Dejuane L. Anderson and Cairo Jordan (ISP)
Nearly two years after the body of 5- 5-year-old Cairo Jordan was found stuffed inside a suitcase discarded in the southern Indiana woods, the boy’s mother has been arrested for his death.
Dejuane L. Anderson was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with one count each of murder, neglect of a dependent resulting in death, and obstruction of justice, authorities announced.
According to a news release from the Indiana State Police Department, a citizen tipped off police and authorities found her in Arcadia, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.
Working with the U.S. Marshals Service in California, detectives arrested Anderson as she tried to board a public transit train, authorities said.
Detectives from the department’s Sellersburg post immediately left for California to continue the investigation.
Indiana State Police Sgt. Carey Huls described the arrest as “bitter-sweet” because of the horrific nature of the crime.
“It’s still a sorrowful, a somber moment in the investigation,” Huls said during a Friday news conference announcing the arrest. “But it’s a thing we’ve looked forward to and anticipated for almost two years now.”
Anderson is being held at the Los Angeles Police Department detention site without bond. It was not immediately clear when she would be transported back to Indiana to face charges.
Anderson’s friend, Dawn Elaine Coleman, last year pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder in Cairo’s death. A judge in November 2023 ordered her to serve a sentence of 25 years in prison and an additional five years of probation.
In exchange for her cooperation, prosecutors dropped additional charges of neglect of a dependent resulting in death, aiding or inducing murder, and obstruction of justice.
Dawn Elaine Coleman and Cairo Jordan (Indiana State Police)
As previously reported by Law&Crime, a mushroom hunter on April 26, 2022, discovered Cairo’s body in “a very distinctive suitcase” with the words “To Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada” that had been discarded in a heavily wooded area off Holder Road in South East Washington County.
Police said then they discovered a Black 5-year-old boy dead with no apparent signs of trauma. No witnesses, family members, or acquaintances came forward in connection with the dead child, and he didn’t match the description of any child who had been reported missing.
In attempting to identify the child, the department used crime scene evidence technologies that required outsourcing to federal agencies and narrowed their suspect list to two — Coleman and Anderson.
On Oct. 14, 2022, the Washington County Circuit Court issued two felony arrest warrants for Anderson and Coleman on charges of neglect of a dependent resulting in death and obstruction of justice. Detectives traveled to California, where they took Coleman into custody with the assistance of the San Francisco Police Department but could not find Anderson.
In court documents obtained by ABC’s Louisville, Kentucky, affiliate WHAS, Coleman told investigators that she walked into a bedroom in the home she shared with Cairo and Anderson to find the mother sitting on top of her son, who was lying facedown on the mattress. She claimed that by the time she entered the room, “it was already done,” meaning that Cairo was dead.
Coleman reportedly confirmed that she then assisted Anderson in stuffing Cairo’s body into the hard-shell Las Vegas suitcase and driving with her to Indiana, where they dumped the luggage in the woods. The women’s fingerprints were found on the suitcase, and cellphone data placed them in the area where Cairo’s body was found days before the suitcase was discovered.
The suitcase Cairo Jordan was found in.
In the days before Cairo was killed, his mother made a series of disconcerting posts on social media, court documents said.
“I have survived the death attacks from my 5-year-old throughout the 5 years he has been alive,” she tweeted on April 12, according to the documents. “I have been able to weaken his powers through our blood. I have his real name, and he is 100 years old. Need assistance.”
Three days later, she reportedly posted on Facebook, “This is a whole demon in a child body. Why you think she need a cigarette?!! Losing energy huh! 64 years old in a child body. Was full of gifts and magickal (sic) rites stronger than many of you because your frequency not high enough. Start asking spirit to reveal these things to you hiding behind a body.”
She also made references to needing “to exorcism [sic] a very powerful demonic force from within my son,” adding, “just because the avatar is of what we call a child does not mean that it is actually a child.”
“[T]here are beings that are here that are not supposed to be here that pick avatars to hide behind to play roles to steal energy and ruin lives,” she wrote.
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