Valasca
Death, horror, torture
The babysitter of a 3-year-old South Florida girl who went missing over 10 years ago has been charged in the girl's death.
Melissa Harding-Jones currently sits behind bars at the Snohomish County Jail for the death of Pilar Rodriguez. At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, officials with the Charlotte County Sheriff's announced they had arrested her early Monday night on charges of aggravated manslaughter of a child.
The sheriff's office would not release any further details about the case. Harding-Jones is being held without bond.
Rodriguez, from Hollywood, disappeared just days before her fourth birthday, nearly 12 years ago. The last time her father Marco Rodriguez saw her, she was 3 years old. In 1999, little Pilar Rodriguez vanished seemingly without a trace. Her father said he let Pilar's babysitter take her on vacation to Punta Gorda on Florida's West Coast.
Just after Pilar went missing, the girl's babysitter, then known as Melissa Cooper, told police her boyfriend, Keith Wilson, hit Pilar and killed her. Then, she said, he dumped her body in a lake. Police searched the murky water, and though some clues were discovered, investigators never found enough evidence to verify the babysitter's story.
Then, just last year, focus turned to an eight-acre property near Punta Gorda-- the estate owned by the babysitter's boyfriend's relatives. Sheriff's investigators at that time declared Pilar's disappearance a homicide. Some 50 police officers dug for Pilar's remains, but her body and the truth never surfaced. "You don't just start sticking shovels in the ground," said Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Cameron, at the time. "You really have to have some reason to believe you have something there."
Her father was always desperate to find Pilar and bring her back home. "If you have or did something to my daughter, just give me back my daughter. I don't care about nothing else," he said.
http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/21002036707485/
