One day, Rachael Norton will sit down and tell her daughters Trinity and Faith about their big sister, Destiny.
"I got everything. I saved all the newspaper articles. When they get old enough I'm going to bring it out of storage. Explain to them about their sister," Norton said. "I'm going to tell them about her and how much she loved them very much and explain to them what happened to her. Not all the details, just enough."
In an interview with the Deseret Morning News, Rachael Norton spoke about her family's life since Destiny's death, the recent conviction and sentencing of Craig Roger Gregerson, the man who killed her, and the void caused by her death.
Destiny was known for a beaming smile that revealed a signature row of silver-capped teeth. She wanted to become a veterinarian. Her family says she wanted to buy her mom a house and her dad a motorcycle. She loved her sister Trinity and was excited for the birth of her new sister.
Rachael Norton says she wants her two daughters to know that.
"Let them know that they had a big sister that loved them very much," she said.
Gregerson's crime
Gregerson, 20, admitted luring Destiny from her back yard near 700 South and 500 East last July. He told an FBI agent that he talked the 5-year-old girl into coming into his apartment.
"Once inside Gregerson's home, D.N. wanted to leave and became vocal," Salt Lake City Police detective Catherine Schoney wrote in an affidavit filed with a search warrant. "Gregerson put his hand over D.N.'s mouth and squeezed. D.N. went limp and Gregerson laid her body on the floor."
Police said that Gregerson took Destiny's body into the basement of his apartment and sexually assaulted it.
Eight days after a massive volunteer search was launched, Destiny's body was found wrapped in garbage bags, plastic packing tape and stuffed in a plastic storage bin in Gregerson's basement.
She was about 50 feet from where she vanished.
On Dec. 4, Gregerson pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and child kidnapping in a deal that spared him the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
"You have every right to hate me, every right to want me dead and every right to never forgive me," Gregerson wrote in a letter to the Nortons. "I take full responsibility for your daughters (sic) death. But her death was not the worst part, what I did after she was dead was unexcusable, sick and disgusting."
Gregerson said he hates himself for what he did and is in pain "every day because your daughter is dead by my actions."
He closed the handwritten letter by saying he is sorry.
"We're glad that it's over and we know he ain't going to get out," Norton said of the plea deal. "If you go with the death penalty, it takes years and years and years. We didn't want that."
Others feel Gregerson got off too easy.
"I do think he deserved the death penalty. I think anybody who harms a child deserves something worse than life in prison," said Jeannie Hill, a family friend of the Nortons. "But I am glad we've got resolution and that he's not going to be walking the streets anymore."
Destiny's mother said she didn't want to hear all of the gruesome details and didn't want to relive them over and over again in court.
"We want to keep her memory as clean as we can," Norton said, praising the FBI and police for keeping the family updated on developments in the case before they would hear them in the news.
A community's love
The outpouring of love and support from the community has been overwhelming, Norton said. When Destiny was found dead, the trees outside the family's home were surrounded by stuffed animals, balloons, candles, cards and notes of sympathy.
"Pictures that people have drawn and painted for us, they're all over my front room. She's definitely going to be remembered," she said.
The stuffed animals filled up an entire room. There were so many that Rachael Norton took a few for her children and donated the rest to Primary Children's Medical Center.
"We figured they needed to go to good use," she said.
Hundreds of people turned out in the hot July weather, searching through alleys, looking in garbage cans, knocking on doors and taping up fliers with Destiny's smiling face.
Members of the community grew to love Destiny, even in death.
"The community came to feel in many ways like Destiny was theirs as well," Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson told the Nortons at the little girl's funeral.
The frantic search for Destiny also reunited the Nortons with their parents.
"I ran into my father; I hadn't seen him in three years. My mom, I hadn't seen since I was 17," she said. "Rick's too. He hasn't seen his family since he was, like, 15."
There is also another family — the people who grew up with Rick and Rachael on the streets. At the time Destiny was kidnapped, the Nortons were living in a home with several other people. At one time, they were all homeless and were trying to bring themselves up in the world.
With their tattoos, their piercings and their unusual clothing, they were looked down on by many people in the early days of the frantic search.
"It was pretty bumming to see how people would react to a bunch of homeless kids needing help," Destiny's uncle, Peter Brooks, said.
After getting public support from the families of other kidnapped children — including the family of Elizabeth Smart — Brooks said it appeared that people put aside their judgments.
Even without the volunteers, the street family put in hundreds of hours searching. They willingly went to the Salt Lake City Police Department to be questioned.
Hill called the search the "worst week of my life," but she said the desperate days had a unifying effect.
"I think it made our family closer in some ways," she said. "Just like all families, family members get grudges against others because of stupid stuff. A lot of the drama that we had before is gone now," she said.
At Gregerson's sentencing, members of that family were also in the courtroom. Some of them continue to live in the home where Destiny vanished, believing that the "bad guy" is gone.
A difficult Christmas
The Nortons are trying to move on with their lives, with a gaping hole that Destiny had filled.
"They seem like they're doing OK, except for the whole time of the year thing," Brooks said. "It's their first year without her and her birthday. Add all that up and it's just not making it any easier."
On Nov. 30 — what would have been Destiny's sixth birthday — the Nortons went to her grave in Holladay and placed some roses there.
"We're trying to get Christmas situated this year. It just kind of sucks a little bit 'cause Destiny's not with us," Norton said.
Just weeks after Destiny was found, Rachael Norton gave birth to her daughter Faith. The name was based on one that Destiny herself had suggested.
The family has since moved to a home in Salt Lake County.
"We just moved far away" is all Norton wants to say.
As her husband, Rick, said after Gregerson's sentencing, they are trying to "take care of our other children."
Rick Norton is heartbroken over the death of his daughter, family friends say.
"He'll never be the same," Hill said. "Neither of them will ever be the same."
During the sentencing, Rick Norton's body shook as he cried. He frantically wiped tears from his eyes as his wife spoke to the judge about the loss of Destiny.
"He's gotten a little bit more emotional with the children," Rachael Norton said. "They're not allowed to go nowhere, really. He can't let them out of his eyesight. He's gotten really protective over the children."
She said her husband has just gone back to work, but it's a seasonal job that will soon end, and he'll have to look for more work.
For now, the family is focused on providing a Christmas for 1-year-old Trinity and newborn Faith.
Earlier this month, the Nortons took their daughters to see Santa Claus for the first time.
"Faith was all for it. She was holding his finger," Rachael Norton said, chuckling. "Trinity was looking at him like, 'Who are you?"'
E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com