"Baby Grace" Testimony Moves Jury To Tears

Jurors wept Tuesday as they heard a mother detail how an attempt to teach her 2-year-old daughter proper manners turned into a daylong torture session in which the toddler was beaten with belts, dunked in a bathtub of cold water and flung across a room so violently that she died from her injuries.

Kimberly Dawn Trenor, 20, told investigators in a videotaped statement that was played for jurors during the first day of her capital murder trial that she hit her daughter with a thick leather belt during a discipline session to teach Riley Ann Sawyers to say "please" and "yes, sir."

But she insisted it was her husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler II, who became so enraged when the Ohio toddler didn't behave better that he hurled her several times across a room, ultimately fracturing her skull and killing her. Trenor said the force with which Zeigler threw Riley was so great that she was able to hear the impact of her body hitting the tile floor in their home.

However, prosecutor Kayla Allen told jurors that Trenor and Zeigler both took part in torturing Riley and both are responsible for her death. Trenor admitted to police that she pushed Riley's head underwater and hit her with the belt during the deadly discipline session.

Allen said after Riley was killed, the couple bought a plastic container, stuffed her beaten body inside and stored it in a shed for a month or two before dumping it in Galveston Bay. Riley was dubbed "Baby Grace" by investigators in October 2007 after they found her remains and worked to identify her.

"I said we have to get her to a hospital. (Zeigler) said, 'No we can't. We'll go to jail,"' Trenor said in the videotape, crying. "There came a point where she stopped breathing. He started doing CPR on the floor. He took her ... and handed her over to me. I could just feel her going cold."

At the defense table, Trenor's eyes teared up as she watched the videotape on a large screen. Several members of the seven-woman, five man jury wiped away tears.

Her attorney, Tommy Stickler Jr., said in his opening statement that Trenor never intended to kill her daughter and that things just "spun out of control."

But prosecutor Kayla Allen said that Trenor did nothing to save her daughter, not even when Riley told her mother "I love you" as she was being beaten.

"She dies right there in front of them and they do nothing to help her," Allen said.

In her videotaped statement, Trenor told police she and Riley moved to Spring, a suburb north of Houston, in June 2007 to be with Zeigler after she met him playing the online video game World of Warcraft.

Stickler portrayed Trenor as a scared 19-year-old girl who had moved to Texas from northeast Ohio after being assaulted by Riley's biological father.

Stickler said Zeigler was her "knight in shining armor, her Texas cowboy."

Trenor said at first her new life in Texas was great. But then Zeigler became concerned that Riley wouldn't listen to adults or say "please" or "thank you." Zeigler had started disciplining Riley with a belt but Trenor said she was uncomfortable with that.

Trenor said that on July 25, 2007, Zeigler stayed home from work so they could discipline Riley.

She said that Riley screamed as they "disciplined" her all day. Trenor said that Zeigler at one point complained that his shoulder hurt from hitting Riley so much with the belt.

Stickler told jurors they could punish Trenor for the abuse but that they can't punish her for capital murder because she never intended to kill her daughter and she didn't cause the skull fractures that an autopsy concluded was the cause of death.

"I don't want to use the word accident, but this wasn't something that was intentional," he said.

Zeigler's attorney, Neal Davis III, has said Trenor was responsible for Riley's death. Zeigler will be tried later.

The toddler's remains were unidentified for weeks until Sheryl Sawyers of Mentor, Ohio, saw an artist's sketch of the girl, believed it was her granddaughter Riley and called authorities.

Trenor could receive an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted of capital murder. The jury could also convict her of a lesser charge.

Prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty against either her or Zeigler, 25, because they didn't think they could prove that the pair would be a future danger, a requirement for such a punishment.

In June 2008, Trenor gave birth to a boy, Shawn, while awaiting trial. The baby is living in the Dallas area with distant relatives of Trenor, who relinquished her parental rights. Zeigler has not relinquished his rights, child welfare officials said.

Trenor and Zeigler are being held in the Galveston County Jail under bonds of $850,000 each.