FORT WAYNE, Ind. — The suspected murderer of a nine-year-old girl who went missing from a mobile home park in Fort Wayne, Ind., confessed that he bludgeoned the child with a brick and then cut her body into pieces with a hacksaw, police said Tuesday.
Michael Plumadore, 39, appeared in court Tuesday morning on a charge of murder. He is accused of killing Aliahna Lemmon on Dec. 22 and was ordered held without bail at the hearing, Allen County Sheriff’s Department Corporal Jeremy Tinkel confirmed to NewsCore.
Plumadore, a family friend who had been babysitting Aliahna at the time, told police he clubbed the little girl in the head while she stood outside his trailer early Thursday, Allen County sheriff’s investigators said in an affidavit.
He said he dismembered her with a hacksaw later in the day and disposed of parts of her body in the dumpster of a nearby business, the court document said.
Plumadore, who was arrested Monday night, directed police to his freezer to find Aliahna’s head, hand and feet.
“It was a horrific crime, probably worse than you can imagine,” Allen County Sheriff Ken Fries told The Journal Gazette.
Aliahna and her two younger sisters had been in the care of Plumadore for about a week while their mother, Tarah Souders, was ill. The little girl was reported missing Friday evening.
Before he was arrested, Plumadore told the paper that Aliahna disappeared from his home Friday morning while he was sleeping.
Plumadore said Aliahna’s younger sisters told him their mother had picked up the nine-year-old, but hours later, he said he realized this was not true.
Relatives said Aliahna was partially blind and deaf and suffered from mood and conduct disorders but described her as a sweet girl.
“This was a child with the face of an angel,” David Story, the girl’s stepgrandfather told The Journal Gazette. “She truly believed everybody had good in them, it just had to be found.”