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Navarro County: 6-year-old girl dies in apparent homicide

Associated Press
September 10, 2007

CORSICANA, Texas (AP) - Navarro County authorities say a 6-year-old girl has been found dead today in her home -- in an apparent homicide.

So far no arrests in the death of Hannah Mack.

A statement from the Navarro County sheriff's office says the girl's body was found by her mother, Dana Mack.

The family's home is near Navarro Mills Lake, about 65 miles south of Dallas.

Authorities didn't immediate provide details on how the child died.

An autopsy will be done in Dallas.

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The mother of a slain 6-year Navarro County girl says she wants justice served.

KWTX
September 11, 2007

Dana Mack told KDFW television Tuesday her daughter, Hanna Mack, made her day, every day.

Mack found the girl’s body Monday at the family’s home near Navarro Mills Lake, about 65 miles south of Dallas.

Investigators say the girl had been sexually assaulted and left hanging in the garage.

They’re handling the case as a homicide, but have made no arrests so far.

Autopsy results are pending.

The Navarro County sheriff's department is expected to release an update Wednesday.

Meanwhile Mack told KDFW that her daughter was "beautiful, smart, innocent, she would never hurt anybody."

The girl had just started first-grade at Blooming Grove Elementary and was the youngest of three sisters.

Neighbors expressed shock at the death, remembering that the girl was always happy.

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Cops Have Suspect in Hanging of Girl, 6

Paul J. Weber
Associated Press
Sep 13, 2007

CORSICANA, Texas (AP) — A 6-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted was found hanged inside her family's garage, and authorities on Thursday described her mother's boyfriend as the primary suspect.

The boyfriend was arrested Wednesday on a charge of possession of child pornography and remained in the Navarro County Jail on Thursday.

Sheriff's deputies have not charged him in the death of young Hanna Mack, but they identified him as the primary suspect, Chief Deputy Mike Cox said Thursday.

Dana Mack discovered her daughter missing Monday morning about the time the first-grader should have been getting ready for school. The little girl's body was found in a rust-covered garage behind her home in Navarro Mills Lake, about 65 miles south of Dallas.

The mother last saw Hanna sleeping on the couch around 1 a.m., according to Jean Langford, the girl's great-grandmother.

"(Dana) is just devastated. We all are," Langford said. "This is the worst thing that's ever happened to this family. Hanna was our pride and joy. She was our little sweetheart."

In a letter to the sheriff's department, Navarro County justice of the peace Vicki Gray said an autopsy of the body showed "a multitude of events that together caused the death of this child." No other details were released.

Neighbors gathered Wednesday evening outside the garage in Navarro Mills, a rural lakeside community in east Texas, and prayed during a vigil. They donated money to the family, held a moment of silence and released balloons into the air.

Many worried that a predator could be on the loose.

"My kids sleep in the bed with me," said Pam Gray, who lives next door and whose children rode the school bus with Hanna. "They get off of school and they've heard all the rumors and wild things, and they're terrified."

Police asked state caseworkers to not say if Hanna's family had been investigated by child welfare officers, said Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. She characterized the request as uncommon.

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Community Mourns 6-Year-Old Murder Victim
Boyfriend of victim's mother arrested on undiclosed charges

Fox 4 Dallas
9/13/2007

A small Texas town gathered to mourn the tragic death of one of its young residents Wednesday night, as the boyfriend of the victim's mother remained in jail on undisclosed charges.

Police have not said whether the arrest of Kevin Anders is related to the death of Hannah Mack. They have not named any suspects in the case.

Anders is the live-in boyfriend of Hannah’s mother, Dana Mack.

Hannah Mack was found hanged to death in the garage of her home near
Navarro Mills Lake Monday afternoon. She was sexually assaulted before she died.

Meanwhile, mourners held a vigil for the girl Wednesday night near her home. About 50 people attended, most from nearby Cornerstone Church.

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6-year-old Hanna Mack to be buried in Corsicana today
Navarro County girl was found hanged, assaulted Monday

By Paul Meyer
The Dallas Morning News
September 14, 2007

Funeral services for Hanna Mack are scheduled for today in Corsicana. The 6-year-old girl was found hanged in her family's garage earlier this week.

The boyfriend of Dana Mack, Hanna's mother, was identified as a primary suspect in the little girl's death by the Navarro County sheriff's office on Thursday.

Kevin Wayne Anders, 32, was being held in the Navarro County Jail on a charge of possession of child pornography, the sheriff's office said. He was arrested late Wednesday and has not been charged in the murder of Hanna Marie Mack. Bail was set at $100,000.

"Computer files obtained during the initial crime scene investigation revealed the presence of pornographic images of children," said Mike Cox, chief deputy for the sheriff's office.

Hanna's body was discovered by her mother on Monday, hanging in a metal garage that houses an above-ground swimming pool. She had been sexually assaulted, an autopsy revealed.

Documents obtained Thursday show that Mr. Anders was arrested in 1995 in Arlington on charges of sexually assaulting a minor, but he wasn't convicted. In that case, his 15-year-old girlfriend told authorities that he had forced her to have sex three times. A grand jury declined to indict Mr. Anders, and the woman, who couldn't be reached for comment Thursday, later married him, records indicate.

An arrest report released Thursday in connection with the child pornography charge says that Mr. Anders most recently worked as a convenience store clerk and is still married.

Mr. Anders also was convicted in 2005 on a misdemeanor charge of driving with an invalid license. He was sentenced to one month plus 15 days in jail and fined $500, according to Texas Department of Public Safety records.

Sheriff's officials have asked state caseworkers not to say whether Hanna's family had been investigated by child welfare officers, said Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Neighbors in Navarro Mills said this week that they saw little to indicate any problems in the two-story pale yellow house that Mr. Anders shared with Dana Mack, Hanna and two older sisters.

Ms. Mack worked as a dishwasher at the local café just down the road. She had moved to town a few months ago. Hanna had just entered first grade at nearby Blooming Grove Elementary School.

Tanya Arnett, whose 6-year-old son, Hunter, attended school with Hanna, said Wednesday that she remembered seeing Ms. Mack with a black eye not long ago. She never asked what happened, and Ms. Mack never volunteered the information, she said.

Another neighbor, Patricia Partney, said word had recently spread about a public fight between the couple at a nearby Dawson carwash. Details of that altercation were unknown.

Ms. Mack discovered her daughter missing Monday morning at a time when she should have been awake and getting ready for school. The crime has shocked the small community of Navarro Mills, about 15 miles from Corsicana near the banks of Navarro Mills Lake.

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Neighbor Charged in Hanging of Girl, 6
Neighbor Charged in Hanging, Sexual Assault of 6-Year-Old Texas Girl

ABC News
9/28/2007

A neighbor of a 6-year-old girl who was found hanged in her family's garage has been charged with sexual assault and capital murder, authorities said Friday.

Hanna Mack's body was found earlier this month by her mother. Authorities said the first-grader had been sexually assaulted and hanged.

Shaun Earl Arender, 19, was linked to the crime scene by DNA evidence, Navarro County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Mike Cox said Friday. Arender lived less than a mile from the little girl's rural home, about 65 miles south of Dallas.

Arender was already in jail on unrelated burglary and drug possession charges. A DNA sample taken from the shirt Hanna was wearing was entered into a Texas Department of Public Safety DNA indexing program Wednesday, and it indicated Arender was a possible match, according to the arrest affidavit.

Arender was questioned Wednesday, and, according to the affidavit "would not give a statement, but put his head on the table and cried."

Two days earlier, he had cut himself with a piece of glass while in custody on the burglary charge and was taken to a hospital "because he was depressed," according to the affidavit.

His bond is set at $2.5 million. It wasn't immediately clear if Arender had a lawyer who could comment.

Family members have said Hanna's mother, Dana Mack, saw the youngest of her three daughters sleeping on the couch around 1 a.m. the morning of Sept. 10. She realized Hanna was missing just before sunrise, and found her body in a garage near the family house.

"I'm just absolutely shocked," said neighbor Pam Gray. "I'll never have that sense of trust here again."

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Man, 19, charged in death of hanged girl, 6
Police: Man's DNA a match; focus had been on mom's boyfriend

By Robert T. Garrett and Emily Ramshaw
The Dallas Morning News
September 29, 2007

Navarro County authorities on Friday said they have charged a 19-year-old man with killing a girl found hanged in her family's garage in their rural community this month.

Shaun Earl Arender, who has a criminal rap sheet and a history of mental illness, was tentatively a DNA match with material found on the body of 6-year-old Hanna Marie Mack. For the past two weeks, authorities had been calling her mother's boyfriend the prime suspect.

Mr. Arender has been in the Navarro County Jail on charges of burglary and marijuana possession since Sept. 12, two days after the girl's body was found hanging in a garage next to her home near the banks of Navarro Mills Lake. She had been sexually assaulted, an autopsy confirmed.

On Friday, the Navarro County sheriff's office released documents saying that when homicide detectives questioned Mr. Arender in jail Wednesday, he declined to make any statement. He was then charged with capital murder. Bail was set at $2.5 million.

As late as Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Leslie Cotten had said his investigators believed that Kevin Wayne Anders was a primary suspect in the killing.

Mr. Anders, 32, is the boyfriend of Hanna's mother, Dana Mack. He has been held since Sept. 12 on a child pornography charge. His bail of $100,000 had not been reduced.

Reached at home Friday, Michael Runion, Hanna's grandfather, said the family felt "a whole lot better" knowing that Mr. Anders wasn't responsible for Hanna's death.

"I think it's a huge sense of relief," Mr. Runion said. "Although [Mr. Anders] has some other charges to deal with ... at least it isn't that charge."

Mr. Runion said Mr. Arender is not a relative or family friend.

"We don't know him," Mr. Runion said. "I don't know what went on at that house, but I know I've never seen the guy."

Although arrest records list a Corsicana address for Mr. Arender, the affidavit said he lived in a mobile home near Purdon, just east of Navarro Mills Lake.

Chief Deputy Sheriff Mike Cox said Mr. Arender lived a little less than a mile from the Macks' two-story house.

Sheriff Cotten said Friday that Hanna's family members had told investigators "they thought they had seen [Mr. Arender] walking down the road once or twice but they didn't know him."

Mr. Arender is described in arrest records as an unemployed construction worker.

On Monday, while in jail, he cut himself with glass and had to be treated at a Corsicana hospital, according to the affidavit. It quotes Mr. Arender as saying he was depressed.

According to an online Texas convictions database, in the past two years, Mr. Arender was convicted in Navarro County of a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief, a felony charge of evidence tampering and two counts of burglary.

Last October, after the burglary convictions, his five-year probation sentence for evidence tampering was revoked. He was ordered to go to prison for three years. It was not clear Friday why he wasn't still in prison.

Mr. Arender also had a juvenile criminal record, one serious enough to land him in Texas Youth Commission custody. An official close to the investigation said Mr. Arender was released four years ago from the agency's Corsicana Residential Treatment Center – the TYC facility reserved for youthful offenders with serious mental health problems.

The official also indicated Mr. Arender was admitted to a state mental hospital sometime after he left TYC custody.

A spokesman for TYC declined to comment, saying only that "state law forbids us from disclosing any information about youth in our custody."

Phone numbers listed for Mr. Arender's mother and brother in Corsicana had been disconnected.

The arrest affidavit said Mr. Arender caused "the death of Hanna Mack by asphyxiation by a manner and means unknown" while in the act of sexually assaulting her.

It said his DNA, kept in a state Department of Criminal Justice database, was a "possible match" with a biological sample taken from Hanna's shirt. It didn't specify if the sample was hair or fluid.

Chief Deputy Cox issued a news release calling the comparison a "positive match."

On Thursday afternoon, Navarro County District Judge Sam Bournias signed an order permitting deputies to take a blood sample from Mr. Arender for further tests. It was unclear Friday when lab tests of the suspect's blood sample would be completed.

Judge Bournias also let deputies search Mr. Arender's trailer home for a necklace and pendant. The affidavit quoted Dana Mack as saying Hanna "always wore" the jewelry, which was missing when her body was discovered. Deputies also were to search for several household items Ms. Mack said were missing.

An employee at the Navarro Mills Café and General Store, where Hanna's mother works, said that Ms. Mack was not there and that "this isn't a good day to talk to her."