Family Photo via KTVT-TV
Shown in this undated family photo is 6-year-old Hannah Mack of Corsicana, Texas. Her body was discovered Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, hanging inside her family's garage. Police said Wednesday the child was sexually assaulted.
Posted on 09/12/2007 6:59:47 PM PDT by Libloather
6-year-old girl found hanged in Texas
By PAUL J. WEBER - The Associated Press
Posted on Wed, Sep. 12, 2007
Family Photo via KTVT-TV
Shown in this undated family photo is 6-year-old Hannah Mack of Corsicana, Texas. Her body was discovered Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, hanging inside her family's garage. Police said Wednesday the child was sexually assaulted.
CORSICANA, Texas --A 6-year-old girl was found hanged inside her family's garage and had been sexually assaulted before she died, police said Wednesday.
Authorities have made no arrests or named any suspects since Hannah Mack's body was discovered by her mother on Monday. They are saying little about their investigation.
"I will confirm that the hanging and sexual assault were part of this scenario," Navarro County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Mike Cox said.
Cox said several people have been interviewed and no one has been ruled out as a suspect.
"We don't want to do anything that would compromise a successful prosecution of this case," Cox said Wednesday before abruptly ending a brief news conference.
Neighbors in the rural lakeside community in east Texas are frustrated by the silence so far and worry that a predator remains on the loose.
In a letter to the sheriff's department, Navarro County Judge Vicki Gray said an autopsy of the body showed "a multitude of events that together caused the death of this child." No other details were released.
Dana Mack found her youngest daughter's body in a garage behind the family's secluded home in Navarro Mills Lake, about 65 miles south of Dallas.
Police said Dana Mack began searching after she realized Hannah was missing at a time she would have been getting ready for school.
The mother last saw Hannah sleeping on the couch around 1 a.m., according to Jean Langford, the girl's great-grandmother.
"(Dana) is just devastated. We all are," Langford said. "This is the worst thing that's ever happened to this family. Hannah was our pride and joy. She was our little sweetheart."
Langford said the family had hoped police would be further along in their investigation.
"What makes this so bad is that we still don't know who did this awful thing."
Those concerns are shared by neighbors. They say imaginations in town are starting to run wild.
"My kids sleep in the bed with me," said Pam Gray, who lives next door and whose children rode the school bus with Hannah. "They get off of school and they've heard all the rumors and wild things, and they're terrified."
"I'm just concerned about the kids out there," said Harold Hocutt, 75, a neighbor who knows the girl's family. "Little girls. Little boys. It's just something you don't forget. Every time I drive by (Hannah's house), I cry."
Police asked state caseworkers to not say whether Hannah's family had been investigated by child welfare officers, said Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. She characterized the request as uncommon.
Another observation is about her being missing when she’d normally be getting ready for school. Was it normal for her to get herself up and get ready on her own?
Mother normally allows her to sleep on the couch, especially a school night? They should be put to bed, and if dozed off on a couch, carried to bed, but long before 1 a.m.
I’m not blaming the mother, but in too many of these horrendous crimes, it always seems as if the poor kids were too much on their own.
Please send the perp to me.
Have people always been this dammed bad, or is it that we are just hearing about everything on a larger scale these days?
Same here.
“Why is a six-year old sleeping on the couch on a school night? Was that normal for her?”
It’s not that unusual for kids to not be in their beds when they’re supposed to be. Both of my boys would end up on the kitchen floor in front of the fridge, sound asleep on any given night.
My guess is you'll be able to before its all said and done.
Wondering that myself, a good mother would have put the little thing to bed.
beyond words.
That poor little girl. What a horrible thing that sicko did to her. I wish they would execute him ASAP after they prove he did it. If they don’t, I hope they send him to a state prison and let the inmates make a little girl out of him before they bash his brains out. Even that won’t be harsh enough to suit me. Maybe they can torture him so he’ll know how that child felt.
The sad thing is this animals lawyer will plead for a more human death for his client. I say start up 2 chairs one for the animal and one for his protector!
Prayers for the family....and investigators.
As an aside, there are many wonderful step dads, and step dads who become adopted dads, they normally get this way through dating. You just don’t hear about them because they don’t take their kids to the emergency room for well visits.
What kind of monster would do that to such a sweet little girl. Lethal injection is too good this animal.
And you would just leave them there until the wee hours of the morning? You must’ve been awfully irre...err, busy.
I believe things in the world haven’t changed all that much, it just seems so because we have access to ways of hearing about it more.
Remember that BTK nutcase serial killer that was finally caught - he started it all by killing a family and hanging the kids in the basement.
Tie him up and throw him to the pigs.
Its within the realm of possibility. I guess the 6 year-old could sleep wherever she wants, and be in charge of her own morning routine, but it doesn't add up for me. And you can bet it doesn't add up for the cops either.
A lot of medical folks call child abuse "mother's boyfriend syndrome".
-ccm
The death penalty will make sure some liberal judge doesn’t let him out—and make sure he’ll never do it again.
It has always occurred. In bygone days, the papers would not have reported it in such detail, and of course there was no TV and nobody like Greta or Geraldo who made their living from other peoples' misery.
There would be a story a week after the event that a "fiend" had "done away with" a child in some far-off city, and perhaps if it were a particularly heinous rape they might use the word "ravished." And nothing more.
-ccm
Death penalty protesters are all silent right now. They will do nothing to recognize Hannah Mack.
When it’s time for her killer/rapist to die, then they’ll drive hundreds of miles to hold a candle for him at midnight.
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