Krystle Tanner, seen here in a March 12, 2012, booking photo, and her mother were convicted Tuesday of kidnapping Miguel Morin in 2004 when he was 8 months old and hiding him for eight years.(Photo: San Augustine Sheriff's Office)
By Michael Winter, USA TODAY
An East Texas woman and her mother have been convicted of kidnapping a
Houston boy when he was an infant and hiding him for eight years before
police found him.
In Tuesday's verdict, Krystle Tanner, 27, and
her mother, Gloria Walker, 51, were found guilty of kidnapping Miguel
Morin in 2004. Walker also was convicted of causing injury to a child,
and Tanner was found guilty of reckless injury to a child.
Walker
could be sentenced to life in prison, while Tanner faces a possible
20-year term. The same jury in San Augustine is deliberating their
punishment.
Prosecutors said Tanner used to babysit the child and
took him from his Houston apartment complex when he was 8 months old.
She and Walker then renamed the boy Jaquan, moved around and kept him
out of school to avoid being discovered.
Authorities began
investigating Tanner in April 2010 after her newborn son tested positive
for marijuana. She and her mother were arrested in March 2012.
Jurors
rejected defense arguments that the boy's biological mother had
actually sold him to Tanner or that it was a child-custody case, as a
Houston police investigator testified.
Miguel has been placed with
a Houston foster family that has taken care of his four siblings for
nearly 10 years under an agreement with their parents.