Fatal Females

The traumatic end of the sweet, freckle-faced ten-year-old Australian girl named Zahra Clare Baker began before 9 October 2010, when firefighters were called to a small grassfire in the backyard of a home in Hickory, North Carolina. Zahra’s stepmother, 42-year-old Elisa Baker, had reported the fire, telling firefighters she’d noticed the flames when she woke up in the early hours of the morning.

Elisa and her Australian husband, Adam, stood around watching the men put out what ended up being nothing more than a burning mulch pile. But one of the firefighters had an eagle eye. There were two vehicles on the property: a burgundy Toyota Camry and a silver 1996 Chevrolet Tahoe with its passenger doors wide open. There was also an envelope on the Tahoe’s front windscreen. When he got closer, he smelled petrol fumes coming from inside the vehicle. Curious about the envelope, the firefighter opened it to find a handwritten note inside. It read:

The firefighter called police right away. Officers phoned around until they reached Mr Coffey, who turned out to be Mark Coffey, the owner of the house the Bakers were renting. When officers visited Coffey and his daughter that morning, both were safe and well. So the ‘ransom note’ was pushed aside as something slightly puzzling but nothing serious.

Later that afternoon Adam Baker phoned the Hickory Police Department to let them know somebody had poured some petrol inside his car. He also reminded them about the note that had been left on his windscreen and told them that his daughter, Zahra, was missing. Police didn’t waste a minute, rushing to the Baker home to search for Zahra, but there was no sign of her. The little girl had vanished.

News of the missing ten-year-old quickly spread across the neighbourhood, and the FBI was alerted. Right away, Zahra’s stepmother, Elisa, was taken into custody – but this was not related to Zahra’s disappearance. She was hardly an upright citizen and faced a string of charges for crimes including writing bad cheques and failure to return property.

Maria Claxton worked with the South Carolina Search and Rescue Dog Association, which uses dogs to help locate missing people or corpses. She received a call from the FBI requesting she take her dogs to search the Baker residence, as well as the surrounding land and vehicles. In just fifteen minutes one of her dogs gave an alert that there were human remains in both vehicles on the Baker property. Both cars were taken to the police station, where officers searched for clues that might solve Zahra’s disappearance.

At the same time, local police officers went door-to-door visiting all the neighbours, asking if anybody had seen Zahra. They carried out extensive searches of sheds and gardens of nearby homes. But there was still no sign of the little girl whose most defining feature was the prosthetic leg she’d worn ever since winning a battle with cancer.

According to police interviews with Elisa Baker, she, Adam and Zahra had gone to the Oktoberfest in Hickory on the evening of Friday, 8 October 2010, between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., and had then returned home. Elisa claimed Zahra had gone straight to bed. At around 2.30 a.m., Elisa said, she got up to check on her stepdaughter, who was asleep in her bed. She then went back to her own bed before waking again at 5.30 a.m., when she saw the small fire outside and phoned the fire brigade. Elisa believed somebody must have taken Zahra at the time the fire was lit. Perhaps the fire was a ploy by the kidnapper to get Elisa and Adam out of the house?

But when police interviewed Adam, he admitted he had not seen his daughter since Wednesday, 6 October. This was very confusing. Now police had to determine whether Elisa was lying to them, or whether Adam was simply mistaken about the time frame.

The next day, Sunday, 10 October, police viewed surveillance footage from businesses near the Bakers’ home. They were hoping to spot something suspicious, even if it appeared mundane, to get to the bottom of what had happened to Zahra. She was particularly vulnerable, not only because of her disability but because she also wore a hearing aid.

Zahra Baker was born on 16 November 1999 in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. Her father, Adam, worked at the local mill, while her mother, Emily Dietrich, stayed at home to look after Zahra. Emily suffered from postnatal depression, and struggled to care for her daughter. Eventually her depression got the better of her, the relationship broke up and she gave baby Zahra to Adam, who moved in with his parents in Newcastle. From then on, Zahra was effectively shut out of Emily’s life.

When Zahra was four, Adam and his parents moved to the Queensland town of Giru. Adam worked at CSR’s Invicta sugar mill; it was the main employer in the town of only 375 people. While Adam worked, Zahra was cared for by her grandmother, Karen. Neighbours remember Zahra as a happy child who was well cared for and much loved.

Tragedy struck two years later. When Zahra was six, she was diagnosed with bone cancer and her left leg was amputated above the knee. In hospital, the brave little girl told an older woman, who was also battling cancer, that losing her leg was nothing to be worried about.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘because I’m going to be getting a Barbie leg, so I don’t want you to be upset.’

A year later, the cancer had spread to Zahra’s lungs. She underwent chemotherapy and, while the drugs stopped the growth of the tumours, her hearing was badly affected. Those around her commented on her bravery, remarking that she was always cheerful in spite of the dreadful illness she was battling.

During this time there had been little to no contact between Adam and Emily. In fact, the only way Emily and her family discovered where Zahra was living was when, in September 2008, her photograph was printed in a newspaper: she was sitting on an army vehicle during a special day out for child cancer sufferers. As reporter Jessica Johnston wrote in an article for the Townsville Bulletin:

Zahra’s cancer was in remission and she was wearing her prosthetic leg. Her mother had no idea she was on the verge of moving to the US.

It was during Zahra’s fight with cancer that her father discovered the sometimes seedy world of internet chat rooms. Adam was a member of the IMVU (Instant Messaging Virtual Universe) website, where you can portray yourself as a 3-D character to exchange instant messages with other users who are also using an online disguise. He struck up a virtual romance with Elisa, who described herself as a forty-something gothic fairy, using a fairy avatar with red angel wings. Adam disguised himself as a strange black figure with bat wings.

Elisa, who was nine years older than Adam, said she was a former police officer who’d been shot in the line of duty. She also told a tale about being a former bounty hunter. But these were blatant lies, perhaps told in a desperate bid to attract a new man. Either way, she succeeded, telling friends she’d found her soul mate in a Queensland cane cutter called Adam Baker.

On her MySpace page Elisa wrote, ‘Who says long-distance relationships don’t work?’ before travelling to Australia in June 2008 to meet Adam, first setting eyes on her future husband at Brisbane’s airport. The two travelled to Giru where, in July, they married in Adam’s parents’ garden. His parents, understandably, were concerned about the union – and became even more so when the couple announced they were taking Zahra with them to begin a new life in Hickory, North Carolina.

A Queensland woman, Nikki Hay, who befriended Zahra when her own daughter was fighting cancer at the same time, later told police that Adam’s family was very unhappy about Zahra moving to the US. In the aftermath of Zahra’s disappearance, Hay wrote an email to the Hickory police chief, telling him that when she’d contacted Adam’s mother, Karen, to pass on photos she’d taken of Zahra, Karen seemed very upset.

‘She explained to me that her son had remarried and they had taken off overseas quite abruptly and she didn’t have any idea of exactly where they were,’ wrote Hay.

Before Zahra left for America, the local community, a school and charities raised money to buy Zahra a wheelchair. According to Karen, other children were inspired by Zahra’s love of life. Zahra had completed an obstacle course involving ropes and, when asked how she managed to do the course with only one leg, Zahra replied, ‘Because I want to.’

Her Australian family and friends claim Zahra did not want to leave Australia, as she would greatly miss her grandparents and friends.

When Elisa, Adam and Zahra arrived in Hickory, they stayed with Elisa’s father for six months until they could find a place of their own. But in those six months, things were already beginning to turn sour. A neighbour claimed Zahra was already in danger then, as there were sounds of physical violence coming from the home. Shirley Mims, the landlord of the Bakers’ first rental home, had to ask the family to leave when they didn’t pay rent. She also told police she had only seen Zahra once and assumed she was a visiting relative, because she never saw her again. As she told The Sydney Morning Herald:

The Baker family moved again, this time to another dilapidated Appalachian town called Hudson, where a decrepit home in a trailer park costs around $US350 a month. It was there that neighbours told police they saw signs of Elisa abusing Zahra. One neighbour said she’d often seen Elisa smack and swear at Zahra as she struggled to make her way up the steep hill towards their home.

By this time, Adam must have realised his new wife was far from being the exotic gothic fairy he fell for online – rather, she was an evil woman who gave Cinderella’s wicked stepmother a run for her money.

By the age of twenty-five, Elisa had three children by two men who both claimed she was a negligent mother. In fact, Elisa has been married a staggering number of overlapping times in her life. The marriage trail began in 1985 when she was just seventeen. Incredibly, she was very skilled in her ability to stay ahead of authorities when it came to her multiple marriages.

Elisa was born Elisa Fairchild on 6 June 1968, the middle of three daughters. According to court documents, Elisa’s parents worked in a variety of textile factories in North Carolina during the 1960s and, while her father doted on her, her mother was a strict disciplinarian. As a teenager, Elisa was said to be pretty, with jet-black hair, and she was very popular with the boys. Her first serious boyfriend was Jerry Alan Winkler. The couple dated on and off during high school. Elisa dropped out of school and had her first child, Amber (whose father’s identity hasn’t been made public). Jerry and Elisa lost contact for a while before bumping into each other at a local petrol station. Sparks must have flown, because the seventeen-year-olds made plans to go out and, a week later, Jerry proposed.

Because they were underage, they needed parental consent to marry. In order to get his father’s permission to marry, Jerry lied and told him he was baby Amber’s father; the devious young lovers even forged a blood test. They married on 14 September 1985. But, a few days later, Winkler had a change of heart. In the aftermath of Elisa’s arrest he was approached by journalists. ‘I was seventeen and married with a kid. It just hit me all at once and I wanted out,’ he explained. Winkler’s father was understandably upset about the deception and asked a judge to annul the marriage four months after that. Less than a year later, Elisa hooked up with 28-year-old Joseph Proctor, who’d recently survived a near-fatal car accident. She fell pregnant and the couple married on 5 September 1987. They had a son named Douglas and, a year later, a daughter, Brittany.

The young family lived with Joseph’s mother, Levertis White, but the marriage was shaky and White eventually applied for a restraining order because Elisa was stealing from her. According to White, Elisa said, ‘If I have to get out of here, I’ll burn the house down. I’m going to kill this baby, I’m going to wreck this car. I’ll kill those kids.’ For reasons only known to her, White withdrew the restraining order and, for a while, Elisa and Joseph were okay. But the marriage ended in 1990 when Elisa walked out, taking her two daughters and leaving Douglas with his father.

It wasn’t long before Elisa met husband number three, Andrew Harris Jnr, who spotted his future wife drinking Jack Daniels at a bar in Lincolnton, North Carolina. Harris had knocked off after his shift at the local textile plant when Elisa waved at him. ‘We just hit it off,’ Harris told a local journalist. ‘She was easy to talk to.’ The couple tied the knot on 17 April 1992, but Harris claimed she was not easy to live with and frequently flew into rages, taking her anger out on her two daughters, yelling at them and hitting them. ‘The truth is, she treated them like dirt,’ said Harris.

In early 1994, Harris left the house for a few days following an argument with Elisa. When he returned, the house was empty: no furniture, no children, no Elisa. ‘There was nothing nice about that woman,’ he said.

It wasn’t long before Elisa met her next husband. In mid-1994, a neighbour of Elisa’s introduced her to thirty-year-old Darrell Putnam, thinking the two would make a good match. Darrell was quite a vulnerable man and was profoundly deaf. He fell for Elisa’s charms and, much to the horror of his mother, Margie, he became husband number four. Margie, who lived with Darrell in the same street as Elisa in the town of Cherryville, was well aware of how Elisa treated her children, as well as the tall tales she would spin to anybody who cared to listen. As Margie Putnam told a Fairfax journalist:

The marriage didn’t last long. At first, Elisa would vanish for several days, taking the lion’s share of what Darrell had earned from his job in a dye factory. He ended the relationship as soon as he found Elisa in bed with another man. He moved a few houses up the road to live next door to his mother, where he still lives. Said Margie:

Elisa’s fifth husband, Jeffery Allred, claims he fled the marital home after one too many arguments that ended with Elisa either throwing rocks at him or whacking him with a baseball bat. The couple married on 3 October 1997, but barely lasted a year. Even though he was a large man, Allred was so terrified of her that he never actually divorced her; the thought of having to face her again in court was just too much.

Husband number six came along in 1998 when Elisa was thirty. Aaron Young claims Elisa (who was then still married to Allred) was the first woman to ever pay him attention. Young had suffered from the bone disease rickets as a child and had been through several operations on his legs, including having a steel rod inserted in his right leg. His disability made him self-conscious and shy, but he claimed to have fallen in love with Elisa, marrying her on 8 August when he was just twenty. Young’s brother James said marriage completely changed Aaron’s life:

But it was during her marriage to Young that Elisa discovered the internet. In early 2008, Elisa announced she was going to Australia and she would not be returning. Young assumed Elisa was kidding but, true to her word, she fled, never to be seen by him again. Seeing as Elisa’s children were all adults by now, she was able to up sticks and move without having to worry about her duties as a mother.

So that’s how, once Elisa married Adam Baker, she had clocked up an astonishing seven marriages. To make matters worse, at one point she had actually been married to three men at the same time. She was never officially divorced from Allred and she wasn’t divorced from Harris at the time she married Putnam. By the time Putnam had the marriage annulled in 1997, Elisa had already taken two more trips down the aisle.

On 11 October, Adam Baker, along with Hickory Police Chief Tom Adkins, appeared on Good Morning America (GMA), pleading for anybody with information about Zahra to contact officials.

There were still glaring inconsistencies in Adam and Elisa’s stories as to when Zahra had last been seen. Adam claimed he hadn’t seen his daughter since Thursday 7 October, mostly due to his work commitments. But he had also told police he had last seen Zahra on Wednesday the 6th. Yet the official police report stated the family was together when they attended Oktoberfest on Friday, 8 October. Somebody was not telling the truth. It was around the time of Adam’s GMA appearance on 11 October that he reportedly mentioned to police that his wife possibly had something to do with Zahra’s disappearance.

At a press conference, officers admitted to the media they were unable to track down anybody, apart from the increasingly unreliable Elisa, who could confirm they’d seen Zahra in the last few weeks. Without that information, it was virtually impossible to work out how long she’d been missing. The media were also told that search warrants had been issued for the two cars belonging to Elisa and Adam Baker. Swabs of what could possibly be blood were sent to the crime laboratory, and a variety of drug paraphernalia was also confiscated. Police also searched the property of a tree service company in nearby Burke County where Adam worked as a labourer. A team of officers and police dogs scoured the area for many hours after the dogs picked up suspicious scents in log and mulch piles and a woodchipper. But the day’s work resulted in nothing.

Suddenly there was a breakthrough: under questioning, shortly after Adam’s GMA appearance, Elisa Baker admitted she’d written the ransom note that had been left on her husband’s windscreen. Police suspected the note was planted in a bid to mislead them in their search for the ten-year-old. Elisa needed a way to explain Zahra’s disappearance. By having police think there were kidnappers involved, they’d be led to believe Zahra was mistakenly taken instead of Mark Coffey’s daughter. However, the note was not particularly well thought through; it was written on an electricity bill, and police later found the matching envelope in Elisa and Adam’s bedroom. Elisa was taken into custody and a dozen charges were laid, including obstruction of justice, larceny, communicating threats and driving with a revoked licence. The search for Zahra was temporarily halted and the case was referred to as a homicide investigation. Police stepped up their efforts, searching the Bakers’ house again and using a high-intensity light in Zahra’s bedroom. They were horrified to see blood specks splattered across the walls – even on the ceiling. There was evidence somebody had scrubbed the walls with bleach and then painted over with pink paint. Police found a half-burned paintbrush in the mulch pile that had been burning in the early hours of the morning when Elisa called the firefighters.

As police interviewed friends and neighbours, a far-from-ideal picture of Zahra’s home life was emerging. Some people told police they suspected Zahra, who was mostly homeschooled, had been abused. Elisa was described as a woman with a fiery temper who was quick to physically punish Zahra, often using her fists. It seemed Zahra was frequently the focus of her rage. Perhaps Elisa wanted her out of the home so she and Adam could concentrate on being a couple?

‘She was always beating her,’ Karen Yount, a former neighbour, told Fox News. ‘I told her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen to anyone. That poor girl.’

Concerned neighbours did take some action: on four occasions social services officers were called to the Bakers’ home following reports of ‘improper discipline of a child’. The officers interviewed Zahra and her parents but, when no evidence of maltreatment or child-safety issues was found, no further action was taken. In fact, the Zahra Baker file was officially closed on 6 August. Only forty-nine days later, she was missing, presumed dead.

On 13 October Elisa Baker appeared in court on the obstruction of justice charge, with the judge setting bond at $40 000. When combined with the other charges, Elisa was faced with a total bail of $72 200.

The next day, police received a tip that Zahra had been seen with two men at a house on Burke County Road. The statement was signed by police chief Tom Adkins, but it was third-hand hearsay at best; it quoted an ‘informant’ who told police one of the men said he’d ‘done something very bad and needed to leave town’. The informant believed Zahra had been raped and that Elisa Baker had ‘some kind of relationship’ with one of the men. The source also told police he’d asked the man who told him this story if the girl had been killed, and the man said Zahra may have been hit on the head.

It was yet another lead the police had to investigate and, when they visited the house on Burke County Road, they found a large mattress lying outside, with a large dark stain in the middle. It was seized as possible evidence, but police did not release further details so it was most likely a false lead. Officers were dealing with more than a hundred phone calls from members of the public – mostly from people who told police they believed Zahra had been ill-treated at home.

Elisa’s lawyer finally contacted police, saying Elisa could help them find Zahra. Police believe she was prompted to partially confess after the bloodied mattress had been found; Elisa must have mistakenly assumed the mattress was Zahra’s. She directed investigators to a handsaw that had been dumped in the woods. It appeared to carry traces of blood, but no DNA was picked up due to weather damage.

By this time, police, as well as the local community, believed Zahra was dead. Wellwishers filled the family’s lawn with soft toys and flowers. Adam Baker appeared on TV to thank police for their tireless efforts in searching for Zahra.

Then somebody came forward with a positive sighting of Zahra. An employee of a furniture store claimed to have seen Zahra with her stepmother on 22 September. This was the first time since the ‘ransom note’ was discovered that somebody, apart from her parents, claimed to have definitely seen Zahra in the past few weeks. The worker had noticed Zahra’s prosthetic leg and heard Elisa call her by her name.

‘As I walked past, I touched her on the shoulder,’ floor manager Pat Adams told the Daily News. ‘She just looked up at me and smiled.’

Next, a family friend came forward with a photograph of Zahra taken with a mobile phone on 9 August. In the photo, there was a bruise under Zahra’s right eye. The family friend told police Elisa had not wanted her to take the photo, but she eventually relented. Perhaps Elisa didn’t want photographic evidence of Zahra’s bruise? According to information from a former neighbour, Zahra was regularly bruised but Elisa always had an explanation, or would refer to her as ‘clumsy’.

A family friend also told police that when Zahra was being punished for ‘bad behaviour’, her stepmother would lock the child in her room for an entire day, only letting her out for five minutes for a meal.

While Zahra was mostly being homeschooled, there were times when she was taken to the local school, Hudson Elementary. When she showed up with a black eye in one of her rare appearances at her fourth-grade class, two teachers went to the Baker house to ask questions about the injury. Apparently one teacher was so concerned about Zahra she gave the child her phone number. But that was as far as they were prepared to go. Another time, Zahra’s schoolteachers found her sobbing because she’d wet herself and was terrified about going home in soiled clothing because her stepmother would be furious. The teachers gave her some fresh garments to wear while they washed her clothes.

As the days went by with no sign of a body, police focused their search on a Cardwill County landfill near Zahra’s home. It wasn’t only Zahra’s body they were searching for, but also her prosthetic leg. Officers had already determined the model and serial number from her medical records. But, like so many other searches, this one also proved fruitless.

Police also made public the 911 emergency calls from Adam Baker. In his first phone call, on Saturday 9 October, he claimed to have last seen Zahra at 2.30 a.m. But a few days later, he told police he hadn’t seen his daughter since Wednesday, 6 October. The police were determined to find out whether Elisa had lied to them about when she last saw Zahra or whether Adam and Elisa had made a mistake about the time frame.

In the call, Adam explained the police had been at his place earlier that day after finding a ransom note for his boss’s daughter:

Police were also digging into Elisa Baker’s past and discovered the truth about her marital history; bigamy was added to the growing list of charges she faced.

On 24 October two officers drove Elisa to a site near the last house the family had lived in, in Hudson, to conduct a new search. This followed a confession of sorts from Elisa, who also told police they could find Zahra’s blood, bones and bodily fluids in the Hickory home’s drainpipes. It was another wild goose chase, because the long search came up empty. The next day investigators took Elisa to another location near Dudley Shoals Road and Christie Road in Hudson, near where the Baker family had recently lived. (Elisa’s mobile phone records played a part in the decision of where to search for Zahra’s remains.) It was in the bush at this Dudley Shoals Road location that Zahra’s prosthetic leg was found. By now police believed Zahra had been dismembered.

At this time it was strongly believed, but not yet officially confirmed, that Elisa had struck a plea bargain with the district attorney’s office where, in exchange for helping police recover Zahra’s remains, she would face a lighter sentence. While police did not want to strike a deal with Elisa, they were sure she was the only person who knew exactly where to find Zahra’s remains. Hickory prosecuting attorney Jay Gaither was widely criticised for ‘saving’ Elisa from lethal injection, but he was adamant they had had no choice. Elisa had the information and Adam, who was cooperating with the police, knew nothing.

The distressing discovery of Zahra’s leg prompted yet another search of the surrounding area, including a nearby creek. Eventually investigators found a bone, which was sent to the crime laboratory for DNA testing. Then, just a week before what would have been Zahra’s eleventh birthday, more bones were discovered along the banks of Little River.

So far Zahra’s biological mother, Emily Dietrich, had been silent. But now she gave her first media interview, telling Australia’s Channel 7 News that she had not seen Zahra since she relinquished custody to her former husband, when her daughter was still an infant. She claimed it was very difficult to keep in touch with Zahra because Adam and Elisa moved so frequently. In fact, by the time she’d tracked them down in North Carolina, it was just three days before Zahra’s disappearance. Said Emily:

Emily Dietrich travelled to the US to talk to investigators, provide a sample of her DNA and visit the memorial neighbours had set up for Zahra: a collection of soft toys, photos and notes left at a shrine for the lost girl. Many of the toys and notes were left by children the same age as Zahra.

While Elisa had not yet been charged with her murder, the general consensus was that she was responsible. When Emily was asked about her daughter’s stepmother, she said, ‘I want her to sit in jail and I want her to live every day of her life remembering why she’s there and what she’s done. She needs to sit there and rot.’

Melissa Huckaby

In April 2009, Californians were gripped by the story of missing eight-year-old Sandra Cantu, who was last seen at her mobile home park in Tracy, southern California, before disappearing without a trace. Her disappearance sparked a frantic search that ended in a horrific outcome: her body was found in a lagoon, in a cow manure–covered suitcase. The relentless search for the missing girl, which had involved 250 police officers, stopped cold.

When 29-year-old Sunday school teacher Melissa Huckaby was arrested for Sandra’s murder, nobody could quite believe it. A woman strangled her daughter’s friend with a piece of cloth, sexually assaulted her with a rolling pin and stuffed her body into a suitcase? Impossible! FBI profilers had suspected the killer was a white male aged between twenty-five and forty; they never suspected a woman.

On 27 March, Sandra came to Huckaby’s home to play with her daughter, but when Huckaby turned her away, she went to play on swings at another friend’s house. The video footage showed Sandra skipping down the street, then turning towards Huckaby’s home before disappearing out of sight.

Shortly after Sandra went missing, Huckaby drew attention to herself. She called the mobile home park office to report a stolen suitcase.

So when Sandra’s body was discovered in a suitcase, police interviewed Huckaby about the theft. They showed her a photo of the suitcase that had contained Sandra’s body. Huckaby said the suitcase ‘kinda looks like mine. Man, it kinda looks like I had something to do with it’. Then, days later, she approached police with a note she claimed to have found. The note, which had several spelling mistakes, read: ‘Cantu locked in stolin suitcase thrown in water onn Bacchetti Rd. & Whitehall Rd witness.’

FBI Special Agent Michael Conrad, a child abduction expert, thought it strange that once she handed over the note, she became calm and relaxed. As he later told the grand jury:

We also commented on the unusual fact that a woman who reported losing a suitcase should be the one woman out of everyone in this complex who should happen to find a note that reports that the stolen suitcase was used to hide the child’s body.

Police were slowly circling their suspect. They searched her home and found on her computer a story she’d downloaded about Israeli divers finding a suitcase with the remains of a missing four-year-old girl.

Finally Huckaby broke down and admitted causing Sandra’s death. But the real question was: why did she do it?

One theory is jealousy. Huckaby’s daughter was not like Sandra, the sweet little blonde girl loved by everyone.

Huckaby entered a guilty plea to first-degree murder with the special circumstance of kidnapping. In a plea deal, prosecutors agreed to drop the rape and lewd or lascivious conduct with a child charges. This way, Huckaby avoided the death penalty.

At her sentencing, she apologised to Sandra’s family and said she did not understand why she murdered their little girl.

Then, the saddest news: the human remains found scattered or buried in the bushland at Hickory were positively identified as Zahra’s. Police believe Elisa chose that area to dispose of Zahra’s body parts because she knew it was a place hunters dumped animal carcasses. She knew the body parts would be devoured by scavenging animals, making it difficult for anybody to identify the human remains. Elisa directed investigators to the spot, so they were able to recover her upper left arm, some of her vertebrae and some ribs. They were not able to find her skull, her right arm, her hands, her right leg and her upper left leg.

Police said the bones had ‘cut markings’ which indicated Zahra was dismembered by ‘at least two different cutting instruments’. While some of her remains appeared to have been dismembered by a handsaw, they believe the section of the spine that had been severed just below Zahra’s head had been done with a power saw. DNA taken from the recovered bones was a perfect match with the DNA sample taken from Zahra’s belongings, as well her parents’ samples. The police, who’d been working tirelessly on the case, were said to have been absolutely devastated that Zahra was not found alive. But the next step was to build a case to make sure her killer was successfully prosecuted.

Elisa had been very busy in custody, writing two letters to a crime website, Serial Killers Ink, which sold the writings and artwork of infamous killers. The site’s owner received Elisa’s letters after he had contacted her in prison. He handed the letters to police. In one letter, Elisa claimed neither she nor Adam had killed Zahra. But she admitted that Adam had done something to his daughter after she died. She wrote:

According to court documents, in January 2011, Elisa Baker allegedly admitted to police that she knew Zahra had died on 24 September 2010 – two weeks before she was reported missing. Elisa claimed her stepdaughter had died of ‘natural causes’; she and Adam disposed of her body the next day.

Meanwhile, Adam Baker strenuously denied having any involvement in his daughter’s death or dismemberment. He told WBTV News, ‘There’s no way I would do that to my baby. There’s no way in the world I would hurt my daughter.’

Adam Baker’s attorney said that Elisa Baker’s claims were only a ‘desperate’ attempt at distraction.

Adding extra intrigue to the story, police discovered that Elisa and another man, and possibly also Adam, had taken part in role-playing games on the internet. This involved a ‘chainsaw massacre’ game, which had allegedly been played on 22 September, shortly before the day Elisa claimed that Zahra had died, 24 September.

By the time the autopsy report was released, the possibility that Zahra had died a ‘natural death’ was thrown out without question. The autopsy concluded Zahra had died from ‘undetermined homicidal violence’. Elisa’s mobile phone records placed her, on 25 September, in the same remote forest locations where some of her stepdaughter’s remains were found. Elisa was charged with Zahra’s murder.

She appeared before a grand jury on 21 February, facing a second-degree murder indictment stating she had ‘a history and pattern of physical, verbal and psychological abuse of the victim’. The grand jury also alleged Elisa had ‘secreted’ the child from her relatives before killing her, to deter the investigation. Elisa managed to avoid a death sentence in exchange for leading police to Zahra’s scattered remains.

While the full story will probably never be known, police believe that Zahra died in the Bakers’ Hickory home on Friday, 24 September 2010. Her body was probably dismembered and dumped the next day, but it took Adam Baker a ridiculous fifteen days before he realised his daughter was missing – it’s especially ridiculous considering Zahra slept in the bedroom next door to Adam and Elisa’s. Adam claimed he did not worry about his daughter because Elisa would tell him that Zahra was sleeping or unwell and shouldn’t be disturbed. Elisa would also send him text messages to let him know Zahra had been fed and even about plans for Zahra’s upcoming birthday celebration. In other words, Adam had a very laid-back attitude towards his child. (His 911 call was not what anybody would describe as frantic.) He admitted to police he had lied about the family outing at Oktoberfest, but only because he didn’t believe Zahra was dead and Elisa convinced him to give police that false information. (Adam was never charged with any offences.)

Yet Adam Baker clearly loved his daughter and told the media how he felt about her disappearance and death:

Naturally, Adam came to the conclusion that Zahra would still be alive today if he had not brought Elisa into their lives.

On 15 September 2012 Zahra’s mother, Emily, read a statement to the court, condemning Elisa for killing her daughter and saying she was sorry that her depression had caused her to abandon her child. She was shaking and crying as she addressed the court:

Adam Baker also addressed the woman who married him even though she was still married to another man at the time:

He also called on Elisa to disclose where the rest of Zahra’s remains could be found. But, even if Elisa had told police where she had discarded her stepdaughter’s body parts, they had most likely already been scavenged by animals.

On sentencing Elisa to eighteen years behind bars, Catawba County Judge Timothy Kincaid became very emotional. Speaking through tears he said:

As she was led from North Carolina’s Catawba County Court to spend up to eighteen years in jail for the murder and torment of a vulnerable Australian child, Elisa’s unrelenting sobbing could be heard from behind a closed door.

In February 2013, the final chapter of Zahra’s tragic death came to a close when a skull found in bushland was identified as hers.

Police chief Tom Adkins told journalists the positive identification gave the members of ‘Team Zahra’ mixed emotions: