GALVESTON, Texas—A Galveston County jury found Royce Clyde Zeigler II guilty of capital murder Friday for the brutal beating death of his 2-year-old stepdaughter.
The world first knew the victim, Riley Ann Sawyers, as "Baby Grace" when her remains washed ashore on an island near Galveston.
She was later identified as Riley Ann after her grandmother in Ohio, Sheryl Sawyers, saw a police sketch of the girl and called police.
The jury of nine men and three women, some of whom were wiping away tears during closing arguments, deliberated for just 4 ½ hours before reaching their verdict.
Zeigler will receive an automatic life sentence, because prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. Jurors also could have convicted Zeigler of a lesser charge of manslaughter.
Grandmother Sheryl Sawyers was present in the courtroom when the verdict was read.
"I love her. I miss her. And I’m glad that we, you know, we got justice for her today," she said through tears outside the courthouse.
Prosecutors said Zeigler and his wife, Kimberly Trenor, who he met playing an online video game, killed Riley at their home in Spring in July 2007 during a discipline session intended to teach the child proper manners. Authorities said Zeigler was upset the 2-year-old didn’t consistently use "please" and "thank you."
Prosecutors said Trenor and Zeigler beat Riley with belts, dunked her head in cold bathwater and threw her onto a tile floor, fracturing her skull. An autopsy determined Riley died of three skull fractures.
In two hours of emotional closing arguments, prosecutors implored the jury on Friday to convict Zeigler in Riley’s death. They called him a monster, while his defense attorneys called him guilty only of tampering with evidence in a murder perpetrated by his wife.
"He had the motive, the intent, and he had all the pressures of the world on him to the point he was walking way," District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk told the jury of Zeigler’s admission that he would often try to leave their home if the stress of dealing with Riley got him too upset. "And he took care of business that day with Riley."
Sistrunk removed his own belt and slapped a courtroom table several times to illustrate the hours of discipline investigators say ended with Riley’s death. The last two photographs he showed the jury included a smiling picture of the 2-year-old taken on her grandmother’s back porch in Ohio. He held that picture in one hand while displaying an autopsy photo of her fractured skull in the other.
"Riley went through hell that day over a period of hours. Riley was traumatized, not this defendant," he said, pointing at Zeigler.
"You know what happened," Sistrunk said to the jury. "You know how child abuse happens."
"His self-serving lies and his pathetic attempt to get away with this murder, that’s why he came up with all these lies," Sistrunk said. "The man can sit in front of his family and friends and lie to them because he knows he’s guilty of murder."
But with a quivering voice at the beginning of his closing address to the jury, defense attorney Dee McWilliams said that prosecutors have a substantial case of Zeigler tampering with evidence in his admitted involvement in disposing of the little girl’s body. But, in his opinion, that is all prosecutors had.
"This man no more killed that child than the man in the moon," he said. "But I know how all this looks. I know how horrible it is."
The defense conceded from the beginning that Zeigler and his wife worked together in the elaborate attempt to dispose of the body. They kept her body in a blue storage container at their home for several weeks before dumping the body inside a blue container in Galveston Bay. Both offered numerous different lies to friends and coworkers about what had happened to the girl, including a concocted story about her alleged abduction by a CPS worker from Ohio. After the body was found October 29, 2007, on a small island in the West Bay, Trenor confessed, but Zeigler offered investigators several different versions of what happened. At first he said he knew nothing about the girl’s death. Then he admitted he helped dispose of the body, but insisted that Trenor killed the child.
McWilliams implored the jury to see that evidence and that web of lies as Zeigler’s attempt to cover up the crime and protect his wife.
"When the lynch mob is gathering pitchforks and torches in hand ready to march down to the jail, it’s not easy to say wait a minute and say what is the evidence this person has done that we’re gonna kill him for," McWilliams said.
"The person who did this they tried and convicted of capital murder, and she’s sitting in prison right now," McWilliams said of Trenor. She was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole last February.
"You’re looking at the face of a man who killed a child," Sistrunk said in his closing argument. "And since that day in July, he’s been focused on doing just one thing: getting away with the murder of Riley Ann Sawyers."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
