HOUSTON – When investigators opened the blue tote containing the battered body of a two-year-old girl that washed up on an island in Galveston Bay, her little light-up shoes were still flickering.
It was October 2007 and former Galveston County Sheriff’s Deputy, now Chief of the Bayou Vista Police Department, Jimmie Gillane had just bought his niece a similar pair.
“I always used to sit out there and watch her run around in the shoes,” says Chief Gillane. “I told [my brother] just throw them away or something. I couldn’t watch her in those shoes anymore. I’ll buy her something else.”
In the Season 4 finale of the KPRC 2 Investigates true crime docuseries ‘The Evidence Room,’ we examine the twisted series of events that ended two-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers’ life - all because her mother and stepfather thought she was too rambunctious.
Journey with us through the evidence, as detectives detail their work to identify the little girl and bring her killers to justice.
It’s a case that shocked the nation and still brings grown men to tears to this day.
Says Chief Gillane, “We promised her that night while we were waiting that we would find out who did it and we would take her home.”
This spring, ‘The Evidence Room’ received national honors from the 44th Annual Telly Awards. The Telly Awards honors “innovative, inclusive, and disruptive work that breaks through the static.”
“The level of true crime filmmaking is unmatched in this series. It is on the level of classics like Cold Case Files and Forensic Files, as it is made with real access to investigators/evidence and with unseen video/photos from the crimes and trials.”
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