Women says man accused in toddler's death was violent
By LIZ AUSTIN PETERSON
Associated Press Writer
POSTED: 05:49 p.m. EST, Dec 11, 2007
HOUSTON: A woman who was once married to the father of a man accused of beating his 2-year-old stepdaughter to death because the toddler failed to say ''please,'' and ''yes, sir'' said her blood chilled when she heard the charge.
About 30 years ago, Rita Grofer was married to the father of Royce Clyde Zeigler II. She said the older man imposed the same disciplinary rules on their baby daughter and became violently enraged when she tried to intervene, once grabbing her by the throat and smashing her head into a kitchen cabinet.
Zeigler II, 24, and his 19-year-old wife, Kimberly Trenor, are accused of killing Riley Ann Sawyers, storing her body in a shed for two months, then dumping her in Galveston Bay, where she washed ashore in October.
Sawyers was known as ''Baby Grace'' for weeks after her tiny body washed ashore in a plastic box. Her identity remained a mystery until a police sketch caught the attention of her paternal grandmother in Mentor, Ohio, where Trenor and the child also had lived. ...
''As far as we know, everything was just kind of normal,'' Davis said of his client's childhood. ''Royce and Hiram (his younger brother) both have said 'No, my mom and dad when we got in trouble we would get kind of a time out, go to your room or occasionally a spanking.'''
But Grofer said her ex-husband called their daughter, April, a few years ago at her urging because the young woman was critically ill with a seizure disorder.
He screamed through the phone that he hated her and she sickened him, said Grofer, who listened to the call. Afterward, she spent three hours holding her sobbing daughter, worried about another seizure.
http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/12372101.html
_____________________________
I just wanted to post this...not sure if it was posted previously? It's the only info I can find on Zeigler or his family. They have been absolutely SILENT since his arrest. What tears me up about this case is that Zeigler's parents lived at most - maybe 2 miles from the house where Riley died. How or why is it that it took Riley's family in Ohio to realize that she was missing or that she fit the description of "Baby Grace"? Something is so not right in this family....
That being said - as bad as Zeigler is / was - Kim Trenor allowed the evil SOB to beat her child to death. She even filled up the bathtub and whipped poor Riley, herself. That poor baby - it kills me to think about her last day and I've CRIED and CRIED over this case. The only solace I've found is that poor Riley probably saved her brother from a similar fate. Had she not died and had these evil people not been arrested, Zeigler would have been tormenting both babies right now. Luckily, her brother is with Kim Trenor's relatives somewhere around Dallas living a hopefully normal and happy life....Thank god he wasn't placed with the Zeigler family!!
