Shannon Lea Dedrick, 7mo old missing from home 10/31/09 Chipley, FL(FOUND ALIVE)

[SuzieQ]

http://www.newsherald.com/news/everybody

Baby Shannon case: 'She had everybody fooled' // REPORTS, 911 CALL

CHIPLEY — When sheriff’s deputies found Crystina Mercer sitting on a rock outside her trailer, smoking a cigarette and casually wondering where her baby daughter could be, they wondered if it might be a Halloween prank.

Not quite.

A 911 call, released Tuesday, became the latest piece of the case against Mercer and her step-aunt, Susan Baker, whom investigators said conspired to make 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick disappear.

“Yes, my little girl… I woke up this morning and my 6-month-old daughter is… my 7-month-old daughter is missing,” Mercer told a 911 dispatcher at 11:23 a.m. Oct. 31, some 10 hours after investigators now believe she carried Shannon to a mailbox at the end of the dirt path to her home and handed her off to Baker.

“My front door looks like it’s been jimmied open today,” she continued.

There was no jimmying, at least not in connection to Shannon’s disappearance, investigators would conclude later, after finding Shannon hidden in a wooden box under a bed in Baker’s home.
---

Mercer’s report was strange from the moment deputies arrived, as they said she was calm and smoking outside the dirty, roach-infested trailer while the baby’s father, James “Rusty” Dedrick, was distraught, his face streaked with tears.

He didn’t know of the plan, Sheriff Bobby Haddock said. Meanwhile, Baker kept the baby and denied any involvement.

“She had everybody fooled,” Baker’s niece, Tabatha Phillips, said Tuesday in reaction to the arrests. In previous days, she had defended her.

“I never thought she would’ve done it.”

It was through Phillips that The News Herald reached Baker — before investigators confirmed she was a person of interest in the case — and published a story based on an interview with her. In it, Baker said she loved Shannon and that an abusive Mercer must know her whereabouts. She provided an e-mail she sent to Gov. Charlie Crist, pleading for state intervention in the home.

There were no hints, Phillips said, nothing even in hindsight to make her doubt Baker’s story.

What Baker kept hidden from The News Herald — besides the baby — was her history. She was the prime suspect in the 1987 disappearance of her stepson, Paul Baker, who vanished after she put him down for a nap and never was found.
She has been a suspect all along, and served 80 days for the beating of Paul’s sister, Nina, but prosecutors never had enough evidence to indict her in Paul’s case.

Documents obtained Tuesday from The Beaufort Gazette in Beaufort, S.C., show the depth of their suspicions.

The search for 3-year-old Paul was much like the search for Shannon — searchers with dogs scoured a creek bed, swamps, woods and yards and used a Marine helicopter to hover over outer creek banks and marsh grass.

Eight days later, Baker took a polygraph test. Results were incomplete because Baker was stressed, obese and taking muscle relaxers, but the man who administered it said he “believes Mrs. Baker is lying,” according to a report.

Her husband, James Baker, failed a polygraph test four days later.

Those results were not admissible in court.

Deputies investigated tips on Paul’s case. There was a call from a local girl who said she stumbled upon a 7-year-old boy’s body partially buried in the woods. It never was found.

There was Baker’s cell mate, who said Baker told her James had beaten Paul to death and she helped bury him in a neighbor’s yard — pretending the boy was a dead dog. Baker was taking the blame for him, she said.

There was James Baker himself, who one day told authorities he believed his wife had snapped at Paul’s misbehavior, asked Paul to take a walk down to the river, killed him and tossed him in the water.

A day later, he recanted that statement.

James Baker, who was released from custody in Chipley early after investigators found Shannon, did not return messages at two phone numbers seeking comment. He still could face charges.

Phillips said she saw him soon after deputies pulled Shannon from the box. She said he came to her house to profess his innocence, saying he was at work most days and had no idea Shannon was hidden under a bed in the home’s guest room — apparently also used as a computer room.

“When him and Sue were out in the yard and the cops came out, he looked at Sue and said, ‘What the hell have you done?’ ” Phillips recounted. “He claims not to have known, period.”

Investigators said Shannon spent as many as 12 hours in the box. Phillips said it must have been much longer, as Baker was away babysitting Phillips’ children during much of the search.

[cookie]

wasn't this "Tab" Tabitha the one who was posting different places and defending Baker and then apologized for sticking up for her once she learned the truth about her?

[SuzieQ]

Thats her.

[Nut44x4]

Updated: 3:16 PM Oct 1, 2010

Jury finds Baker guilty in missing baby case

Posted: 3:09 PM Oct 1, 2010

Chipley - It took only an hour and a half for jurors to find Susan Baker guilty on all three charges in the Baby Shannon Dedrick case that drew national media attention.

Just before 3 pm Friday, Baker was found guilty of aggravated child abuse, interference with custody, and giving false information to law enforcement officers.

In her testimony Thursday, Baker admitted that she’d taken the child and lied to law enforcement officers, but said that “I did what I had to do,” to ensure the safety of Baby Shannon. She claimed that the child’s mother, Crystal Mercer, had threatened to kill the child. Additionally, she said she had made repeated pleas to the Department of Children and Families to take the baby away from the parents because she was allegedly being neglected and living in unsanitary conditions.

Apparently, Baker and Mercer had made a deal for Baker to take the baby, but Mercer nevertheless told police that someone had come in the night and kidnapped the child. That set off a massive search, grabbing the attention of national media, which eventually came to a conclusion when authorities found Baby Shannon in a 2-foot by 3-foot wooden box, shoved under Baker’s bed with only a single hole for ventilation.

Neither woman’s husbands are believed to have been involved in the conspiracy. Baby Shannon remains in private foster care with the Department of Children and Families.

http://www.wjhg.com/news/headlines/104172839.html?ref=839

[MuffyBee]

Can you imagine having someone like Susan Baker as your step-mother and she keeps trying to contact you and give you gifts?!  Scarey!!!  I don't blame Nina for distancing herself from her at all! Susan Baker abused Nina as a child, is believed to have murdered little Paul at age 3 (his remains never found), and then there's the crimes she was convicted of in the case of Shannon.   
 
http://www.islandpacket.com/2010/10/15/1408971/susan-bakers-stepdaughter-tries.html#storylink=misearch
Susan Baker's stepdaughter tries to move past horrific childhoodS
By JEFF KIDD
jkidd@beaufortgazette.com
October 15, 2010

 ::snipping2::
In a case that drew national attention, Baker was arrested Nov. 4, 2009, after law enforcement officers searched her trailer in Chipley, Fla., and found 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick in a latched cedar box beneath Baker's bed. Shannon had been missing for days and was found with an overflowing diaper and a bad rash, but she was otherwise unharmed.

Baker, Shannon's baby sitter and a friend of her parents, faces a sentence of as much as 35 years after her conviction earlier this month of aggravated child abuse, interference with custody and giving false information to Florida law enforcement. Judge Allen Register ordered her jailed without bond until her sentencing, expected Nov. 8.

"At her age, even if she just gets 20 years, she'll be 70 years old by the time she gets out," Nina said in a recent phone interview from her home near Durham, N.C. "... Nothing can ever make it up for what she did to me and my brother. If she spent her entire life in jail for my brother's death, it wouldn't make up for what she did. However, it all seems to work out. Good people get what they deserve; bad people get what they deserve.

"It just takes time."

A CHRONICLE OF MISDEEDS

Susan Baker was Nina's stepmother.

And her dedicated tormentor.

The abuse started about the time the family -- newlyweds Susan and James Baker, and James' children from a previous marriage, Nina and Paul -- moved to the Shell Point area after James was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.

Paul, then 3, disappeared from the home March 5, 1987. He hasn't been seen since.

While his case remains unsolved, suspicion -- and the subsequent investigation -- quickly centered on Susan.

But authorities could never make charges stick. More than a decade passed before they even tried: Susan and James were charged in connection with Paul's disappearance in 2000, but a grand jury refused to indict; charges were brought again in 2003 but subsequently dropped.

In the days after Paul vanished, James turned Nina over to the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office to be placed in foster care, telling investigators he feared for his daughter's safety.

A doctor at Naval Hospital Beaufort examined Nina, then 6. Her small body mapped the abuse.

He discovered a broken bone in her hand that had gone untreated. He also found ulcerated sores on her back that he determined were the result of severe beatings. Nina told investigators that Susan beat her with a stick; she still bears the small round scars from the floggings.

Nina also told investigators of being confined for hours to a closet, with a trash can to use as a toilet.

And of being made to stay up all night with a bar of soap in her mouth.

Susan pleaded guilty to assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature for abusing Nina. She was given 10 years in prison but released after 80 days when a judge suspended her sentence for time served, a move that dismayed child advocates in the Beaufort area.

Soon after Susan Baker's release, she moved with James to Florida. Nina was sent to live with her maternal grandmother, Linda Lambert of Mebane, N.C., who raised her.

Nina has seen her father and stepmother only a few times since. Most of what she knows about their present life, she has read in Susan Baker's letters.

Or in online reports of Susan's other misdeeds.

 ::snipping2::
Now, though, Nina has a life that has all but eliminated that longing.

She has three children, has earned a nursing degree, has married and moved from Chapel Hill, N.C., to Durham.

While the scars, horrible memories and the emptiness that came with her brother's loss remain, time has smoothed their jagged edges.

Nina simply doesn't need James Baker anymore.

"My life is just different now," she said. "... I might talk to my dad again one day, but he'll never see my children."

Nina also is at peace with one hard fact -- she'll likely never know what happened to her brother. Beaufort County investigators interrogated Baker again shortly after her Florida arrest last November but turned up no new leads in the 24-year-old case.

Nonetheless, Nina is confident Baker will not skirt serious punishment as she did more than 20 years ago, when her 10-year sentence for abuse was reduced to less than three months in jail.

Her only regret is that had Susan Baker been forced to serve a full sentence, Shannon Dedrick might never have been stuffed into that wooden box.

"Maybe those 10 years in jail would have done something, but because she got off so easy, I think she believed she could just continue to do things," Nina said.

"Now, maybe this will put an end to it."

[MuffyBee]

http://www.islandpacket.com/2010/11/15/1445663/susan-baker-sentenced-to-25-years.html#storylink=misearch
Susan Baker sentenced to 25 years in 'Baby Shannon' case
By CHRIS OLWELL
The (Panama City, Fla.) News Herald
November 15, 2010

Mouse-over photos to zoom; Click on photos to order reprints

CHIPLEY, Fla. -- More than two decades after she became the prime suspect in the disappearance of her stepson, a former Beaufort resident was sentenced to 25 years in prison for stealing her neighbor's baby and keeping her locked in a wooden box.

Susan Baker, convicted last month in the disappearance of Shannon Dedrick, was sentenced Monday.

The 51-year-old defendant appeared in a jailhouse jumpsuit and handcuffs, facing a maximum sentence of 35 years on several charges -- aggravated child abuse, interference with custody and giving false information to law enforcement -- in the disappearance of "Baby Shannon," as the child has become known. Baker didn't address the judge before sentencing, but her ex-husband and brother asked for leniency.

Assistant State Attorney Greg Wilson told the judge the baby had spent about 36 hours locked in the box during the five days she was missing and asked that Baker be sentenced to one year for each hour the child spent in the box. Wilson said Baker was self-righteous and showed no remorse for what she had done, so there was no reason to mitigate her sentence.

"Even if she went about it the wrong way, her biggest intention was to get Shannon out of a bad situation," James Baker told Judge Allen Register before his ex-wife was sentenced.

Beaufort-area authorities still consider Susan Baker a suspect in the disappearance of her 3-year-old stepson, Paul Baker, who vanished from the family's Shell Point home on March 5, 1987.
More...

[MuffyBee]

Link to Shannon Dedrick's Candles
 
 
http://scaredmonkeys.net/index.php?topic=6417.0

[Sister]

Good grief!  What a trying time for Nina and baby Shannon.  I hope a judge doesn't reduce her time again.