Ten years after Kansas City first embraced “Precious Doe,” it’s time to put her legacy in place.
The adorable little girl is more recognizable by her cherub face, by the anonymous “Precious Doe,” than her given name, Erica Michelle Marie Green.
Erica should be celebrating her 14th birthday Sunday. Should be.
Had she lived, she would be entering those rich years when young girls begin crossing over to becoming young women. Erica never reached her fourth birthday.
Instead, a remembrance ceremony Sunday afternoon will be held near the place her decapitated body was found in 2001.
Nothing seems to move swiftly for this little girl. It took years to bring her killers to justice.
Now, more years have passed without the tangle of woods where she was found being converted into a park to memorialize her.
Organizers vow that they are stalled only temporarily.
“If this is the last breath I take on this earth, we will get it done,” said Tim Dollar, an assistant Jackson County prosecutor who helped try the case and a member of the Precious Doe Committee.
“My vision when we came up with the idea of the park was as a tribute to her life and as a reminder that we can make a difference.”
The land to the north of Hibbs Park at 59th Street and Kensington Avenue was used often as an illegal dump site.
But nothing deposited there was ever as shocking as what was left that April night.
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