Dark fate for smiling Zahra
As US police examine a prosthetic leg, believed to belong to missing Australian girl Zahra Baker, the Herald Sun reveals her dark fate.
She fought cancer that claimed her leg, but a greater evil was waiting for this spirited Aussie girl.
AUSTRALIAN dad Adam Baker picked up the phone and dialled 911.
"Ah, yeah my daughter's missing," Baker said in his distinctive Aussie drawl.
Police issued an urgent child abduction alert but within barely 72 hours they had called in homicide detectives.
So began the most gripping child murder mystery to play out in the US this year.
Central to the case is the little Australian girl whose name is now known worldwide: Zahra Clare Baker. Locals in her adopted home town of Hickory, North Carolina, remember the 10-year-old's innocent smile, her shy nature -- and her prosthetic leg.
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Bone cancer ravaged her lower left leg when she was five and since then she has worn a substitute.
She also wore hearing aids to help with her a mild hearing impairment.
Born in Wagga Wagga, she lived briefly in Newcastle but spent most of her short life in a small township outside Townsville before moving with her father to the US two years ago. They moved after he married American woman Elisa Baker, whom he had met online.
Zahra's biological parents split when Zahra was about 12 months old.
To those who knew Zahra, she was full of spirit. "She was the most determined little girl I have ever met," family friend Kim Wright said from Townsville.
"She was going to still do everything she could, despite not having her leg or her hearing."
Now, the leg is the latest clue in her murder.
THE FBI is working with Australian officials to match serial numbers from her Australian-fitted leg with numbers inscribed on the prosthesis police found in bushland by an isolated stretch of road on Wednesday.
They are also testing DNA from a mattress believed to be linked to the case and dumped at a local tip.
The key finds had been a long time coming. Zahra's father had reported her missing more than a fortnight earlier, on October 9. Since then, investigators have spent countless hours searching bushland, rubbish tips, woodchip heaps and more than five properties. They even drained the local pond.
Behind the scenes though, their two jailed suspects -- Adam and Elisa Baker -- were beginning to crack.
Adam Baker, 33, worked at the Invicta Sugar Mill in far north Queensland before eventually skipping the country for love.
Questions about his role in his daughter's disappearance stunned friends and relatives back home.
"I can only imagine what poor Adam is going through, he really loved her, and there is no way he would ever hurt her," friend and sugar mill co-worker Kim Wright said.
Police are not so sure.
"We would say at this point in time we haven't eliminated any suspects," township police chief Major Clyde Deal said last night.
Twelve hours had passed before either husband or wife noticed Zahra had vanished from her bed.
"My daughter is going through puberty so she's going through that brooding stage so we only see her when she wants something," Adam explained in that emergency call.
Three days later, he choked on his own tears before a national television audience.
"I just hope I can get my daughter back. I miss her so much," he said.
"I appreciate everyone doing what they're doing, I just hope they keep looking," he later said into another TV camera.
He would turn up to search sites as directed by police, who said he was co-operating with their investigation.
This week, however, they arrested him on nine criminal charges unrelated to Zahra's disappearance.
He is now in jail accused of writing about $370 of worthless cheques and using a deadly weapon to assault one of Elisa Baker's daughters-in-law, Brittany Bentley.
Bad blood remains between Bentley and the Bakers.
WITHIN days of the case making headlines, Bentley publicly claimed Elisa Baker would lock Zahra in her bedroom all day, every day, beating her and allowing her out of her room for just five minutes to eat.
"She was beat almost every time I was over there for just the smallest things," Ms Bentley told CBS.
"Elisa would get mad, she would take it out on Zahra, things the kid didn't deserve. She just had a horrible home life."
The Bakers were well known to child welfare workers, according to US reports.Question marks have been raised over why relatives and neighbours did not go to the authorities after admitting suspicions that Zahra was abused.
They said Zahra often had bruises on her body, but her stepmother explained them away as her falling over due to her prosthetic leg.
Police barely hesitated in deciding to lock up Elisa Baker, 42.
They arrested her the morning after Zahra's reported disappearance on outstanding warrants for bad cheques. Two days later, they charged her with trying to obstruct justice by allegedly writing a $1 million ransom note left at the Bakers' home the morning of Adam's 911 call.
Police rebranded the kidnapping investigation a homicide probe after interviewing Ms Baker.
Judging by her online activity, she was interested in the dark side of life. She calls herself a "goth" on her Myspace page.
Under the username "gothicfairy6668" she says: "I am so sick of people judging me by how I look. I am gothic and proud of it."
She refers to Zahra as "the dark child!!!" on the website.
Her relationship with her adult children also appears strained.
Ms Baker's daughter, Amber Fairchild, told the court her mother had been sent $10,000 over the last year by a man in England with whom she had an online relationship, despite her marriage to Zahra's father.
LAST week, Ms Baker's lawyer Scott Reilly denied she had any involvement in Zahra's disappearance.
But she has been providing information to police since Sunday.
On Monday, she had joined police as they searched for evidence near a home she lived in three years ago.
According to local media, the leg was found near that area.
From here, police will keep sifting through the evidence and will probably maintain the pressure on Adam and Elisa Baker in jail.
Time will tell whether a murder charge will follow.
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