2 Charged In Death By ‘Exorcism’

The grandmother and mother of a missing 5-year-old were charged with fatally poisoning the girl, whose body was put out with the trash in front of their apartment building. One police official said the killing was an “exorcism.”

Rosa Wilkerson, 46, and Angelic Burney, 25, were charged with second-degree murder for allegedly forcing Amy Burney to swallow a mixture of ammonia, vinegar, cayenne pepper and olive oil sometime around April 27, Deputy Police Commissioner Patrick Kelleher said Sunday at a news conference.

“She was restrained and her mouth was gagged, and she was intentionally forced to ingest this mixture by both her grandmother and her mother,” he said. “We don’t know exactly why she was forced to ingest the chemicals, whether it was for punishment, or to have some other effect on her.”

Law-enforcement officials said Wilkerson confessed that she and her daughter killed the girl because they thought she was possessed by demons.

“It was some kind of exorcism,” said a police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Wilkerson, who also uses the name Rosa Downing, told reporters Saturday that Amy died of natural causes and her body lay on a mattress for several days before the women realized she was dead. Wilkerson said she and Burney finally threw the body out.

The police have not yet found the body of the girl. They continued to comb Sunday through a 375,000-cubic-foot patch of the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island in their search for clues.