How a fatal blow, cover-up led to death of 2-year-old girl found dead in MS, police say

When the 3-year-old girl told relatives that her 2-year-old sister Nevaeh Allen was “in the forest,” no one knew what to make of it.

Days later, law enforcement revealed their narrative about Nevaeh’s disappearance, and it became clear what the girl meant.

After Nevaeh’s death — which allegedly happened after her mother, Lanaya Cardwell, 24, punched her — police say two other children in the household were brought along to a remote patch of woods in Mississippi while Nevaeh’s self-described stepfather disposed of her body.

Authorities found the child’s remains buried beneath trees by the bank of the Pearl River, making her the first of three Louisiana children to die that week at the hands of a parent.

The secret grave was one of many chilling details to surface in arrest records released last week by the Baton Rouge Police Department, which laid out a timeline of the girl’s death and disappearance.

For the public, the story began the afternoon of Sept. 24, with reports of a child missing from a Belaire neighborhood apartment.

Nevaeh’s distraught mother told investigators that her live-in boyfriend — 30-year-old Phillip Gardner — set the girl down for a nap that morning, only for her older siblings to return from school a few hours later to an empty apartment and an open door.

In an emotional television interview, Cardwell said the last time she saw her daughter was when Gardner drove her to work with Nevaeh and two other children in the car the morning the girl disappeared.

“I don’t know what could have happened, I don’t know what went wrong,” Cardwell told WAFB-TV that evening. “I wish I would have stayed home from work. I don’t know.”

A high-profile search ensued, spanning two states and involving nearly a dozen law enforcement units, including the FBI.

But affidavits accusing Cardwell and Gardner of murder say the tragedy began to unfold much earlier than Cardwell let on.

A fatal blow, a frantic cover-up

According to BRPD, the crime began to take shape hours before anyone reported Nevaeh missing.

Cardwell was in the bathroom preparing to go to work for the day, police say, when Nevaeh picked up her mom’s contact lenses; her mother responded by striking her daughter in the torso with a closed fist.

Arrest records go on to say that Nevaeh fell backward and hit her head on a cabinet before her mother “forcefully grabbed” her and took her to another room. Gardner later told police that from the next room, it sounded like “two adults fighting.”

Cardwell’s mother, Jessica Billiot, and younger brother, Casey Amacker, also said Gardner’s older children told them Cardwell shouted at the toddler.

“Lanaya got real mad about it and she was talking to Nevaeh like Nevaeh was a grown woman, saying ‘f--- you b----, you ain’t s---,’” Amacker said. “That’s what the kids was telling us.”

When Cardwell and Nevaeh emerged from the room, Gardner said the girl was crying and had a large bruise on her forehead.

He told investigators he then drove Cardwell to work, and when he returned to the apartment, the toddler refused to eat and complained about stomach pain.

She then lay down on the couch and fell asleep. Gardner said he was later unable to wake her, telling police he tried to resuscitate the girl.

When his attempts failed, he put Nevaeh in a suitcase and drove to southern Mississippi to bury her, ultimately placing her in a “makeshift grave deep in the woods.”

It’s possible, police say, that Nevaeh was unconscious but alive when Gardner placed her limp body in the suitcase.

A day before the child’s body was discovered, her father, Marcus Allen, who described Nevaeh as “the perfect 2-year-old,” told The Advocate he last saw his daughter two days before her disappearance, when he dropped her off to spend the rest of the week with Cardwell and Gardner. He was supposed to pick her up the following Sunday — the day Gardner was arrested for disposing of the girl’s remains.

Meanwhile, Billiot described her daughter’s relationship with Gardner as “toxic” and said it was often marked with violence. She recalled one incident where she witnessed Gardner “have a fit at” the toddler after she spilled a slime toy on the carpet.

Billiot said Gardner yelled at the girl and forced her to hold a vacuum as he attempted to make her clean up the mess.

Both Cardwell and Gardner face counts of second-degree murder.

The count was leveled against Gardner because police say he failed to help the girl after she complained of stomach pain and because the coroner was unable to determine whether Nevaeh was still alive after he stuffed her in the suitcase.

Despite the coroner’s initial findings, East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore III cautioned that final autopsy results can take weeks, adding that details known about the case may change as police continue their investigation.

“There are a lot of other pieces of potential evidence still out there,” Moore said. “We still have a long way to go.”

A tragic trend

Allen’s death was one of three child homicides to take place throughout the state in the span of a week.

On Sept. 28, Thibodaux resident Jake Guidry, 26, was arrested after he told police he allegedly hit his 11-month-old daughter, Zabria, “too hard,” killing her.

On Sept. 29, the same day BRPD announced Cardwell’s arrest, 33-year-old Shreveport resident Ureka Black allegedly threw her sons, 10-month-old Joshua and his 5-year-old brother, from the Cross Lake Bridge. The older child survived. Joshua did not.

A doctoral candidate in law and policy at Northeastern University and child safety advocate who spent 20 years working for the Louisiana State Police, including seven as part of the Louisiana Clearinghouse for Missing and Exploited Children, said the deaths highlight a need for more research on what leads parents to kill their offspring.

There’s typically a “confluence of factors” at play when a parent commits filicide, Stacey Pearson explained.

Those factors can include previous child abuse or neglect, domestic violence, poverty, the parents’ ages, mental health issues, or whether or not there have been multiple pregnancies in the family in a short period of time.

It’s an understudied phenomenon, Pearson said.

“It’s so complex,” she added, “We just don’t want to believe that parents can harm their children, and I think that prevents us from seeing the red flags.”

Referencing Nevaeh’s case, she noted that it’s not uncommon for parents who have killed their children to make false missing or abducted child reports in order to mislead the community and direct law enforcement attention elsewhere.

According to statistics released by the U.S. Department of Justice, about 7% of the nation’s 2,629 AMBER Alerts issued from 2006 to 2019 were determined to be hoaxes.

Pearson said this could be because it’s often easier for the public to believe a stranger took a child than to believe a parent would harm them. By way of example, she cited the case involving Nevada resident Taylor Nicholson, who told Las Vegas police in June that her 2-year-old son, Amari, was kidnapped, leading to an extensive search. Nicholson’s boyfriend later confessed to beating the boy to death.

In 2019, Another parent, Nakira Griner of New Jersey, told police her 23-month-old son, Daniel, was abducted. Daniel’s dismembered body was eventually found under a shed at the woman’s home and Griner was charged with murder.

Although the circumstances surrounding the state’s recent cases vary, Pearson said studying these situations closely and understanding potential warning signs may help prevent more deaths.

“You want families to be aware of a parent in crisis,” she said. “We can’t avert our eyes. As ugly as it is, as heartbreaking as it is, and as traumatic as it is, we have to look at this case and examine it in the hopes of preventing something like it in the future.”

This story was originally published October 7, 2021 at 5:50 AM.