Ashani Creighton Believed Killed In FL, Buried In OK; Police Search For Remains

[Whisper]

Ashani Creighton Circa 1997

Age Progression Circa 2009

More details at The Charley Project
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/...on_ashani.html

Tulsa police to search for remains of Florida missing child

TULSA - Tulsa police say new leads may help them and other agencies solve the 15-year-old cold case of a missing child from Florida.
Ashani Creighton, last seen in the late 1990s, is now believed to have been killed in Florida and buried in Tulsa.
Saturday morning, forensic experts and archeologists will join detectives in searching for Ashani's remains.
According to Tulsa police, the Orange County Sherriff's Office in Orlando developed information that Ashani was murdered in 1999. Her remains were later transported to Tulsa, where detectives believe she is buried near 61st and Mingo.
Police say the burial site has since been covered by a parking lot and commercial buildings. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has made arrangements with Necrosearch International to provide ground-penetrating radar operators and a geophysicist to locate the exact burial site, police say. A local company has donated its services to help with drilling, removing and repairing concrete.
Additionally, experts from the Oklahoma Archeological Survey and the State Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will assist with recovery and identification if the remains are found.
According to the NCMEC, Ashani was last seen by her mother on March 21, 1997.
[....]
New Jersey police arrested the Jacksons in 1988 for torturing their then 8-year-old son. The boy was found with bruises and burns all over his body after escaping the family's home.
The couple posted bail and fled the state. They remained fugitives until their arrest in Tulsa in 2000. A Tulsa resident alerted authorities when they recognized the Jacksons on an episode of America's Most Wanted.
Tulsa County prosecutors charged Ernest and Kaia for a separate incident of child abuse. Kaia was sentenced to 35 years and is currently incarcerated in Oklahoma. Ernest was found not guilty but returned to New Jersey to serve just over six years in state prison for the 1988 case.

http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_n...#ixzz1o5DesjM3

Ashani Karin Creighton - MISSING

Really good video

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Authorities had several false alarms Sunday, when they dug into portions of the building's foundation to investigate readings by ground-penetrating radar.

The area remained cordoned off with crime tape as officials used ground-penetrating radar, extracted soil and walked police dogs around the businesses and parking lot on Monday.

By Monday evening, workers had excavated a roughly 5-by-5-foot hole in the floor in the Sara Lee Bakery Outlet.
[...]

But by 11 p.m. Monday, officials said it was likely that they would discontinue the search if nothing was found within a few more hours because many of the workers from other areas had to return to their jobs.

Robinson had said earlier that "we've made a promise that we're not going to leave here without this answered. What that answer might be, I can't say."

Orange County authorities had been confident that Ashani's body is buried at the site, he said.

Florida authorities had received a credible tip from an unnamed source that the body is at the site, Robinson said Sunday.

Ashani was 4 when she disappeared in 1997, but authorities believe that she wasn't killed until 1999.
[...]

When she disappeared, the girl was in the care of her grandparents, Kaia and Ernest Jackson, who were fugitives in a 1988 New Jersey child-abuse case.

The Jacksons eluded capture for 12 years before they were arrested in Tulsa in 2000, the World has previously reported. They lived under the aliases Butch and Naomi Hill while in Oklahoma, and they homeschooled their four children.

After their arrests in Tulsa, detectives from Bergen County, N.J., said Ashani's mother, who lived in New York, sent the girl to Florida for a visit with her grandparents two years earlier and hadn't seen her daughter since, the Tulsa World reported in 2000.

The Jacksons reportedly came to Tulsa from Florida shortly after refusing to return their granddaughter to her mother.

They assumed new identities for themselves and their children, as they had done in numerous other U.S. cities since they were charged in 1988 in New Jersey, authorities said 12 years ago.

The couple had been sought since their son Cymande Jackson escaped from their home in Teaneck, N.J., on June 24, 1988, and wandered into a restaurant, where patrons reported seeing horrific scars, burns and other injuries covering most of his body.

The boy was taken into protective custody, and the Jacksons were arrested in New Jersey, but they posted bail and fled with four of their other children, the World has reported.

After their arrests here, the Jacksons were convicted of aggravated assault and child endangerment in New Jersey.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/artic...4_CUTLIN294493

In 2003, Kaia Jackson was convicted of child abuse involving her son Jonathon over a two-year period in Tulsa. In 2001, that boy told a forensic interviewer what life was like in his home

According to court documents, Jonathon claimed his parents beat him regularly with "big boards, extension cords, belts and cable wires."

Three days before both parents were arrested, Jonathon says his father, Ernest Jackson, beat him for riding his bicycle. Jonathon also talks about the family's life in Florida before coming to Tulsa.

He says his mom wouldn't let him eat for 15 days, so he climbed out his bathroom window to grab an orange growing on a tree.

Jonathon says his mom caught him and hit him in the face with the buckle-end of a belt. He says he lost one tooth, chipped another and "had to clean all the blood up in the hallway while his mother screamed at him."

"It doesn't get much worse than that in my opinion," said Tulsa County DA Tim Harris, who remembers the case.

In 2000, Jonathon was examined for injuries and the investigation shows he had scars on his chest, abdomen, shoulders, collar bone, knees, and twenty to thirty scars on each hand.

The remaining injuries portray a child with scars and bruises from his neck to his knees on his front and back.

http://www.newson6.com/story/1708624...ls-of-abuse-in

[Dakota Valkyrie]

The three-day search for a missing Orange County girl near an Oklahoma strip mall has ended.

Orange County Sheriff's Detective Marcus Robinson said the search for Ashani Creighton concluded Monday night after investigators came up empty handed.

"We found no forensic evidence," Robinson said of the search for Ashani who is thought to have been murdered in Florida in the late 1990s and later buried in Tulsa.

Robinson said he was confident the area was searched thoroughly with ground penetrating radar and cadaver dogs. There may be other locations in Tulsa where the child could be buried, he said Tuesday.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...,6330048.story

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Crime scene investigators and graduate students of the University of Oklahoma plan to excavate in a grassy area behind the strip mall Monday morning, Tulsa police Deputy Chief Dennis Larsen said.

In March, authorities excavated inside and in the parking lot of the strip mall, which houses Kang's Institute of TaeKwon-Do, a bakery and other businesses just north of 61st Street and Mingo Road.

Larsen said Monday's operation will be much smaller than the earlier search, which was led by Tulsa police, Orange County, Fla., deputies and scientists.

Florida authorities will not be present this time, he said.
[...]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/specialpro...0_Author218135

On Monday, the OU team and TPD investigators will search the empty lot directly east of the strip mall that was searched in March.

Deputy Chief Dennis Larsen says records show that all the dirt and debris from the construction of the strip mall that currently sits at the 61st and Mingo location was deposited on the empty lot.

The renewed search is expected to last two to three days.

http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_n...hani-creighton

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Tulsa city leaders thanked those involved in the spring and summer search for a young Florida girl’s remains.

A 'credible source' told authorities four-year-old Ashani Creighton’s body was in the area of 61st Street and Mingo in Tulsa. Detectives from Tulsa and Florida spent weeks searching for her remains in March and May 2012, more than ten years after she was reported missing around 1997.

Many volunteers donated their time, their equipment, their skills, and their business space to allow for the investigation to take place along 61st and Mingo.

The mayor thanked them on the city’s behalf. Those volunteers included local construction crews, concrete cutters and mixers, forensic students from Oklahoma State University and archeologists from The University of Oklahoma, the employees and business owners along 61st and Mingo, Grand Master Kang, the Gnarly Dog, Sandra Lee’s, among many others.

Investigators had to cut out huge holes in some of those businesses floors to search underneath the concrete to find Creighton’s remains.
[...]

“When we finally came to those concluding moments where we realized we were going to have to pack up and leave without finding what we really wanted, it was very disappointing,” said Loveall. “It was disheartening because people had their heart in this search. It was not a task it was a mission and the mission was not complete. So we are saying thanks today for all the effort people put into this but this is by no means a conclusion to our mission.”

http://www.fox23.com/news/local/stor...-UcEs8w3Q.cspx