Raven Marie Jeffries

Raven was a beautiful girl.

That video had me in tears.

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by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] on Sun Jul 31, 2011 8:27 am

Little girl was abducted and killed in 2006

Updated: Friday, 29 Jul 2011, 10:51 PM EDT
Published : Friday, 29 Jul 2011, 10:51 PM EDT

By RONNIE DAHL
myFOXdetroit.com

(DETROIT) - The Mariah Smith case is hitting close to home for the family of Raven Jeffries. The little girl was abducted in southwest Detroit during the summer of 2006, and her body was later found burned in a field.

"Raven's my angel - and she's always been my little angel," said her mother Brenda Jeffries.

Jeffries has designed a beautiful garden for her daughter. It's a place she visits each day, because it's the last place her 7 year-old daughter was seen alive.

"I can't see her. I can't hold her, I can't hug her," Jeffries said. "I can't watch her ride a bike and I can't watch her play with her friends and smile."

Raven went missing on August 4, 2006. Days went by with no word, then the body of a burnt child was found in a Romulus field.

DNA proved it was Raven.

Half a decade later, the same nightmare that devastated Raven's family is happening to Mariha Smith's family.

The two families are now connected by an unspeakable pain.

"When I heard about the child being found in the burnt house, that just hurt me. And it hurt me really bad," Raven's mother said.

Brenda said the news of Mariha's death caused her to sit and cry for two hours straight.

Raven's killer is still out there. Her family is asking anyone with information to visit ravenmariejeffries.com or call Romulus police.

Aug. 2, 2007
 

Brenda Jeffries, 42, of Detroit lights candles to place around the memorial she built in the lot where her 7-year-old daughter Raven Marie Jeffries was last seen. Jeffries says she has lots of plans for the site but says she needs to secure everything so people don't steal or vandalize contents of the shrine.

It's nearly sundown in this southwest Detroit neighborhood. Children shriek
as they play outside on a warm summer evening. Mothers sweep their porches
and stoops, pausing to chastise their young ones for riding their bikes too
far.

Brenda Jeffries, one of the moms, busies herself another way. She gathers
boxes of white votive and utility candles before crossing her narrow street
to a vacant lot.

Waiting for her there is a memorial, a poster-size picture of her dead
daughter, Raven, smiling amid stuffed animals, flowers, toys and the
trinkets any 7-year-old girl would love. One by one, Jeffries places the
candles in holders and lights them.

Sometimes her tears flow freely. Other times she's hardened, relying on her
steely resolve to keep her daughter's memory alive -- and her desire to see
Raven's killer caught.

Jeffries also yearns to turn this spot -- where Raven disappeared -- into a
playground or park, a safe place for kids with trees and a pond, a reminder
that "this is God's world."

"I'm not going to let no one forget, and this is what I know to do right
here, to let everybody know that I haven't went nowhere and my little girl
hasn't went nowhere and to let these monsters know that I'm not going
nowhere," Jeffries, 42, said. "They're going to be caught soon."

It was a year ago Saturday that Raven Jeffries, a chubby-cheeked 7-year-old
about to enter second grade at Priest Elementary School, vanished from near
her home on the 6500 block of McDonald Avenue near Lonyo in a corner of the
city not far from Dearborn. She'd been riding her bike and playing with
other neighborhood kids when her older brother noticed she'd vanished.

Three days later, after a frantic search by police, family, friends and
strangers, a child's body was found in a field in Romulus, burned beyond
recognition. Ten days after her disappearance, police confirmed that the
dead child was Raven.

There have been no arrests. Romulus police took over the case from Detroit
investigators because the body was discovered there. Investigators are
awaiting results of some Michigan State Police forensics testing of evidence
collected under search warrants. They hope it will yield more clues about
the killer.

But the case has been slow to develop, to the distress of Raven's relatives
-- who believe they know who killed Raven -- and investigators. Romulus
Police Lt. John Leacher said "in the not too distant future" more
information could become available. He would not comment on specifics,
saying it could jeopardize the investigation.

"I have 20 years of law enforcement, and I've seen homicides of varying
magnitude and intensity ... but this case here with Raven tops all of that,"
Leacher said this week. "I don't know that I've ever seen a more horrific
homicide. It's still something that I think about probably just about every
day. It gets frustrating for us, because we want to bring some resolution to
the family, and we'd like to get the person off the streets that did this to
her."

Mommy loves Raven

Jeffries still smiles when she watches and listens to cell phone recordings
her daughter made the day before she disappeared. Raven is singing joyfully
-- no particular song, just a mishmash of humming and sounds.

At times, Jeffries finds peace while working on Raven's memorial. She grew
sunflowers from seeds and planted them there, along with hostas and tricolor
violas. She's painting a large statue of Jesus' mother, Mary, to add to the
memorial and installed donated solar lights for those times when money runs
too thin to buy candles.

But the sadness is never far away. Jeffries still washes and folds her dead
daughter's clothing at least once a week. She talks to her and wakes
expecting to see the little girl in her bed, sleepily muttering, "Hi,
Momma." Jeffries still tells people that she has three girls and three boys,
though Raven, her youngest, is gone. She often sees Raven in the eyes of
dozens of neighborhood kids.

"Every little thing I do for her means so much to me because this is my way
of letting my daughter know that Mommy is still here and that Mommy loves
her," Jeffries said. "I really don't believe that she's actually gone. In a
lot of ways, I feel like someone has tooken her and they just won't give her
back. And when I do sit here and try to accept it, it's very, very painful.
It's very painful."

Crime touches children

Jeffries blames herself for Raven's death. Despite initial reports that she
had walked to a nearby store to buy supplies to barbecue the day Raven
disappeared, Jeffries now acknowledges that she had taken a Tylenol for back
pain and fallen asleep. Raven's brother David Hosler, now 20, was supposed
to be watching the girl but had gone inside for a moment. She was gone when
he returned.

"It makes me angry that this case is still going on," Hosler said. "I've
done watched other cases on TV of people in the suburbs. To me, I feel that
they're putting us in a different category: Poor ghetto child disappears. If
we were living in the suburbs this case would have been solved a long time
ago."

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said the dedication of Romulus
investigators to find Raven's killer is unmatched. "There aren't a group of
people on this Earth who want to solve this case more," she said.

Raven's friends visit her memorial often. One is still in counseling and
refuses to sleep in his own bed. He has nightmares that he'll be abducted
and often tells his mother that he thinks he sees the vehicle Raven left in.

Another neighbor, Juan Ruinoso, 10, said he tries to remember the good times
with Raven, playing cards and video games and with toy soldiers. He
remembers that he taught her how to ride a bike.

"She didn't know what to do at first," said Juan, who is entering fifth
grade at Bedford Elementary School. "She was shaking. I told her to don't be
scared and to look at my cousin do it."

Beside the neighborhood memorial, Raven's memory also remains alive on
Internet blogs, her Web site, My Space page and online books, many of which
ask people to submit tips about her killing.

While many in the neighborhood have tried to move on -- kids mostly play
freely now after months of careful watching by parents -- Jeffries doesn't
believe she'll ever heal, though an arrest would give her a sense of peace,
if not closure.

"I know a couple people has gave me hugs before and said as time goes on it
will get easier," she said. "Well, I'm here to tell you it hasn't gotten
easier. It has gotten worse. The loneliness gets worser. It really does.

"I feel very alone. Depressed and alone," she said, crying.

"I can see that, just within a blink of eye, one minute your child is here
and the next minute they're not.

"And I'm still in a state of shock, really truly, I'm still in a state of
shock. Because I don't believe that she's gone. ... I don't know why anybody
would hurt a little girl that was so innocent. She didn't do anything to no
one."