Beatrice Louise Routh was 10 when she disappeared from Jones Park on the Gulfport waterfront on August 1, 1991. Her mother Tammy Giles Routh had been traveling with a small group of relatives and friends, living in motels and the family van while seeking work and housing. That afternoon Beatrice was allowed to approach a stranger, 34-year-old Donald Leroy Evans, who had been staying around Gulf Coast shelters and doing odd jobs.

Hours later Beatrice was gone. Investigators say Evans drove west into Louisiana and, according to his later admissions, sexually assaulted and strangled the child with a length of white cotton rope, then kept the body concealed in his vehicle. Evans was arrested in Tangipahoa Parish on August 5, 1991; he led officers to a wooded area in southern Mississippi about ten days after the disappearance where Beatrice’s nude remains were found.

Evans pleaded guilty in federal court to kidnapping on August 19, 1991, and later was tried in Mississippi, where a jury convicted him of capital murder and sexual battery and sentenced him to death. Tammy Giles Routh was charged as an accessory to sexual battery on allegations she permitted Beatrice to go with Evans.