SEATTLE _ At first, the little girl's mother told relatives her youngest child had gone to live with her grandmother in Tacoma. Others were told the girl was living with her father.
As the years wore on and the girl's siblings asked about her, "a new story had to be created" which they also told to relatives, says a search-warrant affidavit filed last week in Snohomish County District Court.
First, the mother and her husband claimed the girl had died from chickenpox and a brain tumor, or that she'd drowned in a bathtub. In one version of the drowning story, the 4-year-old was left alone and smacked her head on the tub, while in a second version, the blame for her drowning was placed on her then-6-year-old sister, according to the warrant.
But her death, regardless the cause, was never reported.
On Saturday, Snohomish County sheriff's detectives found the remains of a child believed to be the missing girl inside a gray, plastic storage tote outside the mobile home owned by the girl's maternal grandfather, according to the affidavit and the Sheriff's Office.
The remains were recovered in the 12600 block of East Gibson Road, south of Everett, where detectives also seized baby clothes, duct tape and framed photos, according to an inventory filed with the court after the search warrant was executed.
The child has not yet been identified, nor has her cause and manner of death been determined by the Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office.
In the search-warrant affidavit, she is identified only by her initials, T.K. The "last solid evidence of her being alive" was in September 2010, while she was living in the Lynnwood area and received her last immunization, says the warrant.
She would now be 9 { years old, but there's no record of her being enrolled in school, according to the warrant. But there are records that both her mother and stepfather claimed her as a dependent in applications for state benefits, including after she disappeared, the warrant says.
From the information in the search warrant, relatives told detectives they recalled smelling a foul odor emanating from a red cooler on the back porch of the Lynnwood-area condominium on Admiralty Way where the family once lived _ and seeing empty bags of concrete there.
"Pouring liquid cement into a container with a body would assist greatly with containing the odor _ and concealing the body," the warrant says.
The girl's mother and stepfather apparently kept the container for several years after the girl's death, subsequently moving it to the grandfather's mobile home after leaving their Admiralty Way residence, according to the Sheriff's Office.
The Seattle Times is not identifying the girl's mother or stepfather because they have not been charged with a crime. Detectives are investigating the estranged couple for unlawful disposal of human remains, theft, perjury and other allegations related to fraudulently obtaining state assistance, according to the search warrant.
The warrant also says the girl's mother and stepfather married in October 2012, apparently "under the belief that they could have some protection(s) against testifying against one another should T.K.'s death and their efforts to conceal (it) come to light." The couple are no longer living together but still see each other, the search-warrant affidavit says.
Their apparent breakup happened after one of the woman's daughters accused her stepfather of sexually touching her, which the stepfather allegedly admitted to during an interview with sheriff's detectives, according to the warrant. It's unclear when he was questioned, but the warrant says a case has been submitted to prosecutors for a charging decision.
The older girl's report to officials at her school prompted involvement by Child Protective Services, says the warrant.
Norah West, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), said Wednesday that CPS had no contact with the family between July 2010 and June. CPS knew of T.K.'s existence "but couldn't locate her," West said.
According to the warrant, a CPS investigator was repeatedly thwarted in his attempts to meet with T.K. In September, the girl's mother told him that T.K. had gone camping but then "took concerted efforts to ignore, delay, deflect and outright refuse to cooperate" with requests to produce the child, the warrant says.
After a relative contacted police in early October and voiced concerns about the girl's apparent disappearance, a detective learned of CPS' attempts to locate T.K. One employee told a detective her agency had "been searching for T.K. for some four years," the warrant says.
Over the years, relatives who inquired about the girl's whereabouts were told she was living with her grandmother, her father and her father's girlfriend, says the warrant.
But according to the Sheriff's Office, the couple "panicked" after the girl's death and concealed the body in the storage tote that was later filled with concrete.
The stepfather's mother declined to talk with a reporter who called her home Wednesday.
Since the remains were found, T.K.'s three siblings have been placed into protective custody, West said.
