Investigators tentatively ID remains as long-missing cousins
COLLINSVILLE, Ill. (AP) — Skeletal remains found in a cistern have been tentatively identified as those of a pregnant teenager and her 4-year-old cousin missing for more than two years, Illinois State Police said Thursday.
Investigators awaited forensic testing that could confirm the remains found Wednesday in a weeded lot were Anquiaette Parker and cousin Cermen Lemont “C.J.” Toney Jr., state police said in a statement.
State police met with Madison County prosecutors Thursday to update them on the break in the case, though a spokesman for the state’s attorney’s office said no charges were immediately expected.
State police Master Sgt. Jim Morrisey declined to discuss reports that at least one suspect was in custody. The agency scheduled a news conference for Friday afternoon.
Greg Parker, Anquiaette’s father, said family would find solace in some “closure,” knowing that the East St. Louis cousins who vanished in November 2005 while Parker baby-sat the boy may finally have been found.
“It’s been a long road, a hard road. Everyone being upset, frustrated,” Parker told KMOV-TV, adding that he wanted to see the “guys involved to be prosecuted to the fullest.”
Men using a bulldozer to clear the overgrown site of weeds and other debris happened upon the cistern and partly broke through it, saw the remains and called authorities, state police Lt. Mark Bramlett said.
State and East St. Louis police converged on the site Wednesday in State Park Place, an unincorporated community that straddles Madison and St. Clair counties, and removed unspecified evidence Bramlett said has been sent to a state police crime laboratory.
The location of the remains is roughly a quarter of a mile from a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall where Parker’s 1995 black Crown Victoria was found shortly after her disappearance.
Wednesday’s discovery perhaps ended the mystery about the 5-foot-3, 140-pound Parker and her 3-foot, 30-pound cousin, whose disappearances prompted vigils and dozens of searches.
Parker’s boyfriend, Reginald Moses, was jailed in Belleville on unrelated charges tied to an East St. Louis shooting at the time of the disappearances.
During a 2005 jailhouse interview, Moses told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he called Parker from the jail about 1:30 p.m. the day she vanished, and that she and Cermen were driving on a freeway to the Collinsville area to visit a male friend of Parker’s.
Moses told the newspaper he believed Parker might have been carrying at least $1,500 and may have been robbed.
View photos of missing victims, investigators at the scene
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Filed under: Anquiatte Parker "Tweety' Cermen Lemont “C.J.”Toney Jr, Video
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