The mother of a 13-year-old girl whose body was found wrapped up in a trunk will face criminal charges – with prosecutors claiming the corpse was kept at her home for a year.
Geanna Durham’s body was discovered at a landfill site in Oklahoma City in February this year, but documents filed this week state she is believed to have died as far back as May 2014.
It remains unclear how the teenager died, but investigators say they do not have enough evidence to proceed with murder charges.
Prosecutors believe Geanna Durham died in May 2014, but her body was not found until February this year
Geanna’s mother Reshawnda is accused of failing to report discovered remains, and unauthorized removal of a dead body
The landfill site where Geanna’s body was found. The 13-year-old is believed to have died in May 2014
Staff at the storage center were alleged to have been told to put the body in a dumpster before it could be found.
Geanna’s mother, Reshawnda Durham, 29, is accused of moving her daughter’s body to Scott Street Mini Storage in late April or early May 2015.
She has been charged with failing to report discovered remains, and unauthorized removal of a dead body.
Her friend and landlord, Walter Ray Pelfrey, 76, faces charges of unlawful removal of a body and being an accessory after the fact. He also faces an alternative count of desecration of a human corpse.
Walter Ray Pelfrey faces charges of unlawful removal of a body and being an accessory after the fact
Investigators have been unable to determine why Geanna died
He is accused of misleading detectives by saying Durham was not using a storage space at the facility, and ordering that the body was removed.
Deputy Attorney General Megan Tilly told News9: ‘It is our belief that Geanna Durham died at her home in May of 2014 and we believe that the body may have stayed at that residence for approximately a year before it was moved to a storage unit sometime in late April or May of 2015.’
But Tilley said a Medical Examiner’s report after the discovery of the skeletonized corpse has not been able to identify a cause of death.
It is thought Geanna’s body was kept at her mother’s Oklahoma City home for a year after her death, according to prosecutors
The landfill site in Oklahoma City where the teenager’s body was found after being put in a dumpster
‘We do not feel at this time we have enough evidence to proceed with murder charges,’ she said.
Durham allegedly told police her daughter had moved out of state to be with her father in Florida, but when contacted by investigators he said he had not seen Geanna for more than a decade.
An employee allegedly told investigators that Durham had a storage unit for around a year, and Pelfrey ordered it to be cleaned out and her name removed from records before police searched it.
Geanna’s body was moved to a storage facility by her mother a year after she died, prosecutors allege
It is further claimed that Pelfrey ordered the body to be put in a dumpster after it was found by a member of staff.
The body and trunk were recovered from the Spencer landfill.
Tilly added: ‘Of course it is tragic and of course there is so much that we don’t know which only compounds the tragedy.
‘How she died, why the death was concealed. We hope that we will be able to find the answers to these questions but we don’t know if we will.’
If convicted, Durham could face seven years in prison, while Pelfrey could be jailed of up to nine-and-a-half years.
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