Two Texas women who allegedly abducted an 8-month old boy and kept him out of the public eye for eight years have been convicted.
Gloria Walker and her daughter, Krystle Tanner, were sentenced to prison on Tuesday–30 years for injury to a child/eight years for kidnapping for Walker, and eight years for kidnapping/eight years for reckless injury to a child for Tanner. Both sentences will be served concurrently.
Walker and Tanner were accused of kidnapping Miguel Morin when he was an infant, then hiding him by keeping him out of school and denying him medical care for the next eight years. Their defense argued that Miguel’s mother had given him away to the women after neglecting him, but the jury didn’t buy it.
“If Ms. Walker and Ms. Tanner had a right to little Miguel, why wasn’t he in school?” District Attorney Kevin Dutton said during his closing arguments. “Why didn’t you get the rest of his immunizations? Why didn’t you take him to the dentist? They knew they didn’t have that right. They knew they couldn’t put that baby out in the public eye.”
The women were caught after an investigation of Tanner, whose own infant tested positive for marijuana in 2010. She was linked to Miguel–who had been renamed Jaquan at that point–because she used to babysit him. The mother/daughter pair still insist they did nothing wrong and voiced their innocence as they were taken away from the courtroom yesterday.
“Justice is not served. We have not hurt no child. We loved and cared for him,” Walker said.
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