Girl, 7, Tells School Counselor She Found Dead Body In Basement Wearing Her Mom’s Clothes — It Was Her Mother
A grisly story unfolded as a 7-year-old girl told her school counselor that she found a dead body in the basement at her house. For two days this little girl lived in fear of telling her father that there was a body in the basement in their Kansas City, Missouri, home.
According to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, the girl also told the counselor she found “lots of blood” and a body with a “stab on the back.” The child was afraid because her father had been acting “weird” and she was afraid to tell him what she had found in the basement because she “didn’t want to be next.”
The 7-year-old didn’t know whose body it was, but she did say that the body was wearing her mother’s clothes, according to Fox News. The child’s story prompted a call to the police who went to the house, which is located near 24th Street and College Avenue in Kansas City.
Police found drops of blood throughout the house. In the basement, they found a tarp that had a carpet laying on top of it and there was blood all around that tarp.
When police uncovered what was under the carpet and the tarp, they found the body of the child’s mother, Melissa Byers, 47. The father of the little girl, Benjamin Byers, 45, was taken into custody and charged with “second-degree murder, armed criminal action, abandonment of a corpse and child endangerment in the death of his wife,” according to Fox News.
The little girl was brought to the Child Protection Center where she told a forensic investigator she had last seen her mother on Monday when her mom picked her up from school. Then on Tuesday, her father picked her up from school.
She told the investigator that her father was “drinking” and “acting weird.” Prosecutors said that the little girl told them how a friend of the family called to say he was coming over. Her father told her, not to open the door and stay out of the basement.
Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said their office has requested that Benjamin Byers be held on a $500,000 bail.
