HOUSTON — A woman charged with capital murder in the death of a 12-year-old Houston boy who disappeared Christmas Eve acknowledges dumping his badly burned body in a ditch but won't say whether she killed him, police said Thursday.
Mona Yvette Nelson, 44, who served time in prison for aggravated robbery more than two decades ago, was arrested Wednesday in the abduction and slaying of Jonathan Foster. She was jailed without bond, and authorities said she didn't attend a Thursday morning court hearing because of medical problems. Court records did not list an attorney for her.
Foster, who had been left alone, was taken from his home on Christmas Eve, killed and burned. Medical examiners used dental records to identify him, police said.
Investigators said they believe Nelson, a maintenance worker with welding expertise, took the child to her home, killed him and burned the body. Neither a specific cause of death nor a motive has been identified. Police initially considered the boy's disappearance a missing juvenile case but it soon became a homicide investigation.
A passing motorist spotted what looked like a body in a ditch Tuesday along a toll road feeder road in north Houston and several miles from the missing boy's home. A security camera outside a manufacturing plant captured an image of a silver pickup truck stopping and a woman dumping a body. Police questioning Nelson found she owned such a truck. Confronted with the video, "She admitted that it was her truck, was at that ditch and was the person that put the body in that ditch," said Capt. David Gott, chief of the police homicide division.
But, he said, she wouldn't say whether she killed the child.
"She has still not confessed," Gott said.
The slain boy's mother, Angela Davis, said she met Nelson only once, on the night of her son's disappearance. Nelson was friends with Angela Davis' roommate, Sharon Ennamorato.
Davis said Nelson stopped by her house Christmas Eve night, telling her she had come there that morning looking for Ennamorato, and Foster had answered the door wearing no shirt and it seemed like someone was in the house with him.
Ennamorato described Nelson as a friend who used to work in maintenance at an apartment complex across the street from the home.
Davis had moved into the home with Ennamorato on Dec. 14, after she and her son's stepfather split up. Both Davis and Ennamorato had to work on Friday morning. Foster was to stay home alone until his mother was expected to return in the early afternoon. When she returned, he was gone.
Detectives said they had a large amount of evidence from Nelson's home tying her to the slaying, including twine similar to that found with the child's body.
They also found in a trash can "very strong evidence that something had taken place," detective Mike Miller said.
Court records show that in 1984, Nelson was charged with aggravated robbery and pleaded guilty in exchange for 10 years' probation. Her probation was revoked in 1991, and she was sent to prison. She served just over three years and was paroled in October 1994, said Jason Clark, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman.
In 1997, Nelson pleaded guilty and served 30 days in jail for a bad check charge in Daingerfield in East Texas. In 2002, she spent another 30 days in jail in McKinney, a Dallas suburb, after pleading guilty to a marijuana charge. Three years later, she spent two months in jail and a year on probation for making a terroristic threat to another woman and misdemeanor criminal mischief in Mount Vernon, in Northeast Texas. Detectives said Nelson implicated others in Jonathan's death but they've have found no indication she had help. They are checking to see whether she may be involved in other similar cases.
"Do I believe she did it before?" Miller said. "Yeah, I do."