Zahra Baker Update: Missing Case Turns into Homicide Investigation

[Hepburn]

HICKORY, N.C. (CBS/AP) The investigation into Zahra Baker, the hearing-impaired10-year-old North Carolina girl who was reported missing Saturday, is now a homicide investigation, Hickory Police Chief Tom Adkins announced Tuesday.

Adkins said that Zahra's stepmother, Elisa Baker, confessed to investigators that she wrote the ransom note found at the scene that asked for $1 million and then asked for an attorney.

Elisa Baker originally told police that she last saw Zahra, who also suffered from bone cancer and had a prosthetic leg, sleeping in her bed around 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning, three hours before a brush fire in the backyard of the family home was reported. Hours after the fire Adam Baker called police to report Zahra missing.

...

" was locked in her room, allowed five minutes out a day to eat, that was it," Brittany Bentley, who is married to Elisa Baker's nephew, told the morning show. "She was beat almost every time I was over there for just the smallest things. Elisa would get mad, she would take it out on Zahra, things the kid didn't deserve. She just had a horrible home life."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20019330-504083.html

Why in the HELL didn't someone, anyone, who knew about how this child was abused step up and do something before this poor child was murdered!?!?!?!?!?!?!

:mad:

[secondwind]

1. Poor kid had a sucky stepmother, and horrible relatives who saw and did nothing. RIP

[lightningandsnow]

2. The abuse of children with disabilities is an epidemic.

:cry:

[Hepburn]

3. She seems so terribly sweet. There are a lot of pictures of her on that link.

And she just comes across as a tender soul.

I am so upset over what was done to her. If there is a hell, those who did this and those who stood by and did nothing ~~ they all deserve to ROT there forever.

Edit for typo