Family and friends of Aaroné Thompson on Tuesday attacked the credibility of an incarcerated informant who told police the young girl was bleeding in a bathtub before she died and was buried in a field.
"People will say and do anything to get a get-out-of-jail card," Sam Riddle said of the man with multiple felonies, "and that's not a credible card for the Aurora Police Department to play."
Riddle, who has acted as a family spokesman, last week said he believed prison inmate Eric Williams' interview with police led them to change focus from a missing person search to a homicide investigation.
An Aurora police source and a published report Tuesday also cited Williams, who is the father of two children of Shely Lowe, a "person of interest" in the case, as telling police that Aaroné may have been killed.
Williams, who is jailed at the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center for state inmates, has declined several requests for interviews.
The children reportedly said they were disciplined with belts, and one had "suspicious" marks on her chest and arms, possibly from older burns.
Gerash and attorney David Lane, who represents Thompson, said they were unfamiliar with the stories reportedly told by the children.
Thompson and Lowe could not be reached for comment, but Lowe criticized Williams' credibility, according to community activist Alvertis Simmons, who drove Lowe to her lawyer's office Tuesday.
"No court record would show child abuse," she said, according to Simmons, who last week organized a candlelight vigil for Aaroné.
Riddle again questioned Williams' motives, suggesting the inmate filled out a Christmas gift list on behalf of the Thompson family but left off Aaroné's name.
Lowe and Thompson have already said they know nothing about the list submitted to a local charity two weeks before the girl's reported disappearance.
Williams appears to have begun accumulating criminal charges in Colorado shortly after he moved to the state around 1998.
In 1999, he was arrested on drug possession charges and sentenced to three years in community corrections, according to court records.
Two months later he attempted to escape, pleaded guilty and received an additional, six-month sentence to the Department of Corrections. In April 2002, Williams tried to escape again and was sentenced to two additional years after pleading guilty.
Williams, who most recently was housed at the Sterling Correctional Facility, made another escape attempt in February 2004, pleaded guilty and received three more years behind bars, records show.
Lowe previously accused Williams of sexually molesting one of her male children, Riddle said. Denver police and Arapahoe County Human Services both investigated the allegations, but no charges appear to have been filed.
Despite Tuesday's revelations, local attorneys said investigators still may not have enough for an arrest.
"They (police) can't prove there's been a homicide here," said defense attorney Philip Cherner, who stressed that innocence must still be presumed. "They don't have a body."
Retired defense attorney Robert Ransome said police could benefit from waiting for more evidence.
Either way, Williams' criminal background could be an issue in prosecuting the case, attorneys said.
"It always, at the very least, 'raises eyebrows,' " Ransome said.
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