Missing: Randy and Denim Sylvester
Filed under: Abduction, Burning, Child Murder, Domestic Violence, Missing Person
UPDATE 9/11/08 - Yesterday, a grand jury indicted Randy Terrell Sylvester, Sr. in the murders of his children, Randy Jr. and Denim Sylvester. The burned bodies of the children were found in southeast Houston on June 21, stuffed inside a suitcase and a wooden box. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the elder Sylvester on both counts of first-degree murder. Sylvester is also facing an assault charge for an attack on the childrens mother in June.
Yes, that poor little girl’s name is Denim. I know.
Pasadena, TX - Randy Sylvester Jr., 7, and his three year old sister Denim have been missing since Father’s Day. The last time the children were seen, they were playing on a tennis court at their apartment complex at about 3:45 p.m. Their mother, Jerilynn St. Cyr, became worried sometime later when the kids didn’t come back inside. She notified the children’s father, who lives in the same complex, but he didn’t have the kids either. At about 9:15 p.m., the parents reported their kids missing.
Randy and Denim were seen by neighbors earlier in the afternoon, hanging out at the complex with their dad, Randy Sylvester Sr. Apparently it’s not uncommon for the children to go back and forth between their parents’ apartments, which may account for some of the delay in reporting the missing kids to police. But by Monday morning, searchers were out in force.
Jerilynn St. Cyr is already in front of the cameras, talking about how the police aren’t working hard enough, doing enough to find her kids. I don’t know, but it seems to me that maybe you shouldn’t leave a seven year old in charge of a three year old outside in Pasadena, which is in the southside metro Houston area. Houston is the fourth largest city in America, so maybe not the smartest place to go back inside and leave the first grader to watch the baby.
Police are also going back over the parents’ stories. A department spokesman says that there were some “inconsistencies”. Now that could be as simple as a parent not looking at their watch right. Then again, that could also mean that a parent knows exactly where the children are. However, no signs of foul play were found in either parent’s apartment by late Monday night. The father’s car was also searched and came up clean. Further, the kids are not thought to be with relatives.
So why no Amber Alert? Because nobody saw anything. In order for an Amber Alert to be issued, a suspect or suspect vehicle and a time of disappearance are needed - and in this case, there’s no suspect or vehicle yet, and no clear time the kids went missing. A four or five hour window is unhelpful at best.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Randy is seven years old. He is 4 feet, 1 inch tall and weighs 55 pounds. He was wearing a blue-and-orange University of Florida Gators shirt, blue denim shorts and blue-and-white tennis shoes. Denim is three. She is about 2 feet, 5 inches tall and was wearing pink shorts, pink flip-flop sandals and a pink T-shirt with brown trim. Her hair was braided and pulled back in a ponytail when she was last seen.
As usual, I’ll update as information comes in. I’m half inclined to think the mother knows something, based on her affect, although I’ve been wrong before. In this interview, she’s all about “we were gonna look for our own kids until night fell” and showing off the Playstations in between begging for her children’s return. An interesting statement she made is “Do you know how it feels to not have your children.. to not be able to hold them anymore?” Maybe I’m wrong, but that just seems odd to me.
UPDATE 6/18/08 - The father, Randy Sylvester Senior, has emerged as the primary suspect in his children’s disappearance and possible deaths. After assaulting Jerilynn St. Cyr during an argument Monday night (after the children went missing Sunday), he picked up a domestic violence charge. By Tuesday, he had told St. Cyr that the children were dead and it was “time to move on”. St. Cyr’s timeline isn’t quite lining up, but at this point, it looks more like she wasn’t watching her kids, and less like she killed them. I believe she knew what he’d done on Monday.
UPDATE 6/19/08 - After a full day of questioning both parents, the investigation again centers on Randy Sylvester, Sr. Police issued a BOLO alert for a black chest with a red star sticker on it and a wheeled suitcase this evening. Community activist and New Black Panthers leader Quanell X met with Sylvester to talk about a possible confession - Sylvester had refused a lie detector test earlier in the week. Shortly after 8:30 pm local time, police near Burke-Crenshaw Park in Pasadena told the media and news crews to back off the area, as it has been declared a crime scene. Sylvester was with police at a body of water in the park tonight, and dive teams are set to resume searching at dawn.
UPDATE 6/21/08 - After a dive search that took all day on Friday, drained three park ponds, and was beginning to look like a false trail, the bodies of Randy Sylvester, Jr. and Denim Sylvester have been found. According to an automated call made by Texas EquuSearch at about 1:45 a.m. Central Time, “The small bodies of Denim and Randy Sylvester are currently being recovered by Pasadena Police officials.” The message apologizes for the hour of the call and thanks search supporters for their prayers, but says, “..they’re home.”
Police have been gathered at a wooded crime scene near Berry Creek at the intersection of Galveston and Allendale Roads in southeast Houston. That site is 6.7 miles from Burke-Crenshaw Park, where police have been searching for the children for the past several days. Accounts are not consistent yet on whether Sylvester led police to the burned bodies of his children, but it’s now clear that Sylvester intentionally misled investigators who were searching for his children, as they were not dumped in the water at all, but were rather burned.
Randy Sylvester, Senior is being held without bond in the Harris County Jail on multiple charges stemming from other warrants and the assault on his wife Monday. He is expected to be charged with murder.
More details as they become available, as usual.
was he required to pay child support?
I have to disagree about the “40 or 50 lbs and not tossing around that kind of weight like it was nothing”. I do it all the time. I raise rottweilers. 50 lbs of dog food is nothing. I can lift it out of a shopping buggy - up and over the buggy sides and back down to the trunk, without any trouble or straining at all.
If I have a gallon of milk, lets say in one hand - I can pick up a 50 lb bag of dog food with the other arm and cradle it against my body or flip it on up on my shoulder and carry it to the register, easily. 50 lbs ain’t shit. I have no problem throwing one 50 lb bag on one shoulder and then putting another 50 lb bag on my other shoulder and carrying them both. I’d say the man wasn’t straining a bit, especially given the “excitement” and “Oh, Hell” factors - his adrenaline had to be pumping.
Maybe I don’t find it to be “much weight”, because of growing up on a dairy farm and basically “working out” with that much weight my whole life - (long ago, in a land far away, dairy feed came in 100lb bags when I was growing up). Or maybe its because, at my last job, Southern States Cooperative, we handled 50 lb bags all day long, every day.
I just don’t see a 55lb child and a trunk weighing that much at all, and certainly not enough to make a grown man strain, much less to the point to where he would have to push or drag the trunk or even have to have any help from someone else. I just don’t see it, because I’m a far cry from “strong” and 50 lbs ain’t shit to me.
I’ll have to go with Lizard’s assessment - the trunk and suitcase were more memorable because of one thinking, “Are they leaving? Are they moving out? or plain ole, “where the hell is he going.”
pooh, you are making me feel like such a weakling!
I only have to sling around bags of rodent chow, so I guess I don’t get much of a workout… I’ll start offering you some panties if you’ll come over and do my garden heavy lifting for me–
I agree with this 100%. Even if someone else did kill his kids because he owed them money…well, if someone is a low enough character to do that, then he should have gone directly to the police, screaming, “So-and-so probably has my babies because I owe him money! Here’s a description of what he looks like, and where I met him, and where he hangs out at, and etc. etc. etc.” What’s the worst someone you owe money to could do to you once they’ve snatched and killed your kids? What further kind of retaliation could there possibly be to fear if you go to the police? Once your kids are gone, your heart is gone. I don’t even have kids…but I know that if I had kids, and somebody killed them over a drug debt? I’d be begging them to kill me, too, because what’s left of your life after that? So no, I’m not buying the “I owed money,” and the inevitable, “I couldn’t tell earlier because I was afraid of something else happening” that is sure to follow.
Sorry, that was not my intention. I was mostly thinking out loud - well, typing out loud. You can keep your panties, for the garden work - but if I happen to make a brilliant witty post or post 69 in a thread, well, then your panty toss to me would be in order.
If I lived close enough, I’d be happy to help you out - just to be a good neighbor. You wouldn’t have to bribe me with panties.
Talk about a tall tale! Give me a fucking break, he was seen removing the trunk and suitcase from his home AND he took them to the bodies!
Shonnie you need to accept reality here. He killed his own kids and will likely be in prison for the rest of his sorry life.
Does anyone else think that Shonnie, may be “the other woman” and a reason to want to make a “fresh start” free from child support, visitation, and the ex?
Finally they have charged the piece of shit with capital murder.
http://www.kten.com/Global/story.asp?S=8543916
Randy Sylvester Senior has been held in the Harris County jail without bond since he was arrested June 17th and accused of assaulting the mother of the children.
No decision has been made on whether to pursue the death penalty.
A call to Sylvester’s attorney, Jimmy Ortiz, was not immediately returned.
Police over the weekend found the burned remains of 7-year-old Randy Sylvester Junior and his 3-year-old sister, Denim. The remains were in a wooden chest and a suitcase.
The discovery of the bodies ended a week of turbulent emotions for police, searchers and the children’s family and friends.
i knew i didn’t believe his story….see below…..also, they’ve issued a subpoena for the mother to testify in front of a grand jury because her statements are inconsistant and they want them on record….
from http://www.khou.com….
Before he was charged, Sylvester told the Houston Chronicle that someone else murdered his kids because he failed to pay off a drug debt, and that he just discarded the bodies.
But Pasadena police were skeptical about those claims.
“That particular statement would be especially difficult to reconcile in the face of the fact that according to Quanell X, he made the statement to him that he did it, but it was an accident†Pasadena Police Capt. Bud Corbett said.
Accident?? Yeah right! How the fuck do you accidental kill not 1 but 2 kids, load them into a suitcase and a trunk, toss them away and light them on fire?
He has already taken too much oxygen from the rest of us. Somebody please just put a bullet in his empty head.
Y’all, this is getting more and more gruesome. Cops are saying they’ve never seen bodies in that state. The remains are “mostly skeletal” and “bones are missing”. The medical examiner called in an anthropologist to try to figure out what happened to these bodies…. read it and weep along with me, won’t you?
Posted by http://www.khou.com today:
http://www.khou.com/topstories/stories/khou080624_tnt_sylvesterfolo.35bea850.html
Cops: Pasadena dad killed kids in apartment
02:34 PM CDT on Tuesday, June 24, 2008
By Rucks Russell / 11 News
HOUSTON — A Pasadena man accused in the deaths of his two young children killed the kids in his apartment before burning their bodies, police said Monday.
Randy Sylvester is facing capital murder charges for the slayings of his daughter, Denim, 3, and his son, Randy Jr., 7.
The children’s charred bodies were discovered late Friday in a wooded area in southeast Houston. They had been stuffed in a trunk and a suitcase and lit on fire.
The murders were so gruesome, police say even seasoned homicide detectives are having trouble coping.
Police said investigators have been waking up in cold sweats, calling each other in the middle of the night and crying about what happened to the kids.
One sergeant in the Pasadena Police Homicide Department told 11 News the scene was one of the worst he’d ever seen, and it will haunt him for the rest of his life.
He said though he’s seen a lot of dead bodies in his line of work, nothing could have prepared him for what he saw that night.
Police still don’t have a theory as to exactly how the children were killed.
The medical examiner has called in an anthropologist to help determine the manner of death. The remains are mostly skeletal, and some of the bones are missing.
The Sylvester kids moved to Pasadena from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina with their father and mother, Jerilynn St. Cyr.
Officials said the couple were married, but were living separately in the same apartment complex.
They disappeared while playing near a playground at the complex last week and were the subject of a frantic, six-day search.
During the search, police considered Sylvester their lone suspect.
Local activist Quanell X visited one of the units rented by Sylvester. He called it a “dog house,†and said it was filthy and littered with porn.
After that visit, he said he knew Sylvester was not innocent.
Sylvester eventually led Quanell to the bodies. At a memorial service for the children on Sunday, the visibly shaken activist was largely at a loss for words, calling Sylvester “cold-blooded†and saying he was “angry as hell.â€
At the time of the kids’ deaths, Sylvester should have been in jail.
Officials said Monday he had already violated his probation for a prior drug offense.
Sylvester had failed to pay his probation fees, never got a job, didn’t perform any community service and did not participate in a drug awareness program.
Under normal circumstances, two to three months of noncompliance would get a case sent back into courts.
On Monday night, sources confirmed to 11 News that the children’s mother was issued a subpoena to testify before a Harris County grand jury. While not a suspect in her kids’ murders, law enforcement sources said her various statements to police about Randy Jr. and Denim’s disappearances were “inconsistent.â€
Before he was charged, Sylvester told the Houston Chronicle that someone else murdered his kids because he failed to pay off a drug debt, and that he just discarded the bodies.
But Pasadena police were skeptical about those claims.
“That particular statement would be especially difficult to reconcile in the face of the fact that according to Quanell X, he made the statement to him that he did it, but it was an accident†Pasadena Police Capt. Bud Corbett said.
Im confused, once he lead QuanelX and the police to the bodies, didn’t he confess? Or even if not, isn’t that action essentially the same as a confession? Knowing the location of your childrens bodies, and they happen to be in a trunk and suitcase that are known to be yours?
I think the mom probably was used to the kids going back and forth between apartments, if the man never abused or threatened the kids before and was still married to her and their biological father, there would not have been any set visitation schedule and presumably she had no reason to believe he would murder them and burn their remains!
Her statements were probably inconsistent because she was embarassed/ashamed that she WAS so lax in keeping an eye on the kids and she still fully believed and trusted the dad, the domestic violence incident happened 24 hours after the kids were reported missing…….I would guess that was her first inkling that he WAS involved
You’d think, no? Not this fella. He’s claiming that he owed someone money for drugs and they killed his kids. He says he knew where to find them because that was one of their “meet up places” (him and the drug dealers). At another point, he apparently claimed that the bad’uns killed his kids, but that he disposed of the bodies. But then he told Quanell X that he killed them but it was an accident.
In short….who the fuck knows? This man’s mind is a twisted mass of lies and bullshit he’ll feed to anyone who’ll listen.
Pick a story, any story. Doesn’t matter, really.
Well he IS in Texas, has more reason to be trying any foolish B.S. he can come up with to hang it on some mystery “drug debt/child killer” because they WILL execute you in TX and it is not a 25 year process.
Louisiana has executed 27 people since 1976, Texas 406…………..Im not a big proponent of the death penalty but this seems like a case where it is more warranted than most and this dumb ass has the luck to relocate to Texas THEN decide to kill his kids. Karma, eh?
Yup. Next up, he’ll be crapping his pants and talking to his imaginary friend Foo-foo to claim mental disease or defect to get out of the death penalty.
Man up, Sylvester, take your punishment like the gansta you try to portray yourself to be. You killed your kids. Don’t be afraid of getting the same sentence you gave them. Tell the truth and give the family some peace.
Eh, I doubt we can expect something as noble as that from someone who hits women and murders babies. I can dream though.
I know I watch a lot of TV and that anything is possible. But, I want to believe that “dealers” would actually not kill innocent children for something as small as $4500. I know that criminals are ruthless but still most respect the innocence of our children. Right? $4500 seems so petty to me for a dealer who makes that in probably 1 day. If it was only 5k that would just be a good ass whoopin’, right? Man, this guy is a piece of work.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that a drug dealer most likely would not kill and burn this mans children over a debt of any amount.
First it makes no sense, perhaps kidnapping them would be in the realm of possibility to hold for ransom, but very very few people would just happen to be drug dealers and also violent child-killers. There is a certain moral laxness in dealing drugs, but nowhere near what would be required to carry out the killing of 2 totally innocent children…….bad guys come in lots of degrees
If he really did owe money and it seemed hopeless to collect, maybe the “mysterious drug dealer” would have popped a cap in his head.
Missing bones??? WTF!!!
I guess he doesn’t want to “strap up” now, azzwipe needs to be tortured and fried.
Yeah, I agree that it’s unlikely that drug dealers killed his children. Moral queasiness over child killing aside, a successful drug dealer does not get that way , or stay out of prison, by being stupid or taking unneeded risks (outside of the drug-dealing aspect, of course). Few of them are going to risk a possible death sentence–or even a lengthy prison term–by killing children over a relatively paltry drug debt. Popping a cap in the ass of some loser druggie is one thing…kidnapping and killing two children is something else completely. What illicit businessperson would be stupid enough to bring that kind of attention to themselves? Let alone risk the possible sentence when they would be found out, for sure. You might or might not ever be arrested and sentenced for drug-dealing. But kill a child, or a cop? Yeah, they’re never going to stop looking for your ass. I just don’t see any way possible that a drug dealer hit makes any sense whatsoever.
I don’t care for Quanell X, but have to give him credit for hanging in there and working with the “father.” The detective in the second site listed below said that X earned the man’s trust, he thought, and that’s why he told where the kids were.
http://www.khou.com/topstories/stories/khou080623_tj_quanellxwalk.32458ab6.html
Quanell X retraces discovery of kids’ bodies
And I congratulate the police. Here is a video of an officer being interviewed. This guy describes in detail finding the bodies. It’s a long video that covers alot of stuff, but worth watching the entire thing. I found it moving to see this officer describe his feelings about the murders and the hunt.
http://www.khou.com/video/news-index.html?nvid=257552
Quanell X never met a camera he didn’t like.
A Sylvester Memorial Fund has been set up @ Chase Bank - for those concerned citizens that would like to make donations
Well at least we get justice for these precious children. God, I just cried right along with you Ruby. I truly cannot wrap my brain around things like this happening.
RIP little ones, God bless……
police that’s just the way it is
This isn’t about the litttle girls name or the way he talks, ( which is absolutely stupid), lets just concentrate on the issue at hand… these two children are missing and the Father is a suspect, what don’t you understand about that???
Actually, they’re not missing anymore, as noted in the article and at the update above it. They’re dead, and Randy Sylvester Sr. killed them. Did you miss that part?
And I am sorry - I really am - that anyone would name a child “Denim”. Bless her sweet baby heart and may she rest in peace, that is a horrible name.