Chicago Grandmother Found Guilty in Brutal Murder of 8-Year-Old Granddaughter

A Chicago woman was convicted of first-degree murder Thursday for the brutal, gruesome killing of her 8-year-old granddaughter, who was tied up and deprived of food and water for days. Suggested Reading Three Friends Were Headed To A Beyoncรฉ Concert, But One Dies On the Way. Guess What The Other Two Did Next? Our Fave…

A Chicago woman was convicted of first-degree murder Thursday for the brutal, gruesome killing of her 8-year-old granddaughter, who was tied up and deprived of food and water for days.

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According to the Associated Press, 55-year-old Helen Ford now faces life in prison without parole for the 2013 murder of Gizzell Ford, which, after the bench trial, Cook County, Ill., Circuit Judge Evelyn Clay called โ€œexceptionally brutal.โ€

โ€œThis murder was torture. That child suffered a slow and agonizing death,โ€ Clay said in the courtroom, according to the report. โ€œThat little body looked like it had been pulverized from head to toe. ... Her treatment [of Gizzell] was evil.โ€

AP notes that eight months before Gizzell was killed, a judge had placed her in the custody of her father, Andre Ford, an unemployed felon who was living with his mother because of a chronic degenerative disease. He was also charged in his daughterโ€™s murder but died in Cook County Jail in August 2014 while awaiting trial

Ford had argued that Gizzellโ€™s mother, Sandra Mercado, was homeless and didnโ€™t get their daughter to school regularly, according to the report. Mercado was trying to regain custody of her daughter around the time of her death. The mother has since filed a lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, claiming that a caseworker who had visited the home where Gizzell was living had ignored obvious signs of abuse.

People magazine reports that Gizzell kept a journal in which she detailed some of what she went through at the hands of her grandmother.

โ€œI know if I be good and do everything Iโ€™m told I wonโ€™t have to do punishments,โ€ Gizzell wrote, describing how she had been forced to squat for hours and told to stand in one place for โ€œan hour or two.โ€

The little girl was excitedly looking forward to the start of school in August so that she could be out of her house and away from her grandmother.

โ€œI am going to be a beautiful smart and good young lady,โ€ she wrote one day. โ€œI can do anything I put my smart mind to. People say Iโ€™m smart and courageous and beautiful.โ€

Her last entry was on July 11, 2013, when she wrote, โ€œI hate this life because Iโ€™m in super big trouble.โ€

Gizzell was dead the following day, and her body was discovered soon after in her grandmotherโ€™s trash-filled apartment. She had been strangled and badly beaten.

Cellphone video of Gizzellโ€™s abuse was played in court, showing Helen Ford berating the young girl for breaking rules while the little girl stood with a sock stuffed in her mouth.

Prosecutors said that Gizzell had been tied to a bed for days, denied food and water, and then punished when she tried to get a sip of water from a toilet.

It is believed that her father directed the attacks, while her grandmother carried out the cruel deeds.

โ€œ[Helen Ford] first broke her body, then she broke her spirit,โ€ Assistant Stateโ€™s Attorney Jennifer Coleman said, according to AP.

Fordโ€™s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Jennifer Hodel, argued that the woman had โ€œtoo much on her plate,โ€ with her sick son and other grandchildren, and only tied up Gizzell because the girl had tried to attack her father and a cousin and tried to kill herself by jumping out a window.

โ€œThat was the way Helen was trying to keep order, if you will, in that home,โ€ Hodel said. โ€œHelen was overwhelmed. She was overworked. She was unable to overcome what was on her plate.โ€

Read more at Fox News and People magazine.

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