Zahra Baker Case: Warrant's Grim Details on Body Disposal
Dec. 1, 2010— -- Grim new details have emerged in the death of disabled 10-year-old Zahra Baker in a police search warrant in which the girl's stepmother told police that bits of bone and bodily fluids could be found in a bathtub drain.
According to the documents, released Tuesday night, Zahra's stepmother Elisa Baker told North Carolina police through her lawyer that after the girl's death, Zahra was dismembered, her body parts placed in trash bags and then rolled into a comforter and car cover. Elisa Baker also directed police where to look for the body parts.
In the warrant, an investigator said that "persons involved in homicides may conceal the body and /or body parts and those parts of Zahra Baker may be located" near a residence in Hickory, N.C.
Blood, bodily fluids and pieces of bone could be found in the drain of a bathtub, Elisa Baker said, the document stated.
The stepmother directed police to a dumpster where she and husband Adam Baker dumped Zahra's mattress, the warrant said. A car cover and comforter used to "conceal and transport the body parts" was also stashed in the dumpster.
Investigators eventually found Zahra's prosthetic leg, wrapped in a white trash bag and tossed in a separate dumpster. A piece of bone and additional body parts were found at two additional locations.
Zahra had lost her leg along with most of her hearing in a battle with bone cancer.
Though the warrant offers new information in how Zahra's body was dumped, it does not shed any light on how or why the child died.
In a jailhouse letter obtained by ABC News last month, Elisa Baker wrote, "We really didn't kill her, but what he [Adam Baker] did after the fact is kinda horrifying."
A second warrant revealed that police investigated a secondhand tip that Zahra had been raped by two men before her death before the men hit her on the head. Hickory police would not comment on the warrants except to say the investigation is ongoing.
Elisa Baker is currently in jail one charge of felony obstruction of justice after allegedly admitting she penned a $1 million ransom note which was discovered Oct. 9, the day Zahra went missing from her Hickory, N.C. home. Adam Baker was held in prison on unrelated charges, but is free on bond.
Adam Baker made rare public comments last month to deny he had anything to do with his daughter's dismemberment.
"There's no way I would do that to my baby," Adam Baker told WBTV. "There's no way in the world I would hurt my daughter."
