Precious Doe & Omega Man

 

I wept for joy, when I learned that the killers of "Precious Doe" had been found.  I literally shrieked.  For heinousness, viciousness and barbarity, this crime, which featured the decapitated body of a three-year-old baby girl, discarded like trash in a wooded area of Kansas City, ranks at the top of my list.

What kind of animal, what kind of savage, could possibly do this I wondered?  Turns out it was her own mother, and her stepfather, residents of Muskogee, Oklahoma.

Alonzo Washington, the creator of Omega Comics, himself, father of a brood of beautiful, black children, has made this case his personal crusade, since 2001.  Month after month, year after year, lead after lead, Alonzo patiently and indefatigably persisted, keeping this case fresh and in the foreground, not letting it die.  He, and others, humanized the child, by giving her a sweet name, "Precious Doe." They raised a permanent memorial to her in the wooded area--now a shrine--where her body was cast, and where her head was separately found in a black garbage bag, by a neighborhood brother, a Viet Nam veteran, who, upon an impulse, searched the area previously combed by police without result.  Working along with the Kansas City Police, whose officers deserve high praise for their dogged determination to see justice done, forensic experts reconstructed and refined a succession of faces, and plaster of Paris reproductions, until they hit upon one that a witness could match.

The witness called Alonzo Washington and sent him photographs showing Precious Doe, whose real name is Erica Green, along with her eight (8) other sisters.  Washington contacted the police, and the police nabbed the culprits.

The mother, now being held on $500,000 bail in Oklahoma is only 25, and her husband, the step father is only 30.  According to news accounts, he kicked the child in the head and killed her, and they let her lay dead for two (2) days, because they both had warrants!  He cut off her head with garden shears and pitched her.

They were in Kansas City, purportedly, looking for work.  Why they brought only this child is unclear, and why this baby had to be murdered defies both understanding and explanation.

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen." (Heb.11:1) Fortunately, the faith of "Omega Man"--creator, Alonzo Washington, was not found wanting.  "For if by one man's offense death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ."  (Rom. 7:25)

Precious, baby, rest in peace.

Rev. Dr. Larry D. Coleman