Georgia woman confesses to slaying adopted son she reported missing

Georgia woman confesses to slaying adopted son she reported missing

27-JAN-06

ANDREW DAMPF

The America's Intelligence Wire

A woman who reported her 3-year-old adopted son missing from a Wal-Mart parking lot has confessed to killing him, investigators said after a two-day search for the boy.

Authorities spent Thursday searching for Ahmad King's body in wooded areas of rural Bacon County in southeast Georgia, not far from where the woman lives. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Mary Jean King, who adopted the boy less than a month ago, was cooperating with police and would be charged with murder.

"She has made a confession," Jeff Evans, special agent in charge of the GBI's regional office in Douglas, said Thursday. "I'm confident that what she's told us is true and I'm confident Ahmad King is no longer with us."

King, 34, called police Tuesday from a Wal-Mart store in Jesup, 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of her home. She said she had left Ahmad in her car while she went to get a shopping cart and he was gone when she returned.

The woman also made tearful public pleas for the boy's safe return.

"Just bring him back or just leave him with somebody," she told Savannah television station WTOC. "Leave him at a store, something. We just want him back."

Evans said investigators found other evidence Ahmad had been slain after searching King's home early Thursday morning. He declined to elaborate on that evidence or Kings confession.

Search crews were combing several areas in Bacon County, he said, but finding the body was difficult even with King's cooperation.