Mom in Landfill Linked to Kids Found in Canal
March 5, 2011— -- Florida police have connected the two children whose bodies were found in suitcases floating in a canal to the body of a woman that was found last summer in a landfill.
Delray, Fla., police said Friday evening that they had identified the two children as 10-year-old Jermaine McNeil and his 6-year-old sister Ju'tyra Allen.
The boy was identified by the medical examiner, and while the girl's identity was not confirmed by the ME, police said her features were similar to the boy's, Delray Police Department Sgt. Nicole Guerriero said.
"This is our belief," Guerriero said. "However, the medical examiner wasn't able to confirm with scientific proof.
"The medical examiner has been able to positively identify the male child as 10-year-old Jermaine McNeal," she said. "He was identified through dental records."
Ever since the bodies of the two children were found Wednesday in the C-15 canal, police had been working to identify them and discover who their parents were.
Now police said they believe that a body discovered on Aug. 16 at the Solid Waste Authority processing plant in West Palm Beach was their mother, 25-year-old Felicia Brown, according to ABC affiliate WPBF-TV in Palm Beach.
Guerriero said the Delray Beach Police Department made the connection and that neither the medical examiner nor West Palm Beach police could confirm the identity of the woman.
Brown and her children had been living with a man named Clem Beauchamp, whom she had been dating since 2007, friends and relatives of the woman said.
Beauchamp, 34, is considered a suspect in the deaths but has not been charged, Guerriero said. She said he is being held on an unrelated weapons charge.
Kenneth Marshall, a neighbor of Brown and her children, told ABC affiliate WPLG in Miami that the woman had not been seen for about eight months. He said Beauchamp told anyone who asked about her that Brown had been arrested.
