Texas’ Baby Grace case sees first trial this week

Even the most grizzled investigators were reduced to tears by the disturbing details of the death of 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers.

The tot’s already decomposed remains had been stuffed into a plastic container that was dumped into Galveston Bay. A fisherman found the container and its contents on an island about a mile from the shore of the bay in October 2007.

On Monday, jury selection is set to begin for the capital murder trial of Riley Ann’s mother, 20-year-old Kimberly Dawn Trenor. She and her husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler II, are accused of beating the toddler to death in July 2007.

After the gruesome discovery in Galveston Bay, the toddler was dubbed “Baby Grace” until authorities were able to identify the tiny remains as Riley Ann.

Trenor told police the beating began during a discipline session when Riley Ann forgot to say “please” and “yes, sir” to Zeigler, her stepfather.

According to an arrest affidavit, Trenor said she and Zeigler used two leather belts to beat Riley and also held her head under water. But she claims it was Zeigler who grabbed Riley by her hair and flung her across a room onto a tile floor, fracturing her skull in three places and killing her, an autopsy concluded.

Authorities said the couple hid the little girl’s body for a month or two in a storage shed at their home in Spring, a northern Houston suburb, before dumping it in the bay 70 miles away.