Aliahna Lemmon dismembered with a hacksaw

Discussion: Any issue and topic. Also, what could have been done to prevent Aliahna's death? What can be done to protect children today?

Formal charges against a suspect charged in the dismemberment of a 9-year-old Indiana girl will be read on Friday.

Michael L. Plumadore, 39, is charged with one count of murder in the death of Aliahna Lemmon. Plumadore was being held without bond after Tuesday's initial court appearance. He was arrested Monday night after the missing girl's body was found.

"Some of the story we heard from the beginning with him led us to believe he was the key to this case that ... he was the one who was going to have the answers we were looking for," Allen County Sheriff Ken Fries told HLN's Nancy Grace on Tuesday night. "He was the one who saw her last. He was the one who had the most contact with her."
Babysitter admits to killing 9-year-old

In the probable cause affidavit released Tuesday, investigators with the sheriff's department said Plumadore admitted striking the girl repeatedly in the head with a brick while she stood on the front steps of his mobile home in the early hours of December 22.

He stored the body in garbage bags in a freezer at his house until evening, according to the affidavit, when he allegedly began to dismember it with a hacksaw.

Plumadore allegedly told investigators he threw parts of the body in a nearby commercial trash bin, but kept the head, hands and feet in his freezer, according to the document.

The document does not disclose a motive for the girl's death. Fries said the details of the autopsy will be released at a later date.

Plumadore's confession came Monday evening after several hours of interrogation by sheriff's deputies.

"It was very factual when he started telling them what happened. And they just had to sit there and listen to him as if they were just listening to a story with no emotion. Just trying to get him to say more and more and more," Fries said.

Amber Story, the girl's grandmother, had described Plumadore as a neighbor and close family friend.

She said Aliahna and her two sisters were staying with Plumadore for about a week while Aliahna's mother recovered from the flu.

Prior to the suspect's arrest, Story said she believed the girl could have sleepwalked out of Plumadore's Fort Wayne home early Friday morning and been taken. She said Aliahna suffered from partial hearing loss and partial blindness and has gotten out of her home while sleepwalking before.

A babysitter and trusted neighbour has confessed that he bludgeoned a nine-year-old girl to death with a brick then dismembered her, hiding her head, hands and feet at a home where he was staying and dumping the rest of her remains nearby, US police say.

Allen County sheriff's investigators in Indiana said in an affidavit that Michael Plumadore, 39, admitted to killing Aliahna Lemmon last week.

According to the affidavit, Plumadore told police that after beating Aliahna to death on the front steps of the home in the early hours of the morning, he stuffed her body into rubbish bags and hid her in the freezer at the home in a rundown trailer park in Fort Wayne. He said he later chopped up her body with a hacksaw and stuffed her remains into freezer bags.

Police said Plumadore told them he had hidden Aliahna's head, feet and hands at the trailer and discarded her other remains at a nearby business. Police obtained a warrant to search the trailer on Monday and found the body parts.

Authorities did not say why Plumadore killed the child, but Sheriff Ken Fries said
A judge ordered Plumadore to be held without bail or bond at an initial hearing on Tuesday, sheriff's department spokesman Corporal Jeremy Tinkel said. He has yet to be formally charged in Aliahna's death.

Mike McAlexander, the Allen County chief deputy prosecutor, wouldn't say whether

Paulette Hair, 45, a former manager at the trailer park who lives at a nearby trailer park, said she never would have guessed Plumadore would kill a child.

Aliahna was a student at Holland Elementary School, Fort Wayne school district spokeswoman Krista Stockman said. She did not know what grade the girl was in.

Schools are currently closed for holiday break. Stockman expected extra counsellors will be made available when students return on January 5, and the school will likely plan some sort of memorial, she said.
week because their mother, Tarah Souders,

Plumadore told The Journal Gazette on Sunday that Aliahna disappeared from the home on Friday morning
Aliahna wasn't reported missing until Friday night. Plumadore said the younger girls told him
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Aliahna Lemmon Our Prayers are With you. Mike Plumadore I hope someone "handles" you