Dad charged with murder a decade after child’s skeleton was found, Alabama cops say

A decade-old child murder has been solved with DNA testing, and it’s the girl’s father who is implicated in the brutal killing, according to the Opelika Police Department in Alabama.

The arrest of Lamar Vickerstaff, 50, on a felony murder charge was announced Jan. 19, just days before the cold case marked its 11th anniversary.

It was on Jan. 28, 2012, that Opelika police discovered skeletal remains in the Brookhaven Trailer Park. Opelika is 110 miles southeast of Birmingham.

The victim was known only as “Jane Doe” until December, when investigators discovered her name was Amore Joveah Wiggins, police said in a news release.

“An autopsy was performed and notated fractures to her skull, arms, legs, shoulders, and ribs; totaling more than 15 individual fractures that were attributed to blunt force trauma. These injuries all had evidence of healing and occurred sometime prior to her death,” police said.

There was also evidence the girl was “malnourished and blind in her left eye due to a fracture in her eye socket,” officials said.

A specific cause of death has not been released, but the girl died “between the summer of 2010 to 2011.”

Investigators credited advances in DNA testing with allowing them to do a genealogical profile of the girl in 2022. That led to her father, an Opelika native who lives in Florida, officials said.

“In December of 2022, Opelika detectives traveled to the Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Fla., where Mr. Vickerstaff is currently stationed, to notify him of his daughter’s death. During the meeting Mr. Vickerstaff did not provide investigators with any information on the identity of Jane Doe,” officials said.

“Detectives then met with Mr. Vickerstaff’s wife, Ruth Vickerstaff ... (who) advised detectives she did not know his daughter or who may be the mother of Jane Doe.”

DNA testing also provided “several possible matches” for the girl’s biological mother, and one of them was 37-year-old Sherry Wiggins, a Norfolk, Virginia, native now living in Maryland, officials said.

Wiggins provided the girl’s name during a December interview and revealed she had been born in January 2006, officials said.

“Wiggins provided documentation showing that Lamar and Ruth Vickerstaff obtained legal and physical custody of her daughter in 2009, at which time her visitation with Amore was suspended,” officials said. “Wiggins also provided documents indicating that she has continuously paid child support to Lamar Vickerstaff since 2009.”

Investigators learned the girl had not been enrolled in schools where the Vickerstaffs lived, “nor was she reported as a missing person,” officials said.

Lamar and Ruth Vickerstaff were arrested Jan. 17 and remain in Florida awaiting extradition to Lee County, Alabama, officials said. Ruth Vickerstaff is charged with failure to report a missing child, officials said.

This story was originally published January 19, 2023 at 3:17 PM with the headline "Dad charged with murder a decade after child’s skeleton was found, Alabama cops say."