A woman in Missouri is currently on trial on Monday after she reportedly drugged her teenage daughter and attempted to kill her, before dragging her body to a pyre and burning her to death–and attempting to cover up her crime afterward.
Testimony against defendant Rebecca Ruud has ranged from her prison mates to her husband Robert Peat, Jr. regarding her relationship with her 16-year-old daughter Savannah Leckie as well as her admittance to drugging and killing her daughter for unknown reasons, according to Law&Crime.
One of the prisoners that Ruud was jailed with said that she admitted to using hydrocodone to make Leckie fall asleep, and another said that Leckie woke up screaming when she found herself being burned alive by Ruud, after which Ruud used a rake to beat her to death while she burned.
“And after all that, all that was left of Savannah was a bag of bones,” the prisoner said.
Ruud had given up Leckie when she was a child due to the feeling of being an unfit mother as well as Ruud’s abusive mother kidnapping Leckie during her childhood. Tamile Leckie-Montague, Savannah’s adoptive mother, testified that she had brought the teen to Ruud’s home after she had become combative at home, Ozark’s First reported.
“Rebecca stepped up at that point,” Leckie-Montague said. “She could see that Savannah really needed some help.”
Savannah had reportedly been improving in her grades and that she had enjoyed her time with Ruud, but that quickly deteriorated once Leckie-Montague and her family were unable to visit her often on the farm.
A fire then broke out on the farm on July 2017, but Ruud had refused to call the firefighters to help quell the flames. She also refused to show them where Savannah was, claiming that she was inside a trailer naked during a hot summer afternoon.
Eventually, Savannah’s bones were found on Aug. 4 on Ruud’s property. A recording was also given by Ruud to police officers where she confessed to burning Savannah’s body after she thought she overdosed from drugs.
The trial against Ruud is still ongoing.
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