The 911 Call That Unraveled a Murder

The call came in just after dark. A man named Devin told the dispatcher that his girlfriend's three-year-old daughter and the family dog had vanished while he napped. "I took a thirty-minute nap and I just woke up and they're nowhere," he said, his voice trembling. He described the child as a "full-fledged adult" who could climb like a monkey, mentioned a deadbeat baby daddy in Cleveland who might have taken her, and rambled about his bipolar disorder, lithium medication, and lack of sleep. But as officers arrived at the house in Sandusky, Ohio, the story began to fracture. There was blood in the bathroom. A broken picture frame. A katana sword with what looked like blood on it. And when police searched the shed in the backyard, they made the discovery that turned a missing child case into a homicide investigation.

The Shed and the Body

Officers found the three-year-old girl's body inside a tote in the shed. The medical examiner later determined she died from blunt force trauma and had a broken rib. There were multiple slices on her body—one cut on her leg went down to the bone—and a significant human bite mark on her leg. The scene was so disturbing that one officer later described it as the worst he had seen in his career. The child was also presumptively positive for sexual assault.