The police charged a Georgia mom with murdering her son in 1999 after a tip from a family friend led the authorities to identify the body of a young boy abandoned near a church graveyard.
Teresa Ann Bailey, 45, the mother of the deceased ten-year-old boy, now faces two counts of felony murder, two counts of cruelty to children, aggravated assault, and concealing the death of another.
On February 26, 1999, authorities found the remains of a ten-year-old boy in a wooded area at the corner of Clifton Springs Road and Clifton Spring Church Road in DeKalb County. For many years, authorities named the boy Dennis. With the recent developments, police identified the boy as William DaShawn Hamilton, 6, per 11 Alive.
A breakthrough in a cold case
According to the District Attorney's Office documents, the police found a significantly decomposed body of an African-American boy between five and seven years old in 1999. Police estimated that the boy had died for three to six months before discovering the body.
The boy wore a blue and white plaid shirt, red denim jeans, and brown Timberland boots. At the time, authorities also did not know the cause of the young boy's death. The DeKalb County Police Department (DKPD) and Medical Examiner's Office worked on the case for years, but the boy remained unidentified.
In 2000, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) became involved in the case. The agency provided renderings of the boy and featured his story on the website and social media channels, according to the Law and Crime.
Identifying William DaShawn Hamilton
In 2019, an NCMEC forensic artist completed a new facial reconstruction. The development received media coverage and drew public interest in the case. A year after, a tipster, Ava, who knew Hamilton and Black in 1998, saw the rendering of the unidentified child and contacted NCMEC. The DKPD and the District Attorney's Office reinvestigated the case and followed the lead.
Ava told the police that when she saw the image, she knew it was Hamilton. She screamed and cried and knew without a doubt that it was the boy.
The authorities collected DNA from Black earlier this year, and police were able to link it to the remains of the child. The mom was arrested in Pheonix, Arizona, on June 29 and is now awaiting extradition. A grand jury indicted her on June 28.
Black and Hamilton were living in Charlotte, North Carolina, with a family member when she withdrew Hamilton from school in December 1998 and moved him to Atlanta, Georgia. She returned to Charlotte in late 1999 without the boy and told people different stories about where he was.
"Never give up hope"
Angeline Hartmann, Director of Communications of NCMEC, said the case is a perfect example of why they should never give up hope. She added that for over two decades, a woman in Charlotte who knew Black and her son had a gut feeling that something was wrong, and she never gave up looking for him. She added that they are grateful she never stopped her search and gave the police the missing piece to help them solve the mystery.
According to CBS News, Ava said that perhaps, the purpose for her coming to the boy's life was to make sure that he gets justice if someone took his life.
