National New's, Why?
guilty to manslaughter, and faces 18 to 30 years. ``He's a
child-killer, child-abuser, liar and wife-beater,'' said
Roselene's defense attorney, Reemberto Diaz. ``All in one
skin, all in one disgusting human being.''
Part Two
Hello,
Here's the tale of yet another child abused and killed by her
father, with the full support of her mother. This is from
Wednesday's edition of the Miami Herald newspaper. The
story pretty much speaks for itself. Totally incompetent
people gaining possession of a helpless baby through
impregnation and not having to pass any competency tests
before society throws the helpless infant into the snake pit
of brutality that constituted a home and family. Society
sanctioned, enabled, and facilitated the destruction of 4 year
old Kendia. Mandatory competency testing would have very
likely saved her life. Oh well, the beat goes on...
Here are the details, from the Miami Herald:
Published Wednesday, February 19, 1997, in the Miami
Herald
Horror in a shallow grave
Child's mutilated body thought to be missing 4-year-old
By FRANCES ROBLES
Herald Staff Writer
Kendia Lockhart lasted just three months in South Florida.
The 4-year-old arrived here from the Bahamas in November
to live with her dad. On Tuesday, her burned body was
found in a shallow
grave in North Dade, her arms cut off. Detectives said she
apparently died as the result of ``blunt trauma.'' The chief
suspect: her 25-year-old father, the man now accused of
child abuse -- biting her little sister's buttocks a year ago.
Ken Antonio Wilkinson is in jail for that abuse, and for
beating Kendia so badly on Christmas Day that the bruises
still showed on New Year's. His wife and Kendia's
stepmother, Roselene Wilkinson, 23, stands accused of
doing nothing to stop the beating. As of late Tuesday,
homicide charges had not been filed. Police found a little
girl's body shortly after midnight in a wooded area on
Northwest 161st Street, near Interstate 95. While a review
of the girl's dental records has not been conducted, police
are virtually positive that the body is that of the girl reported
missing by her stepmother last Friday.
Roselene Wilkinson told Metro-Dade Police that she lost
Kendia at the 163rd Street Mall on Valentine's Day. Her
story quickly unraveled. Now the investigation is homing in
on Roselene and Ken Wilkinson. Police said statements
from Kendia's father, coupled with information gathered in a
search of the couple's Northeast 141st Street apartment, led
them to the grave site. Police stressed that neither parent
has confessed.
While homicide investigators worked to build their case,
leaders of law enforcement and social service agencies
discussed whether the tragedy could have been averted.
Metro-Dade Police and the Florida Department of Children
and Families knew about reports of abuse in the Wilkinson
family since November 1995. And there were other warning
signs: Records show a long history of domestic violence
between Ken and Roselene Wilkinson.
``It was a bad situation,'' said Frank Boni, chief of
Metro-Dade
detectives. ``But I absolutely would not characterize it as
slipping through the cracks.'' Department of Children and
Families local director Anita Bock echoed him:
``The system did not fail,'' Bock said. This is what Bock,
Boni and Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle
say happened: Abuse reported Roselene Wilkinson's sister
called police in November 1995, saying Wilkinson had
abused his baby daughter, Kendia's half-sister. The
11-month-old was found bleeding from the vagina, with bite
marks on her buttocks and thigh. Roselene Wilkinson told
police she suspected her husband, because he had
adamantly insisted that she not bathe the child; he already
had.
Roselene Wilkinson
bathed the baby anyway and found the bite marks. The
child was examined at the Jackson Memorial Hospital Rape
Treatment Center, where doctors determined she had not
been raped. The bleeding, doctors said, could have been
caused by a number of things. But doctors also said the
child had teeth impressions on her buttocks and that her
face showed a pinch mark. When confronted by his
sister-in-law, Ken Wilkinson allegedly said he bit the baby
because he was mad at his wife. But the case collapsed:
Wilkinson took off for his native Bahamas, and his wife told
prosecutors she planned to move to New Jersey.
Abortive meeting When prosecutor David Shapiro held a
Christmas Eve meeting to discuss the case, neither Roselene
Wilkinson nor her sister showed, despite subpoenas.
Shapiro reset the conference for Jan. 5, 1996. This time,
Roselene Wilkinson showed up, very upset, saying there
was no way to prove who attacked her baby. She called her
sister a liar. ``We had absolutely no evidence, other than the
bite, which was pretty severe,'' Rundle said.
``We had nothing with which to prosecute.'' Boni said
detectives probably would have gone to the Bahamas to find
Wilkinson had the child been raped. The case was picked
up three months later, when the Department of Children
and Families received an anonymous call: Wilkinson was
back. And harming the child. A social services investigator
went back to the North Dade home, where Roselene
Wilkinson denied that her husband had returned. The
investigator could not find proof that a man was living there.
Return reported The investigator says he called Metro-Dade
to tell detectives that Wilkinson had returned. Police records
do not reflect that phone call. Said Rundle: ``We all could've
done more. This is a horrible, horrible thing. But the child
appeared to be safe during the investigations. ``It's very
difficult when you have mothers and family members
protecting perpetrators who break the law,'' she said.
The abuse case was reopened last Friday, when Wilkinson's
wife reported Kendia missing from the 163rd Street Mall.
While searching for Kendia, police heard allegations that
Wilkinson had beaten her on Christmas Day, using his hands
and a belt.
``The victim sustained massive bruising on her back, arms,
abdomen and legs,'' according to Wilkinson's arrest form.
Those bruises were still visible on New Year's Day, when
family members asked Kendia how she got them. ``The
victim would reply, `My daddy did it,' ''
the arrest form says. Roselene Wilkinson faces two counts
of child neglect for allowing the abuse to take place. Risk
of flight Husband and wife are considered flight risks and
were jailed pending posting of $100,000 bond each.
Bock said the case highlights the need for better
communication between social service and law enforcement
agencies, a topic she discussed Tuesday with both Rundle
and Metro-Dade Police Director Fred Taylor. She says her
department never knew about the couple's history of
domestic violence, which dated
from before their marriage.
Had investigators known that, Bock said, they would not
have taken Roselene Wilkinson at her word when she said
her husband was out of the country. Why? Battered
women often lie for their spouses. Social service
investigators found out this week that in April 1994,
Wilkinson was arrested for using a five-pound metal drain
cover to threaten Roselene Wilkinson, who was then his
girlfriend. In November that year, Roselene Wilkinson told
North Miami police that Wilkinson punched her in the face
and pulled her hair while she was 8 1/2
months pregnant with their child.
But when a detective came to the house the next day,
Roselene had no physical signs of abuse and had changed
her story. She declined to press charges. Police were called
to the Wilkinson home again in April 1995: Roselene said
Ken Wilkinson had stolen her car and $459. Again, no
charges were filed. She married him three months later.
so violently by the hands of her step mother and
father. She was only 4, let us always remember
Kendia and never forget her.
Brutal death and dismemberment of his four-year-old
daughter, Kendia Lockhart.
Published Wednesday, October 13, 1999, in the Miami
Herald
Stepmother goes on trial in brutal slaying of girl,4
Monday November 8 3:12 PM ET
Wilkinson To Be Sentenced - (MIAMI) -- A sentencing
hearing is underway today for Ken Wilkinson... the
man who pled guilty to manslaughter in the brutal death
and dismemberment of his four-year-old daughter,
Kendia Lockhart. Wilkinson avoids a murder charge in
exchange for testifying against his wife, Roselene
Wilkinson. Jurors found Roselene Wilkinson guilty of
manslaughter in the girl's death. Both Wilkinsons claim
the other is responsible for the blow that ended the
girl's life. Prosecutors say without the plea agreement,
both of the accused could have gone unpunished.
FRANCES ROBLES
frob...@herald.com
The brutal beatings 4-year-old Kendia Lockhart endured
did not start the night she died, the night someone she
trusted fractured her skull by slamming her against a
closet door. Just the day before, Kendia's dad
discovered his daughter wet and shaking in a red
rocking chair, with a lump on her head. Another day,
Ken Wilkinson said he came home to find her tied to a
bathroom towel rack, a pair of panties
stuffed into her mouth.
Tuesday, Kendia's stepmother Roselene Wilkinson went
on trial, accused of killing Kendia just three months
after the child arrived from Nassau for a visit with her
father. Allegedly, Roselene threw Kendia so hard
against a closet door that the knob made an imprint in
her head. Roselene is expected to deny the charges and
pin the blame on her husband Ken.
``Kendia died because she was the other woman's
child,'' Assistant State Attorney Trudy Novicki told
jurors Tuesday. ``Ken Wilkinson is a man you're going
to hear a lot from -- a man you are going to learn to
hate.'' That's because the story of Kendia's short life
and death will be detailed by the most unlikely of
prosecution witnesses -- her father, a man who admits
biting and pinching his children and smacking around
his wife. A ninth-grade dropout, he will tell a chilling
story about how he came home to find his first born on
the brink of death and then, took ghastly steps to cover
it up.
FATHER'S STORY
Ken Wilkinson could take the stand as early as today.
His tale, already chronicled in a sworn statement,
begins Monday, Feb. 10, 1997.
That's the day Ken Wilkinson said he got a call at the
Broward bagel shop where he worked telling him to
rush home because his wife had food poisoning. When
he got to his Biscayne Park apartment, she told him she
wasn't really sick.
There was, however, a terrible problem: Roselene
Wilkinson said she spanked Kendia, who collapsed in
the bathroom and wasn't breathing. Ken Wilkinson said
he found the girl in a chair, her hair wet, a towel on her
head. She was awake but silent, with a lump on her
head. She smiled at her dad and went to sleep. ``Leave
the girl alone,'' Ken remembers telling Roselene. ``I
don't need to be sending her home with marks and
things.''
The next day, Ken Wilkinson came home early from
cashing his check and getting his car washed. This
time, Kendia had a hole in her head. ``What happened
to this girl?'' Ken said he asked. ``She's always playing
this crap'' he said his wife replied, explaining that
Kendia
hit her head on the bureau in the bedroom. But Kendia
looked like she'd been beaten. ``Hey man, this girl ain't
playing,'' Ken said he told Roselene.
He started pushing on her chest to give her CPR, and
blew into her mouth to force oxygen into her lungs.
Twice, Ken said, he asked Roselene to call 911. He
claims she refused, and went back to her work as a
telephone sex operator. Neither parent called 911.
Roselene, Ken said, didn't want hospital bills. He said he
wasn't sure whether Kendia was dead, but he didn't
want his younger child
Keyshan to stumble upon her body.
Roselene and Ken drove in silence to an aunt's house,
dropped off Keyshan and stopped for beer. ``What we
got to do is cut off her head,'' Ken said Roselene
suggested. ``We got to burn her, so she be ashes and
can't identify anything.''
AN AX AND SHOVEL
They arrived home and Ken put Kendia's body in a suit
bag. The next morning, he went to work. Roselene
went to Home Depot for an ax and a shovel. After
work that night, Ken and Roselene stopped for supplies:
Texaco for gasoline to pour on Kendia's body, Food
Plus for more beer and trash bags for Kendia's remains.
Once home, Ken Wilkinson says he napped and drank
before he got to the ugly business of chopping,
burning, and burying his daughter.
First, he placed a blue sheet on the kitchen floor, and
lay his daughter's body on top. He covered Kendia's
face with the sheet and spread out her arms. He looked
toward the dishwasher as he raised the hatchet over
Kendia's arm. ``I just came down, and it came off,'' he
said. Chopping her up, he explained, was more
difficult than he anticipated, so he gave up. He wrapped
her in the sheet, placed her inside an aluminum can and
doused her in gasoline. He lit a tissue and dropped it.
The fire flashed in Ken's face, singing his eyelashes,
brows and mustache. It didn't hurt, he said, because he
was ``between drunk and sober.''
``I was scared the whole time, before I cut her arms
off. I was scared,'' he said. ``I held her in my arms and
told her I was sorry, sorry for everything that
happened in her life.''
BURYING A CHILD
Ken drove around until he found a secluded spot off
I-95 and Northwest 161st Street. He dug a shallow
trench and covered her body with branches. Then, he
says, he went home and drank more beer. The next
day, he went to work. On Friday, Roselene reported
Kendia missing from the 163rd Street mall. From there,
their story started to crumble. They both wound up in
jail. Each blamed the other.
