Mrs Behavin
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(CNN) -- Before dying, 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers was beaten with belts, picked up by her hair, thrown across the room and held under water, according to an affidavit from the Galveston County Sheriff's Office.
The affidavit says the girl's mother, Kimberly Dawn Trenor, described to police how her daughter died and was put in a plastic storage box that Trenor and her husband, Royce Zeigler, later dumped into a Galveston waterway.
Trenor told police Zeigler tried to commit suicide the weekend before Thanksgiving, and wrote a note that said, "My wife is innocent of the sins that I committed."
The body of the then-unidentified toddler was found on October 29. A fisherman found Riley's body stuffed inside a blue storage container that washed up on an uninhabited island in Galveston's West Bay.
A medical examiner said the child's skull was fractured, and a forensic dentist estimated her age at 2 to 3 years.
Police dubbed the child "Baby Grace." A police artist's sketch of her was widely circulated in the news media and prompted a call to Galveston police from Riley's grandmother in Ohio, who had not seen the girl in months.
On Saturday, police arrested Trenor and Zeigler on charges of injuring a child and tampering with physical evidence, the sheriff's department said. Their bonds were set at $350,000 each.
The affidavit, obtained by CNN, says when police interviewed Trenor on November 23, she "gave a voluntary statement on video with her attorney present in which she describes her involvement, with Royce Zeigler, in the physical abuse, death and disposal of the remains of her daughter, Riley Ann Sawyers."
Trenor's statement said on July 24, she and Zeigler both beat the child with leather belts and held her head under water in the bathtub. She said Zeigler picked the girl up by her hair and also threw her across the room, slamming her head into the tile floor.
After her daughter died, Trenor's statement said, she and Zeigler went to a Wal-Mart that night and bought the Sterilite container, a shovel, concrete mix, and other supplies.
The statement said the box containing the child's body was hidden in a storage shed for "one to two months." Then, Trenor said, she and Zeigler carried it to the Galveston Causeway and tossed it in, and she saw it drifting away.
Riley Ann's father, Robert Sawyers, on Monday tearfully remembered her as a "fun-loving girl ... with a big imagination."
Police: Mother describes beating of 2-year-old, hiding her body - CNN.com