by that I don't think about her," Sheryl Sawyers told KTRK.

When the little girl's body was found Oct. 29, investigators didn't have much to go on to identify her. They called in renowned forensic artist Lois Gibson who came up with a sketch of the girl whom detectives called Baby Grace. Gibson felt an overwhelming need to help determine the little girl's identity. "I needed to know the name of this girl and I needed this to be over with," Gibson said.

When Baby Grace was found, she was wearing a Target-brand pink, flowing skirt, a pink shirt and white light-up tennis shoes with purple flowers on them. For a brief time investigators looked into the possibility that the child's body was that of Madeleine McCann, a 4-year-old British girl whose disappearance from a resort hotel in Portugal in May has made international headlines, but quickly ruled out a connection to that case.

Riley Ann Sawyers' biological parents met when her mother was in high school in Mentor, Ohio. Relatives say Trenor met Zeigler over the Internet and moved to Houston to be with him.

Sawyers, Riley's biological father, is devastated. Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo, spokesman for the Galveston County Sheriff's Office, says more information will be released this morning.

For now, Riley's mother and stepfather are being held on $350,000 bond. It will take several weeks for the results to be returned from the DNA testing that will prove conclusively that Baby Grace is Riley Swayers.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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