Investigators say the child saw what happened to her mother, Betty Williams, whose throat was cut from ear to ear. But the little girl remained sedated and in serious condition at the University of Kentucky Hospital in Lexington Monday, leaving police only to wait for her to become coherent so they can speak to her.
"She's the only witness," said Kentucky State Police Trooper David Stevenson. "The only one we know of, at least."
They hope her recollection will provide them a virtual motion picture of what is the most horrific Owen County homicide long-timers could remember.
Ms. Williams, 27, and her little girl were found in the trailer on Calendar Road shortly after 10 p.m. by the parents of Ms. Williams' fiance. Owners of the property, about 3 miles south of Glencoe, they stopped by to tell Ms. Williams that a potential buyer would be coming to look at the site Monday.
An autopsy conducted by the state medical examiner's office in Louisville showed Ms. Williams died from a blow to the head and that she died within a few hours of the time she was found. Investigators also say Ms. Williams might have known her attacker. They interviewed several possible suspects Monday, but had made no arrest.
Trooper Stevenson said tests were being done on the mother's body to determine whether she was sexually assaulted. He said he did not know the nature of the girl's injuries, and declined to comment on whether she was sexually assaulted.
The crime is the latest in a long list of hardships for the family. Ms. Williams, whose education stopped at the seventh grade, married when she was just 14. She and her husband, Dion Williams, separated in the spring. He killed himself in July.
"Now she's an orphan," said a tearful Barbara Buis, their closest neighbor.
The suicide came after the couple lost a baby in January. The full-term boy strangled in his own umbilical cord, Mrs. Buis said. Ms. Williams had planned to be married next month to John Marcum, who was not home at the time of the attack because he is behind bars in Carroll County for having a gun, something prohibited for convicted felons.
Neighbors described the girl as a kind of precocious, scrappy kid who would boast that she could spell Tyrannosaurus rex all by herself and that she could do the splits. A couple of days ago, she bought a pair of red shoes for her mother at the Buis' yard sale. She paid 13 cents, all she had in her coin purse.
Mrs. Buis and her daughter, Leisa Ferone, last talked to Ms. Williams and her daughter last Thursday, when the little girl came over to show her new school supplies. She was a student at Owen County Primary School.
Ms. Williams, who was unemployed, got the money for the school shopping trip by selling a bull. The buyer paid her a little over $300, Miss Ferone said.
The mother and daughter were extremely close, the neighbors said. With her fingers crossed, Mrs. Buis said: "As close as this."
She said the two were attacked in the living room on a mattress. They often pulled the mattress into that room to watch TV and be near the trailer's only window air conditioner.
"I just wish I could go hold (her) and rock her and tell her everything's going to be all right," Mrs. Buis said. "But I guess, how could anybody say that to her now? I mean, my God, she's 8."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
