Welcome to One Black Woman’s Blog

Hi there.

I’m known as blksista on the pages of DailyKos, Jack and Jill Politics, and Booman Tribune, among others. If you don’t readily know who I am, you probably heard that I wrote a series of blog articles about the drowning of New Orleans, my birthplace. It took a long time for me to find my voice blogging, and these articles basically made my rep on DK.

I finally realized that I wanted my own blog to continue to talk about New Orleans, black people, culture, gossip/public intellectualism, politics, Buddhism, journalism and ethics, looksism, cooking, fiction, history, womanism, writing, race, fashion, music and other topics of interest during this rather fractious time in American life and the life of the Republic.

I’ll also be posting pieces of my essays and fiction for people to read and enjoy. I can accept thoughtful feedback and criticism.

Finally, I would like to say that I have a patron saint of blogging, and that, for all intents and purposes, is the late Steve Gilliard. I discovered Steve’s blog while I was living on 132nd Street in Harlem, New York between 2003-2005. Through him, I got a real introduction to New York politics. We talked privately online here and there, but I never got to meet him. I’m sure we even passed by each other while at I-HOP without knowing it. I am so sorry he is gone, because he would have truly enjoyed seeing Obama in the White House, and his former nemesis Steele in the dog house as chairperson of the GOP. I know that I could never be as audacious or as knowledgeable as Steve was during his short career, but he did teach me a few things. One: to be yourself and two: to say what is real. Then you’ll never be alone.

If you like my work, if you like visiting This Black Sista’s Page, and if you can contribute $5, $10 or more, I may be able to weather some crises and stay afloat. You can use your bank account, Visa, MasterCard, AmerEx with the PayPal button to the top right.

Update: BART Cop Trial for Shooting of Oscar Grant Sent to Los Angeles, Not San Diego

Grant’s family is counting this as a victory against the defendant’s attorney, who wanted the trial sent to a jury from a more conservative area like San Diego County, and not from an area like Los Angeles County with a jury pool that includes more moderates and liberals, and more working and middle-class people of color and blacks.

“I really wanted to jump for joy,” said Cephus Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant III, the 22-year-old Hayward man whom Mehserle fatally shot early Jan. 1 on the platform at BART’s Fruitvale station in Oakland. “The family is ecstatic.”

More from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Grant family attorney John Burris called the ruling “the most important decision that will be made in this case other than the verdict.” If the case had been sent to San Diego County, Burris said, “Mehserle would have walked.”

From the East Bay Express:

Judge Morris Jacobson appeared to select Los Angeles, which is more closely allied demographically to Alameda County, because it would be cheaper. Although San Diego County officials said they could be ready for a trial sooner, they said they would need extra funds from Alameda County to pay for extra security and they needed an East Bay judge to come to San Diego to try the case. Los Angeles officials said they don’t have those problems, although they said they won’t be ready for trial until later next year.

Johannes Mehserle’s attorney, Michael Rains, objected that a year’s wait for a trial in Los Angeles would severely impact his client who is undergoing financial hardships and is having difficulty even finding a job while free on bail.

“A fellow facing murder charges doesn’t just go out and find a job,” Rains said. “This is an enormous hardship on my client.”

Rains also argued that having the case tried in Los Angeles could hurt his client because of the past incidents there involving police brutality.

[...]

“We will be going back to the boiling cauldron,” Rains said. “It is possible that this case ignites that boiling cauldron.”

Yeah, but it wouldn’t be L.A. catching fire but Oaktown. And that would only happen if the DAs blew the case. Of course, Mehserle should have thought about those things before he pulled the trigger on a prostrate Oscar Grant. I don’t think even six months more would be enough time for Mehserle to get a new job. If he’s thinking of getting a position in law enforcement, I think that he is fresh out of luck in that area. Even if he tried to get a desk job, he’s notorious.

Compared to someone like the brother who brought down Major Hasan earlier this month, and who had only discharged his weapon that day in 25 years of law enforcement, Mehserle seems immature to be using weapons at all.

I was hoping that it would be L.A., too for the family’s and for the city’s sake. There is still a possibility that justice will be served in Oscar Grant’s case.

Friday Night Music, November 20: Shirley Bassey, “Diamonds Are Forever,” 1971

She wasn’t just known for singing the theme song to Goldfinger. Shirley Bassey is just about the only singer to have been asked to sing a theme song for three James Bond movies. I liked this particularly for the last stanza, when she sings, Diamonds are forever, forever, forever. Chills. I do mean chills. I used to turn my radio up when she would come on the wavelength, the days when pop music was still played on AM radio. This girl still has a powerful voice at the age of 72.

Born in Cardiff, Wales from an interracial marriage between an Efik Nigerian seaman and a Yorkshire-born white woman, Bassey identifies as Welsh, the same nationality as Tom Jones. So she was lumped together with the other Brits when they stormed onto the shores of the United States in 1963–The British Invasion, so to speak. She’s been active for over 50 years as a singer. Bassey has been married twice, but the fathers of her two daughters remain unknown. She and her second husband also adopted a grand-nephew. Several years back, though, the body of her youngest daughter Samantha was found in the Avon River, an apparent suicide. Bassey steadfastly refuses to believe that Samantha’s death was self-inflicted.

Shirley Bassey was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in December 1999. Last week, she released a new album called The Performance. The guest performers include Gary Barlow, K.T. Tunstall, Manic Street Preachers, Pet Shop Boys, John Barry, Kaiser Chiefs, and Don Black.

Enjoy!

Shaniya Davis: The Details of Her Rape and Death Emerge

I figured this was what Mario Andrette McNeill did with Shaniya Davis. He choked her to death and tried to hide the evidence of his crimes under bags of deer carcasses. No wonder he had that flicker of a smile on his face as he was being photographed and videoed. He was famous, even notorious now. No wonder he and her mother, Antoinette Davis, are separated from the jail population for their own protection. That there is honor even among thieves, so to speak, says a lot about how heinous a crime that has been committed.

I am going to say this: black people did not resist slavery in order to visit this kind of thing on our people. We saw so much and were probably reeling from so much even after slavery officially ended. And in some cases, it got worse for us. That’s exactly why our ancestors didn’t talk too much about their memories of slavery, of the days during and after Reconstruction, and of second-class wage slavery and American apartheid to their children and grandchildren; it was too painful on which to linger.

That even as a child of 10, 11 or 12, you could fall prey to a master, a master’s son or other relative, a white manager or worker. Or, to a master’s archaic ideas about multiplying his “herd” or “flock” by putting a ‘tween black girl with a fully-adult black male like horses or mules.

A girl’s feelings about who they are aren’t that well-developed, no matter how people may argue that the current culture has sexualized and desensitized children into thinking that they are mature. Now imagine a girl child of five being forcibly, wrenchingly introduced into that adult world of carnality. She’s not able to process mentally, much less physically, what in the world is happening to her. Shaniya could have sustained massive internal injuries during the rape. Had Shaniya had survived, she may not have been able to bear children. This isn’t anything new either. We have the testimonies of black women like Billie Holiday and Maya Angelou–Holiday and Angelou through autobiographies and memoirs–who were raped as baby girls. It’s just that simple–and horrifying to explain. Those stories were also meant as warnings, not just protest literature. It happened to us; it was not our fault.

Somehow, though, by not teaching and talking about this legacy–making it real beyond simply a school assignment–and by not repeating the poison of self-abnegation, we’ve got some generations who know no limits to dealing despair and cruelty to each other. So slavery too is back with a vengeance. Some 100,000 children of every color between 10-14 years old are sex slaves, some being pimped by their parents, the majority selling themselves on the street as runaways or being pimped by other adults. And there is indeed a market. We know there is, but it could be as distant from our minds like the modern slave trade in Africa. We need to agitate here so we can have some understanding of what is going on over there. A mother, who looks like a denizen from a bad dream, to sell her own daughter for some coke rocks? I thought that I had seen the last of this kind of thing in the Eighties and Nineties.

Even wearing McNeill and Davis wearing their hair in dreadlocks gives a bad name to the hair style. I don’t think Marley meant for his Rasta dreads to be imitative of dope fiends, but of released-from-mental-and-spiritual-bondage, proud-of-who-they are and lionized black people. But there they are on these two wastes of blood and semen. This too is how a legacy is obscured and misused. When I admired a brother’s dreads in New York at a subway station, he cautioned me about touching them because he considered them as nothing less than a sacrament. I had heard about people like this, but when confronted with it, I had to respect him. My curiosity could go no farther. I could not lay hands on him, or anything on his person, without his permission for whatever reason. There are limits about treating things and people that you don’t understand with disrespect, or robbing them of life.

But people like McNeill and Davis feel nothing. They look like they don’t give a flying you know what. All they feel is the rock talking through them. Antoinette in particular seems zombified. And so now, because of their own dreadful choices, they don’t even have their own lives any more because they have robbed this child of life. Did Antoinette feel nothing about the child while she was in her womb at all? What did she feel when she gave the girl to McNeill? Did she really think that she could have sanitized the girl’s absence with her father? All this because of Antoinette’s drug habit. Like I said, the bust in the summer could have been the reason why. Because the cops got his stash while McNeill was living with her sister, Antoinette must have owed him. Did he use a gun or just his physical strength against the mother in order to get “paid”?

Shaniya reminds me of my brother’s girls, my biracial nieces Tasha and her sister when they were little babies and toddlers. I can only look at their photographs as they were when they were five, and shake my head.

Those New Breast Cancer Guidelines: Keep Doing What YOU Are Doing Right

This episode just goes to show how much we are on our own as it comes to our own bodies: how we perceive them and how we heal them.

Women all over the country must have uttered, arrrrgggghhhh! yesterday, on hearing about the new guidelines for getting a mammogram, basically that women should begin screenings at age 50, not age 40 and get them every two years, not every year. Frankly, though, each individual woman is different.

“That is, the likelihood of having a false positive test with all the attendant anxiety, the additional imaging tests, perhaps even leading to biopsy that may have been unnecessary,” said Dr. Diana Petitti of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Major medical groups still recommend mammograms under 50 and worry this new advice may confuse patients.

“The worst outcome for this study would be for women to throw up their arms and say, ‘well, I’m not going to get screened at all,’” said the American Cancer Society’s Len Lichtenfeld.

They argue the government puts more emphasis on computer models than real patients.

“We’re not satisfied at this point that the approach that they used is sufficient and adequate to discard a proven way of saving lives from breast cancer,” Lichtenfeld said.

Sabrina Singletary’s 41 and says she’ll still get a mammogram every year.

But with the government now recommending against it it’s unclear if insurance will pay.

I didn’t panic. I have paternal aunts who are being treated for breast cancer. Which means that I am already alerted to the danger. I’m the next one on the fast track to have breast cancer. Then again, I may not, but I am not taking any chances. I self-examine myself every other month. I know what a lump feels like. One evening, someone came to see us at the women’s residence hall I once lived in during the Nineties to talk about breast cancer. She passed to us nearly accurate plastic representations of breasts that included abnormalities. The “cancerous” lump felt crinkly, hard…and scary. That’s what I look for every other month.

PBS Frontline Has a Documentary on Neda Agha-Soltan ندا آقا سلطان

I’m watching this PBS investigative documentary on Neda Agha-Soltan and the Twitter Revolt in Iran in Madison, and I thought I would like to share this information with those who visited my blog this spring at the height of the unrest after the disputed election.

PBS, for those of you who don’t know, stands for Public Broadcasting System. It is the educational and cultural network in the United States.

Here is the link, people. It is called A Death in Tehran. It’s telling the story of Neda for the benefit of concerned Americans who want to understand what happened, and to learn more about what is still happening in Iran. Please do see it, talk about it, and share this with your friends worldwide, and let us know what the documentary didn’t get right or didn’t talk about here or at the Frontline site.

For Neda.

A (Gay, Hate) Murder in Puerto Rico

I got this news via Feministe from TowleRoad. It is not, repeat is NOT being covered by the cable/network news organizations at all. Why? Because (1) it’s a hate crime, reminiscent of the Black Dahlia sex murder in Los Angeles in the Forties (which by its nature WAS a hate crime against women); and (2) it occurred in Puerto Rico, a territory, a “commonwealth” if you will, that could also be called a colony of the United States. Christopher Pagan who is reporting on this case is updating the situation as it occurs at the link below.

At Last Night’s Vigil for Shaniya Davis

Okay, this is a better video than the earlier one from the Associated Press that I posted. Apparently, the Associated Press took this from the local channels and chopped it up for its purposes. I know this is the biggest thing for these news outlets in a long while. This also includes footage of Shaniya’s half-sister, who was interviewed by Nancy Grace last night.

Bradley Lockhart, shown off his head and supported by friends, family, and members of his church at this vigil attended by dozens of grieving parents, grandparents, strangers and volunteers who searched for the child, apparently has been in both the black and white communities in this part of North Carolina. On Nancy Grace last night, Lockhart’s older, teen daughter looked biracial as well and her voice had the cadences of Southern black language. He’s what one might call a white brother or an honorary brother. He admires black people; he admires black women. Openly.

Being hurt to the heart by the death of his little daughter doesn’t make him a weak man. Not by halves.

Despite my misgivings: that he gave Shaniya back to her mom without checking up and finding that drug bust three months ago at the mobile home, he deserves our respect for loving and keeping his children, and in particular, his little daughter Shaniya. And our prayers for him and his family.

It doesn’t mean that he, for being white, is better than most black men. Let’s say that he was better than most men in his small part of Fayetteville, NC. And better than most white men in the country.

Shaniya Davis Has Been Found Dead (w/Updates)

Shaniya Davis could have been someone special in her own way, all by herself. Instead, she's fodder for Nancy Grace (Courtesy: CNN)

UPDATES

The little girl was found about 100 feet from Highway 87.  In other words, she was dumped along the road like trash, half buried in a shallow grave.

Her mother will be charged with sex trafficking today. Meanwhile, ABC News throws open a window on what this evil practice is in the United States. There are estimates that upwards to 100,000 children are being pimped to adults, many by their own parents. While the majority are between 12-14 years old when they are initially offered up, it is rare to find children under the age of ten prostituted.

To me, the discovery of Shaniya’s favorite blanket, covered in feces and found in a neighbor’s garbage can, takes on a greater significance as to what she suffered.

The police are awaiting confirmation from the FBI before they charge Mario Andrette McNeill with murder. Naturally, the child will have to be autopsied. The jurisdiction no longer remains with Fayetteville, which lies in another county. The body was found in Lee County.

I have no pity for either McNeill or the mother, Antoinette Davis. They are going to have to be isolated from the general population of their respective jails/prisons if they want to stay alive. Child molesters are the lowest of the low, and as I said before, women’s institutions are full of mothers or would-be mommies who would jump Davis and beat the hell out of her before she could say hello.

Why couldn’t she have left the little girl with Bradley Lockhart? I guess that was too good a fate for a child of hers.

—–

It was just announced seven minutes ago.

More information coming beyond this:

SANFORD, NC (WTVD) — Fayetteville police said Monday they have found the body of missing 5-year-old Shaniya Davis.

The child’s remains were located in an area bordered by Highway 87 south and Walker Road – just south of Sanford – during a second day of searching.

There ARE no words. Please pray for little Shaniya, and for her other missing and abused “brothers and sisters” who have been disappeared.

Shaniya Davis: It’s Official; The Cops are Looking For a Body

Scores of volunteers are combing the area with police. Poor baby:

The Endangered/Missing poster for Shaniya Davis, put out by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (Courtesy: Examiner.com)

Police searching for 5-year-old Shaniya Davis in a wooded area off N.C. 87 near Sanford say they are looking for a body.

Based on “reliable information,” they believe her body may have been dumped off Walker Road near its intersection with the highway, said police spokeswoman Theresa Chance.

About 250 people and two helicopters are searching both sides of Walker Road near where it intersects with N.C. 87. They include police and sheriff’s deputies from Fayetteville, Sanford and Lee County, fire department personnel and civilians who live in the area and who know the woods.

At a press briefing at 10:30 a.m., Chance said people have been turning out in droves to offer help but no more volunteer searchers are currently needed. She said civilians who want to help can call the police at 433-1820 to volunteer.

Meantime, the State Highway Patrol issued a ‘be on the lookout for’ advisory this morning, saying that they’re looking for a man who had been spotted with Davis. The man is believed to be about 60 years old and driving a blue Toyota, according to an official with the Highway Patrol. He may be in the vicinity of Raeford Road or Cliffdale Road.

Chance said police are following up any and all tips but are still concentrating their search for Shaniya on Walker Road.

At a press conference at the search site at 9 a.m. today, Chance said police had received some tips.

She said Mario Andrette McNeill, who has admitted to kidnapping Shaniya and is in custody, has been “extremely uncooperative” but has given some information to police.

Chance said McNeill is known to frequent Sanford. He was arrested Thursday after being identified as being with Shaniya Tuesday morning at the Comfort Suites hotel in Sanford. The two were seen on a surveillance tape at 6:11 a.m. Chance said police know McNeill left the motel with Shaniya at about 7:30 a.m. but they don’t know what condition Shaniya was in at that point.

Events like this makes one want lose all hope in people.

Dane County Announces Two-Day Mass Flu Inoculations in Madison

From Channel 3, WISC-TV:

On Friday, Public Health Madison and Dane County said there will be two vaccination clinics next week, each targeting a different group of people.

Dr. Thomas Schlenker, director of Public Health Madison and Dane County, said that each day they’ll be giving out approximately 5,000 vaccines. Both clinics will be held at the Alliant Energy Center.

“The gates will open a half hour before the clinic starts,” Schlenker said. “There will be no camping out overnight or lining up — the gates will open a half hour before they start.”

The first clinic is set for Tuesday, Nov. 17, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. That clinic will be for: pregnant women; children 6 months to 23 months old; and children 5 to 18 years old, with underlying health conditions.

The second clinic will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 18, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Wednesday clinic will be for: children 24 to 59 months old; people who live with children less than 6 months old; and child care providers who care for children less than 6 months old.

These clinics are the first since public health officials stopped the school-based clinics because of lack of vaccine supply.

People will be definitely turned away if they do not fit the criteria of either groups, or if they live in other counties.

Most of the flu-struck were originally from Milwaukee, and were schoolchildren. However, that situation quickly changed as the summer merged into fall. Last week, a Dane County resident who was in her mid-sixties and had an underlying condition–lupus–died of H1N1. To date, 22 million Americans have been stricken, but 4,000 have died from H1N1, and of these, 540 have been children.

I’ve added a widget at the top of this page that will lead readers to updated information regarding the flu pandemic in Wisconsin. Take advantage of it, and of this mass inoculation coming up. Here is a link about what to expect at the Alliant Center, and how to download consent forms in English, Spanish, and Hmong ahead of time.

“Cold Cash” Jefferson Gets 13-Year Jail Term

Barack Obama tried hard not to fall prey to the system and syndrome of graft in his adopted state of Illinois. He had a lot of temptations–and opportunities to feed at the public trough–but he managed to shy away from the most egregious. I think Obama is relatively clean–but not squeeky clean–for a politician. More to the point, he’s hasn’t allowed his ego to take advantage of his life (like the greasy embarrassment Rod Blagojevich) or his aims. However, as a result, Illinois is in arrears by several billion dollars because of the culture of graft in that state, practiced by both Democrats and Republicans. This has added to the financial woes of the state during what is being called the Great Recession.

That being said, there are several big name black politicians who are currently being investigated for questionable practices and ethics violations, lawmakers like Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel, and Carolyn Kilpatrick. (Jesse Jackson, Jr. barely missed being named as an eighth offender.) Some feel that they are being unfairly singled out because of racism, because of double standards, and because of the state of their relationship(s) with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is considered no friend to black congresspeople. They are quick to point out that Pelosi’s ethics committee hasn’t fingered any white congresspeople like Jane Harman or John Murtha, who have “enough money to defend” themselves.

Far be it for me to support Pelosi’s shenanigans; I haven’t liked her since she was a bottom-feeding protegée of Willie Brown and the Burton brothers in the San Francisco of the Seventies and Eighties.   But I still believe that some of the seven ought to have known better.  Like I said, their egos got in the way of their lives or aims. One great, but overweening example of ego was the late Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem. Sometimes that ego was warranted as when he integrated the congressional lunch room, or made lawmakers stop saying the n-word on the floor, but at other times, like the incident that sealed Powell’s Waterloo, it paid to take oneself down a peg, and apologize.

Blue Hippo Sued by FTC; Only One Computer Sent While $15 Million Was Pocketed in Layaway Fees

Hat tip to Prometheus 6, which famously insists, “Don’t lie on Black folks, don’t lie about Black folk,” and “Don’t lie to Black folks.”

You’ve probably seen commercials by a company, Blue Hippo, claiming that it would allow consumers to buy brand-name computers on layaway. I have. I even thought about looking into Blue Hippo for buying a desktop or a laptop computer. The company was flogging its services everywhere, from New York, to Georgia, to Wisconsin, daily and even late at night.

But then, I found other opportunities where I could get a computer: Best Buy’s clearance outlet on eBay; WalMart, and CraigsList. In these hard times, layaway is particularly attractive for many who have lost their credit standing or who don’t have a credit card. But unlike stores like K-Mart, Sears, Burlington Coat Factory, Marshall’s, Toys-R-Us, TJ Maxx, and at eLayaway, the FTC says that Blue Hippo consistently didn’t come up with the goods. Its customers are still waiting for their computers. In short, it was indeed like taking candy from the poor.

Sapphire Interviewed by Katie Couric About “Precious”

Hat tip to What About Our Daughters? (WAOD)

Some quarters of the black community are up in arms about this film (and have their oyster knives out for Tyler Perry’s adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls… coming next year.) They say that almost all of Precious Jones’ helpers are almost all light-skinned; that it appears director and producer Lee Daniels–notorious for Monster’s Ball–is saying and depicting that physical, mental/emotional and sexual abuse within the black family is still the norm; that the film’s outlook is unremittingly harsh, especially for black women as well as for black men. It seems almost like the kind of anger that was generated by Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, both book and Spielberg film. Walker was said not to be pleased with Color Purple the film; she was happier with the Broadway show that was produced by Oprah Winfrey.

So what does Sapphire have to say about her book and the film? I saw part of the interview on Couric’s CBS Evening News program earlier this week, and it was pretty interesting. I’m not going to say anything because I haven’t seen the flick yet, but people are welcome to watch this interview, compare notes, and compare the book with the film.

Precious is not playing yet in Madison, WI.

Did She Disappear or Kill Her Daughter? The Arrest of Shaniya’s Mother, Antoinette Davis

Even if it was based on my own questions yesterday, this arrest was bound to happen. I hate to say this, but there is a clear argument to be made in this case that some people–be they black, white, Latino or Asian–should not be having children. Somebody’s going to have to crack now. Let that girl go home.

Antoinette Nicole Davis, mother of the missing Shaniya, as she was booked today (Courtesy: Fayetteville Observer)

Shaniya’s mother, Antoinette Nicole Davis, 25, was charged at 9:12 p.m. Saturday with human trafficking, felony child abuse – prostitution, filing a false police report, and resisting, delaying or obstructing justice.

The search for Shaniya Davis continues. Asked if police think the girl is still alive, Fayetteville police Sgt. John Somerindyke said, “We sure hope so.”

According to arrest documents, Davis “knowingly provide(d) Shaniya Davis with the intent that she be held in sexual servitude” and she “permit(ted) an act of prostitution.”

Police have not charged anyone with molesting Shaniya, but said the investigation is ongoing.

The man accused of taking her, Mario Andrette McNeill, 29, turned himself in Friday. Police said he admitted to kidnapping the child.

Investigators reviewed the timeline Davis had originally given them and found several inconsistencies, Somerindyke said.

And those inconsistencies were that Davis had reported her daughter missing at 5:30 a.m., when a little over half an hour later, Mario McNeill was shown with Shaniya in his arms in a nearby hotel at 6:11 a.m.

They’ve Got the Guy in the Video, But Five-Year-Old Shaniya Davis Is Still Missing

This is weird upon weird. There’s a nasty missing piece here that I don’t like to dwell on.

He knows something we don't, and he loves it. Mario Andrette McNeill, 29, won't say where Shaniya Davis is (Courtesy: Fayettville, NC Police Dept)

On November 11, a family who has had several run-ins with the social services department as well as with the police in Fayetteville, North Carolina called in to the cops to say that their little daughter had disappeared. The child, Shaniya Nicole Davis, 5, was last seen by her mother, Antoinette Davis, around 5:30 a.m., when she allegedly placed the little girl back to sleep on a couch in the living room. Davis, her boyfriend, her sister, along with another infant and Shaniya’s 7-year-old brother were present when the girl disappeared from her home at the Sleepy Hollow Mobile Home Park.

Shaniya Nicole Davis in a recent photograph (Courtesy: CBS News)

Naturally, foul play was immediately suspected, and an Amber Alert was raised. Not only that, Nancy Grace picked it up and gave the case national attention on her evening show on HLN. Grace gets too shrill for my taste, but she does some things right: namely playing up to the hilt the stories of missing or murdered women and children.

A couple of days as well as two suspects later, and police think that they have the perpetrator. Problem is, he isn’t saying anything about what he did with Shaniya. He’s just admitting that he did kidnap her. From the Fayetteville Observer: