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'Baby Grace' positively identified

  • Story Highlights
  • DNA tests confirm toddler's body is Riley Ann Sawyers
  • Kimberly Dawn Trenor and Royce Clyde Zeigler II were arrested last Saturday
  • Trenor told police she and her husband killed the girl in July
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(CNN) -- DNA tests have confirmed that a toddler whose body was found in the West Bay earlier this month was Riley Ann Sawyers, the Galveston County Sheriff's Department said Friday in a statement.

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DNA tests have confirmed that the body found in West Bay is that of Riley Ann Sawyers.

Earlier this week, police said they were all but certain of the identity of the two-year-old -- the daughter of Robert Thomas Sawyers and Kimberly Dawn Trenor who became known as "Baby Grace" -- after receiving a tip from relatives in Ohio.

Trenor, 19, and her husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler II, 24, were arrested last Saturday and charged with injuring a child and tampering with physical evidence.

The Sheriff's Department said that the Galveston County District Attorney's Office would be reviewing the case to decide whether there were other possible charges.

Riley Ann Sawyers' body was found October 29 on an uninhabited island in the bay by Robert Wayne Spinn, a fisherman. The body was inside black plastic bags which were, in turn, inside a blue plastic Sterilite container.

Trenor told police her daughter had been beaten and thrown across a room and that her head was held under water before she died on July 24.

Trenor also said the little girl's body was hidden in a storage shed for "one to two months" before she and Zeigler threw the blue plastic container containing the remains into the bay.

Trenor and Zeigler were living in Spring, Texas, a northern Houston suburb. They are now held in the Galveston County Jail after their Saturday arrests, Sheriff's Department Sgt. Ray Tuttoilmondo said.

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Their bonds have been set at $350,000 each.

Trenor and Riley Ann Sawyers came to Texas from Ohio in May to be with Zeigler, whom she met online. Sheryl Sawyers, Robert Sawyers' mother, said earlier this week that she saw widely distributed police sketches of "Baby Grace" and contacted Galveston police to say she thought the girl was her granddaughter. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

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