Kansas City, Mo. ? Mourners gathered Saturday for a memorial service to remember the little girl known for four years only as “Precious Doe” — but who was recently identified as a 3-year-old whose life appears to have been nearly as torturous as her death.

“This experience brings us face to face with man’s destruction toward man, face to face with evil,” said the Rev. Wallace Hartsfield of the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church. “But life cannot be dismembered, covered up and put in a trash bag. That’s why we’re here. But life keeps crying out. You cannot do away with life. The blood will cry out. Erica cried out.”

The girl’s body was found near an intersection in Kansas City in April 2001. Days later, her head was found nearby, wrapped in a trash bag. Police say the child’s head was cut off with a pair of hedge clippers.

Kansas City dubbed her Precious Doe as police sought her killer and her identity. Last week, after working on a tip from a man in Oklahoma, Kansas City police identified the child as Erica Michelle Marie Green, who was nearly 4.

The child’s mother, Michelle M. Johnson, 30, and Johnson’s husband, Harrell Johnson, 25, face one count each of second-degree murder and endangering the welfare of a child. They were being held in Muskogee, Okla., but agreed Friday to be returned to Kansas City to face the charges.

The Johnsons had moved to Kansas City with Erica in April 2001, according to Lawanda Driskell, a cousin of Harrell Johnson. Driskell said the three moved in with her, but Erica was homesick and cried often.

Harrell Johnson allegedly would beat the child “for crying, for peeing on herself, if she wouldn’t eat, whatever,” said Driskell, who now also lives in Muskogee.

She said she also heard a loud bang from the bedroom, which she now believes was the fatal blow to Erica’s head. According to police, Erica wasn’t moved for two days. Driskell said the couple kept the bedroom door closed and told her Erica was sick.

About 300 people attended Saturday’s service, which included several teenage speakers from area high schools.

“If I was a teenager today, in terms of what has happened to the child that gathers us here today, I would not even want to experiment with PCP,” Hartsfield told the congregation. “Or with anything that could lead someone to …” The pastor couldn’t finish his sentence but held out his arms and made a chopping motion as though he were using hedge clippers.

Hartsfield’s service was broken up several times with shouts and applause, and at one point everyone in the church shouted the child’s name in unison.

Betty Brown, who raised Erica from infancy until April 2001 when her mother took her back, attended the service and said afterward that she was warmed by the people in Kansas City who came to know of her only after her death.

“My legs are rickety talking about it,” Brown said.

Relative says girl was beaten days before her death

When asked what she would seek for the people charged in Erica’s death, Brown said she was torn.

“We have to go with the system,” she said. “But if you want to know what’s in my heart, they need to get what Erica got.”