Who Is Baby Grace?

I just finished reading the following article from the Galveston Daily News. Please forgive me, but I must have actually read this with my eyes closed, cause I just cannot believe the contents.

Take a look, and see if you find some interesting facts. I know every mother loves her children to no end, but just how many so called 'daughter-in-laws' do you need living at your house at the same time.

Friends: Baby Grace's mom 'quiet, good girl'

By Sara McDonald
The Daily News

Published December 5, 2007

GALVESTON — She was shy, polite and mostly unnoticed in the sea of 2,500 students at Mentor (Ohio) High School.

Then she got pregnant and, inevitably, people started gossiping about Kimberly Dawn Trenor, a 15-year-old honor student who’d be a mother long before she’d graduate high school.

But, after the ripple of rumors settled down, several classmates at the suburban Cleveland high school said they remember the girl now charged in connection with her 2-year-old daughter’s gruesome beating death as a proud mother.

“She loved that baby,” high school classmate Sammi Tuckerman said. “At school, she mostly talked about the baby. The baby was her life. She carried pictures with her everywhere.”

As Galveston County Sheriff’s Office deputies try to piece together how Riley Ann Sawyers’ life ended, Trenor, 19, and her husband sit in jail awaiting possible new criminal charges.

Both she and 24-year-old Royce Clyde Zeigler II are charged with tampering with evidence and injury to a child. Their cases likely will go before a grand jury by Dec. 13, Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk said.

Meanwhile, the community where her family has lived for more than 40 years tries to comprehend how and why the shy student became the woman who told investigators grisly details of her child’s killing, as arrest affidavits claim.

Investigators say Trenor and Zeigler beat the child during a four- to six-hour period, then hid her body in a backyard storage shed. They later tossed a plastic container with the child entombed inside into West Galveston Bay, according to affidavits.

The plastic container washed ashore at a small island Oct. 29, when investigators began an international search for the identity of the girl they named “Baby Grace.”

‘A Quiet, Good Girl’

Trenor was raised by her grandmother, who moved to a nursing home while Trenor was a teenager, said Sheryl Sawyers, Riley’s paternal grandmother.

She then moved in with her father and stepmother, but Tuckerman said Trenor told her life at home wasn’t easy.

“She was living with her boyfriend’s family,” Tuckerman said. “Life at her home wasn’t very stable, but she didn’t say much about it.”

In class, Trenor was soft-spoken and made good grades, classmate Eric Doremus said.

“She was a quiet, good girl,” he said. “She was pretty smart.”

When she met Robert Sawyers in high school gym class and the two started dating, the reserved girl became lively and obviously happy, Doremus said.

But, as the couple’s sophomore year wrapped up, Trenor learned she was pregnant.

On the day of her first prenatal doctor appointment that confirmed her pregnancy, she was told to move out of her father and stepmother’s house, Sheryl Sawyers said.

Although Sheryl Sawyers said she was troubled by the news of the pregnancy as well, she agreed to let Trenor move in.

Trenor planned her daughter’s first birthday party during classes and showed pictures of the smiling little blonde girl to friends, Tuckerman said.

But Trenor had difficulty with school work after Riley’s birth, Tuckerman said.

The two friends lost touch. They talked on the phone occasionally, instead of spending time together, Tuckerman said.

A Troubled Relationship

The teenage couple seemed happy, Sheryl Sawyers said. But struggling to provide for their daughter meant that Robert Sawyers, then 18, needed a job to support them. He dropped out of high school and started working nights so he could stay with Riley while Trenor was in school.

Sheryl Sawyers said she had to constantly remind her son and Trenor to keep up with household chores. If Sheryl Sawyers was home, she was usually the one watching Riley, she said.

The young couple rarely saw each other. They spent their waking hours apart and watching the child, Sheryl Sawyers said.

“I think they just grew apart,” she said. “They more or less ended it in October 2006. He came into my room that night, absolutely devastated.”

Meanwhile, Trenor worked at a Mentor bagel shop, took a few courses at Lakeland Community College and became increasingly interested in the online game World of Warcraft, where she met Zeigler.

Even after the breakup, Trenor kept living in Sheryl Sawyers’ condo. Robert Sawyers started dating a mutual friend who later became pregnant and moved into the already-crowded condo, causing more problems in the damaged relationship, Sheryl Sawyers said.

In March 2007, just a week after Riley’s second birthday, Trenor called police during a dispute with Robert Sawyers about a parking space.

Sheryl Sawyers kicked her son out of the house for two nights after seeing him “grab” Trenor, she said.

The fight eventually led to both of them moving out of Sawyers’ house, she said.

Meanwhile, Trenor became more involved with the online gaming world. Zeigler sent Trenor a diamond necklace and Riley an Elmo doll. Sheryl Sawyers said she found cell phone bills that show Trenor and Zeigler had talked on the phone for hours leading up to her move to Texas — including an all-night conversation the night of the parking space fight.

Trenor also filed a restraining order against Robert Sawyers, so Sheryl Sawyers was chosen as a mediator to enforce a court-approved visitation schedule.

But Robert Sawyers only had a few visits before Trenor left Ohio for Texas, although the Sawyers didn’t learn where she was for months.

Shock And Remorse

News that “Baby Grace” was a Mentor child has shaken the quiet suburb, Sheryl Sawyers said. Her family has given media interviews, but she said she’s been unable to return to work or go out in public.

Community members have organized fundraisers for the family to help pay for travel costs to Galveston, so Sheryl Sawyers can meet more of the investigators who worked on the case and attend any court hearings.

Doremus, who works in Mentor, said the speculation about how Trenor came to be involved in such a crime is something the community is still trying to understand.

“There is a lot of shock and remorse,” he said. “Mentor doesn’t get a lot of national attention. That, coupled with the fact that it was someone from Mentor that may have done this; it’s just too much for some people.”