Shockley was reported missing in October. The case is now a homicide investigation, with her mother, Jerice Hunter, as the prime focus of the investigation -- police suspect she murdered the girl and dumped her body in a trash can in Tempe.
Authorities say at least 40 people from agencies including the Glendale Police Department, the FBI, and the Child Abduction Response Team, will be at Butterfield Landfill in Mobile everyday until the search is complete.
Investigators have narrowed down a 180x200-foot area of the landfill where they suspect Shockley's remains might be. The area is 20 feet deep, which amounts to about 6,000 tons of trash investigators will have to sift through.
Jhessye was reported missing on October 11. Since then, Hunter's played
the role of a concerned, grieving mother. However, the Glendale P.D.'s
investigation revealed that Hunter served time in prison for abusing her
other children. Detectives also determined that Hunter locked the girl
in a closet for what may have been weeks before reporting her missing.
According to court records obtained by New Times,
two of Jhessye's siblings, who are now in foster care, told their
foster parents about some of the abuse Jhessye received at the hands of
Hunter, who spent four years in a California prison for child abuse --
and scolded us last month for asking whether she hurt her daughter .
Jhessye's
13-year-old sister told her foster parents that several weeks before
the little girl was reported missing, Hunter came home and found her
watching TV with a boy from the neighborhood. The girl told her foster
parents -- and later police -- that Hunter called Jhessye a "ho" and
dragged her into a bedroom where the sister could hear Jhessye screaming
and crying.
Following
the apparent beating, Hunter kept the child in a closet. Her sister
told police she had to bring the 5-year-old water when Hunter was out so
she wouldn't become dehydrated. She would let the her out when Hunter
was gone, but quickly put Jhessye back when Hunter got home to keep her
from getting in trouble.
The sister also told investigators that
she saw bruises and cuts on Jhessye's face and body while she was kept
in the closet, and that her eyes were black and only slightly open.
The
13-year-old also told police that her sister's hair had been pulled out
and that she didn't look alive. The older sibling described Jhessye as
looking like a "zombie" and that the closet she was kept in smelled like
"dead people" and was like a "grave."
All of the alleged abuse
happened weeks before Hunter called police on October 11. The last time
anyone saw Jhessye alive was September 22, which was the last time
records show her attending school. Her sisters say they never saw
Jhessye the day her mother reported her missing, when Hunter told police
that the older siblings were watching the girl as she ran errands.
On
October 9, Hunter bought a bottle of bleach at a Walgreens. She then
cleaned the entire apartment and scrubbed her shoes that were in the
closet with Jhessye with bleach, the sister told police.
Court
records also show that Hunter was suspected of child abuse in April, and
a report was filed. It's unclear whether Child Protective Services was
alerted about the reported abuse.
Hunter has made sobbing
attempts to declare her innocence since the day she reported her
daughter missing more than two weeks after she was last seen alive.
She's blamed everyone from the media to the Glendale Police Department
for not locating her daughter. When we spoke to her, Hunter went
ballistic when we asked if she had hurt her daughter.
"I really
think they should take the focus off of me and quit asking people --
wasting time -- if I did something to my daughter," Hunter told us last
month. "They should quit holding my babies hostage and trying to get
them to say something [about what happened to Jahessye]. [Authorities
are] telling me 'your kids aren't saying anything.' It's been 13 days.
What do they expect my babies to say that they haven't already said?
[CPS] don't wanna hear 'we love our mama, we wanna go home we want our
mommy' -- they don't wanna hear that. They won't let me see them because
they don't want them running into my arms. They don't wanna hear them
scream 'mommy.'"
Hunter was arrested last month on child-abuse
charges but wasn't officially charged because the Maricopa County
Attorney's Office didn't want to create a double-jeopardy situation if
police could gather enough evidence to later charge her with murder.
