In honor of Black History Month I’m profiling one African-American MP every day on this blog for the month of February. Today’s case is Zaden Alexander McKnight, a four-year-old boy who disappeared from Dayton, Ohio on March 25, 2014. Zaden went missing with his mother, Nichelle. Nichelle’s body was found near the Stillwater River two and a half weeks later. She’d been murdered.
Zaden is presumed murdered too, and the police are pretty sure what happened and who did it. Antwan Anderson, Nichelle’s ex-boyfriend, and Tonisha Harris, another woman Anderson had dated, are the prime suspects in the cases.
Neither of them have been charged in connection with the actual homicides, but Harris was imprisoned for using Nichelle’s bank card and later for evidence tampering, abuse of a corpse and failure to report a crime.
Antwan Anderson killed himself when the police came to arrest him. Apparently he did not want to go back to prison.
Tonisha Harris was sent to prison briefly for using Nichelle’s ATM cards and for abuse of a corpse, along with other minor charges. Since the police had her texts to Anderson planning the crime and how to get rid of Nichelle’s body, it is not clear to me why she was not charged with more. But juries do not like to convict women.
Zaden’s body has never been found. The river was exceptionally high at the time, and he was so little, poor little guy.
I knew Nichelle as a co-worker. She was a great person, and so was little Zaden. They deserved better than a cruel murder plot.