Mom, husband charged in ‘Precious Doe’ beheading

Kansas City, Mo. ? For four years, she was known only as Precious Doe, a little girl whose headless body was found along a road. On Thursday, police gave the girl a name, arrested her mother and stepfather on murder charges and pronounced the sad mystery solved.

Michelle M. Johnson, 30, and her husband, Harrell L. Johnson, 25, both of Muskogee, Okla., were charged with endangering the welfare of a child and second-degree felony murder of Michelle Johnson’s daughter, long known only as Precious Doe. The girl with big brown eyes and neat cornrows in her hair was identified as Erica Michelle Marie Green, just shy of 4 years old when she was found.

“We have closure,” Police Chief James Corwin said. “The little girl that we’ve known for four years as Precious Doe has a name.”

Police said Harrell Johnson, admitted that one night late in April 2001, under the influence of alcohol and the hallucinogenic drug PCP, he became angry with Erica when she refused to go to bed. He said he grabbed her, kicked her, and threw her to the ground, causing her to hit her head and fall unconscious.

According to a probable cause statement filed in Circuit Court, the Johnsons did not seek medical treatment for the girl because both had outstanding warrants for their arrest.

The child died, police said, and the couple carried the body to a church parking lot, then through the woods, where the stepfather allegedly cut the girl’s head off with hedge clippers.

The body was found April 28, 2001. Days later, her head was found nearby, wrapped in a trash bag.

In the months following, hundreds volunteered to answer witness hot lines and pass out fliers with an artist’s rendering of the girl; hundreds more prayed and sang at candlelight vigils. More than 1,000 leads poured in to authorities and the case never totally left locals’ consciousness.

The break apparently came after community activist Alonzo Washington, who has long championed efforts to find out who the little black girl was, placed another advertisement seeking leads in a local paper.

video 6News video: KC police identify ‘Precious Doe’ (05-05-05)

“There’s something about it that just bothers me that a child could be thrown away and people forget about it,” Washington said.

A man who had been in contact with police before on the case came forward again, talking with detectives and Washington last weekend.

Washington said the source then sent photographs of the child as well as hair samples from both the child and the mother.

Police and prosecutors refused to confirm such specifics of the case. They also declined to identify the source; Washington said the informant was a grandfather of one of the individuals involved in the case, but declined to be more specific.

A picture used by Kansas City media and police during the news conference, showing the girl with a slight smile and adornments in her braided hair showed the wrong picture, police said after the news conference. Oklahoma police saw the picture and said it appeared to be one of the girl’s cousins.

Oklahoma records show that Michelle Johnson has convictions for theft and forgery. The stepfather, being held at a Muskogee jail on unrelated charges, has convictions for several offenses, including assault with a dangerous weapon and possessing a sawed-off shotgun.

Prosecutor Mike Sanders said the couple would be extradited to Kansas City as soon as possible. He said he did not expect to file charges against any other individuals.

Authorities said the Johnsons had been staying with friends or family in Kansas City at the time of Erica’s death and had only been here for a short time. Police closed off the street Thursday and stood outside the run-down home where the alleged killing took place.

Locals who long had been transfixed by the case heralded news of the arrests.

Billy Stegall, a retired post office worker and Army sergeant, discovered Erica’s head in 2001 and has gone back to the site regularly to pray.

“This is a day I have been looking for,” he said. “I just asked the Lord to say who she is so she could be at peace, because she wasn’t at peace and I wasn’t at peace.”

In a park near where Precious Doe’s body was found, a makeshift memorial of poems, teddy bears and flowers grew in the months after her death before eventually being replaced by a permanent memorial. On Thursday morning, among flowers and balloons, a handwritten sign announced the news: “My Name Is Erica Michelle Maria Green.”

A timeline of events from 2001 to present in the Precious Doe case:¢ April 28, 2001: The headless body of a young girl is found in a wooded area in southeast Kansas City. Three days later, a volunteer searcher finds the girl’s head in a trash bag nearby in the woods.¢ May 31, 2001: One of the first of several apparent breaks in the case comes to naught when DNA shows the girl found in Kansas City — dubbed “Precious Doe” by community activists — is not Teekah Lewis, a missing 2-year-old from Tacoma, Wash.¢ July 15, 2003: Precious Doe’s body is exhumed, and her skull taken to Louisiana by forensic anthropologist Mary Manhein of Louisiana State University, who plans to sculpt what investigators hope will be a more accurate likeness of the little girl.¢ Sept. 19, 2003: Police begin circulating images of the bust created at LSU.¢ April 29, 2005: Police and activists receive a tip from an Oklahoma man who says he is a relative of the slain girl and knows her identity — and who killed her.¢ May 5, 2005: Police say Precious Doe was Erica Michelle Marie Green, who was almost 4 when she died. Her mother, Michelle M. Johnson, 30, was arrested in Oklahoma and was charged with murder and endangering the welfare of a child. Police said her husband was also being held in Oklahoma, but no immediate charges were brought against him. Police said Johnson told them her husband, Erica’s stepfather, killed the girl with a kick to the head and used hedge clippers to decapitate her.