A babysitter and trusted neighbor has confessed that he bludgeoned a 9-year-old girl to death with a brick then dismembered her, hiding her head, hands and feet at a home where he was staying and dumping the rest of her remains nearby. Click below to read the story.
Allen County sheriff’s investigators said in an affidavit that 39-year-old Michael Plumadore admits he killed Aliahna Lemmon on Thursday.
According to the affidavit, Plumadore told police that after beating Aliahna to death on the front steps of the home in the early morning hours, he stuffed her body into trash bags and hid her in the freezer at the home in a rundown trailer park in Fort Wayne. He said he later chopped up her body with a hacksaw and stuffed her remains into freezer bags.
Police said Plumadore told them he had hidden Aliahna’s head, feet and hands at the trailer and discarded her other remains at a nearby business. Police obtained a warrant to search the trailer on Monday and found the body parts.
Authorities didn’t say Tuesday why Plumadore killed the child, but Sheriff Ken Fries said investigators suspected Plumadore was involved since soon after she was reported missing Friday night.
Investigators questioned him Friday and Saturday and he was arrested Monday after being interviewed by detectives for several hours more.
Fries said his long police career told him that Plumadore’s account of the girl’s disappearance had too many inconsistencies.
“Things that were said in 29 years of doing this that just didn’t make sense,” Fries said during a Tuesday news conference. “We needed to get him to talk.”
Fries said Plumadore was “factual” in talking with investigators, but he wouldn’t describe Plumadore’s demeanor.
A judge ordered Plumadore held without bail or bond at an initial hearing Tuesday, sheriff’s department spokesman Cpl. Jeremy Tinkel said. He has yet to be formally charged in Aliahna’s death.
Mike McAlexander, the Allen County chief deputy prosecutor, wouldn’t say whether anyone else was suspected of being involved and said “nothing has been ruled out.”
