WTH, no death penalty!

[RACER X]

if any such couple deserved it'd be them........

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6230596.html

just heart breaking.

Jurors hear mom tell of Baby Grace's death
'We need to break her,' she says husband told her before 2-year-old's fatal ordeal
By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Jan. 27, 2009, 11:58PM

The length of her torture was one of the gruesome details in the death of Riley, known as Baby Grace until she was identified, that jurors heard Tuesday during the first day of her mother’s capital murder trial.

The description of the girl’s fatal beating and how her body was stuffed into a plastic box and tossed into the sea was revealed in a voluntary videotaped statement that the girl’s mother, Kimberly Dawn Trenor, gave to Galveston County sheriff’s investigators Nov. 23, 2007.

Several members of the five-man, seven-woman jury wiped away tears as a sobbing Trenor told investigators how her daughter looked at her during the beating and said, “I love you.”

Her husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler II, 25, told Trenor that her daughter was merely trying to manipulate her. So the beating continued.

In the tape, Trenor told investigators that Zeigler had stayed home from work on July 25, 2007, to make sure that Trenor punished Riley by whipping her with a belt as he ordered.

“He said, ‘We need to break her,’ ” Trenor said.

Zeigler wanted to teach Riley to say “please” when asking for something and “yes, sir” and “yes, ma’am” when spoken to, as well as correct other behavior that displeased him, Trenor said.

The session began in Riley’s bedroom, where Zeigler beat the child and shoved her face into her pillow, Trenor said. But most of the punishment took place in the family room, she said.

Mother admits helping
Zeigler beat Riley with a thin black belt while screaming at her but switched to a thicker belt that caused more pain, she said.

At Zeigler’s request, Trenor said, she filled the bathtub with cold water.

Zeigler dragged Riley into the bathroom, sometimes by the hair, and held her head under water every time she screamed, she said.

Zeigler hurled Riley onto the tile floor at least three times, once so hard that Trenor said she heard a loud crack.

When Riley tried to run away, he hooked the belt around her neck and dragged her back, Trenor said.

“It seemed like it went on and on and, no matter what she said, she was going to get slapped with a belt,” the girl’s mother told investigators.

She added that Zeigler at one point bit Riley on her right hand.

Trenor admitted that she also beat her daughter after Zeigler urged her to do so. “At some point, I was using the belt,” she said.

‘She kept falling’
Finally Riley, black and blue from the beating, was unable to stand when ordered to do so. “She didn’t have control of her legs,” Trenor said.

“He was holding her and trying to get her to stand and she kept falling,” Trenor said.

Riley had trouble chewing and swallowing Tylenol that Zeigler had given her and he realized something was wrong.

Trenor wanted to phone 911. “He said, ‘No, we can’t do that. We’ll go to jail,’” she said.

“There came a point that she’s not breathing ... he started doing CPR,” Trenor said. “He just handed her to me, and I could just feel her going cold.”

Zeigler wrapped Riley’s body in a purple towel and put her in the bathtub. After purchasing a blue plastic box at Wal-Mart, Zeigler washed Riley’s body with bleach and poured some down her throat, Trenor said.

The body was stuffed in three plastic bags and placed in the box, kept for at least a month in the backyard storage shed, she said.

After an attempt to bury the body at night failed, the next day Trenor drove onto the railroad bridge next to the Galveston Causeway and Zeigler tossed it into the sea, she said.

Zeigler panicked when the box floated away, saying he should have drilled holes so it would sink, she said.

The fisherman who discovered the body on an island in West Galveston Bay is expected to testify this morning.

Zeigler’s attorney, Neal Davis III, does not accept Trenor’s version of events.

Zeigler’s capital murder trial has not been scheduled.

No death penalty sought
District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk decided not to seek the death penalty because of a state appeals court decision saying that the death penalty isn’t appropriate in cases involving parents accused of killing their children.

During opening statements, the prosecution portrayed Trenor as a willing participant in the death who knew or should have known that the beating could lead to Riley’s death.

The defense said that neither Trenor nor Zeigler intended or foresaw that Riley would die.

The point is crucial because prosecutors must prove that the couple either intended to kill Riley or should have known that their actions would lead to her death if they are to convince the jury to convict her of capital murder.