Memory is precious, and so is Kansas City’s Erica Green, aka Precious Doe | Opinion
A decapitated body was found in the woods near 59th and Kensington on Kansas City’s East Side on April 28, 2001. A few days later, a head was found in the same area.
It would be five months before the attacks of 9/11, but the gruesome discovery of the little girl who would be known as “Precious Doe” was just as astonishing. Just as frightening to this Kansas City community.
Last week, the 25th anniversary of the murder passed with an intimate gathering of people in the park across the street from where she was found.
Erica Green would have been 29 years old, and people came together to remember.
I remembered her too, and joined the congregation Friday night at Children’s Memorial at Hibbs Park. Yes, it was reminded me of a church assembly, with background music and words of inspiration, “Amens” and talkback from the crowd – not just during the prayers from Evangelist Rae Dupree, but also in response to community leader Alvin Brooks, who talked about the children playing on the playground equipment behind him that very night and how Erica should have been here.
“As I look at these children, they’re ours. The biological parents are probably here, but they’re ours, because scripture tells us we must look out for our children.” Brooks went on to talk about the responsibility we all have to protect children. “How many kids in this nation are abused, and I pray that none of these become victims, but it’s our responsibility to see that that doesn’t happen, not only the parents and the people who are close to the family, but all of us.”
It wasn’t lost on us that Erica’s mother and stepfather did not take care of her. In fact, the two were convicted of her murder.
Mothers United formed from Brooks’ Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, and members came to remember Erica, said president Jill Buford. Looking around at the variety of ages at the memorial, Mothers United Secretary Joanne Banks said she thought it was because her death affected younger people as well as seniors “Who were right here when it was going on. They heard about it, they read about it, and it affected all of us.”
A community comes together
The Kansas City Defender’s Vaughan Harrison organized the event. He said he was 9 years old when Erica was killed.
“There was special coverage that night on the news, and all I remember is hearing about something being found on 59th and Kensington. All I can recall are my parents and my aunts and my uncles just reaching for the remote and trying to turn the TV off … but by that time it was already too late, especially for me, because I was a very nosy kid, I was always asking questions.”
Harrison told the crowd that this case inspired him to become a journalist.
His story connected deeply with me as a journalist. I was at the anniversary event recording audio and video and taking notes, but I recognized that I, too, was there to honor and memorialize Erica. How could I not?
I was working in the newsroom in the old Star building at 18th and Grand that week she was found. Reporters followed the story and editors decided what headlines to write and what photos to display, and even though we did our work, still it was horrifying to think about: a 3-year-old, who we later found out had been beaten to death and whose body was cut up and disposed of.
It was our job to chronicle those events, but as I sat on the benches among family, friends and people who lived in the neighborhood, I realized we were more than that. We were part of the community, too. And the story of Erica Green had not left me.
Just as the story of Tamika Turks and Donna Williams continues to haunt me.
More children taken from us
Twenty years before Erica was killed, I was a police reporter at my first job in Gary, Indiana, covering crime. The body of 7-year-old Tamika was found in an area I recall as grassy or wooded. The girl had been sexually assaulted, along with another girl, 9, who escaped. In a surprising twist, suspects in this case also included a man and a woman.
As I was covering Tamika’s death, a young woman named Donna Williams, 25, was reported missing. Her disappearance was connected to the same man and woman, and a body resembling hers was found in Detroit, police said. In my role as a police reporter, I stayed with the Williams family the night they waited to hear if it was, indeed, their daughter, Donna. To this day, I don’t know why they allowed me into their home or let me stay with them all those hours. We cried and grieved together.
Unlike Erica, Tamika and Donna were killed at the hands of a serial killing duo, Alton Coleman and his girlfriend Debra Brown. Coleman was executed in 2002 and Brown was convicted and given the death penalty. Her sentence later was commuted to life.
The killing of Tamika Turks and Donna Williams affected me deeply, and I didn’t remain a crime reporter long after that. But I do understand that journalists are every bit as much a part of the communities they cover.
I didn’t immediately connect the Coleman crimes to the Precious Doe case until I began to wonder why my memory of Erica and her murder still seemed so fresh and bittersweet. Sometimes as a reporter, we must push down our feelings when covering a difficult story. Sometimes those feelings push their way up, as mine did when I was with the Williams family the night we learned of their daughter’s murder.
I talked to Tanyanika Samuels, a former Kansas City Star reporter who wrote the early stories about the murder victim Erica, before we knew she was Erica — even before she was called Precious Doe. I asked her what she remembered. What she recalled was grisly.
“I remember seeing a photo … (police) showed me a photograph of the body. All these years later I still remember these black and blue marks on whatever part of the body they were showing me. I remember being struck by that.”
Samuels, who was 26 at the time she covered the story, said, “I just remember the city being really consumed by this mystery, and the horrific nature of it. This case just consumed the city’s attention.”
And people still remember. A memorial to children killed by violence was erected in the park some years past. And some people would like to see more. At the anniversary gathering, Kansas City Councilmember Darrell Curls imagined a day when the woods where Erica was found would be turned into a larger memorial with a walking path, a bust of Erica and information about her.
After all, using her name, Erica, and remembering who she was is the point, Harrison said.
“She was lively, she was happy, she was friendly. And calling her Erica Green now is making sure that Kansas City knows.”
