American victim of torture and murder by her mother. At age three her battered body was found in a shallow grave near Sweet Home, OR with abrasions on her ankles and wrists from being bound, marks from electric shocks and trauma from sexual violence. Two weeks prior, the police had checked on reports that she may be an abused child but paperwork had never been implemented for child protection services.
Her mother, Stella Kiser, had a baby boy when she was 16 who looked like his dad, Jason O’Cull. Her own dad had been a suicide a few years before she met Jason in the streets, doing drugs and parties in Ontario, CA. When Tess was born, 6 lbs 12 oz, Stella was 18. Unmarried, she and Jason and the two kids lived with her mom in a mobile home. Jason did odd jobs as a carpenter and they saved welfare income enough to move into a duplex.
In September 1996 she moved to Oregon with the two kids where she renewed a bond with her twin brother Billy and made an effort to shape up her life by taking a parenting class. When she visited the O’Cull family at Christmas, she left young Jason with them.
In late January 1997, Stella met Jess Compton and moved in with him early March. Their shared habit of meth abuse bred violence as they would go for days without sleeping or eating and become dangerously irritable and paranoid before crashing to sleep for days.
Neighbors reported that they dangled Tess from the balcony, poured beer down her throat as a big joke, and that Jesse spanked the baby and threw a knife at her. Jesse beat both Stella and Tess, and they often left the baby home alone. When her grandma visited, the two-year-old told her that she wanted to live somewhere else. The family became suspicious but Stella, erratic, cut them off. She said that Tess herself had cut patches out of her hair. When the family complained to the police, the cops made a cursory call and reported, “no signs of abuse.”
Stella’s mom took a cake to the apartment for Tess’s third birthday on June 8. Stella turned her away, saying that Tess was sick. When her grandma hugged her, the child clung to her.
That weekend, Tess was battered to death then her tiny body was loaded into a laundry basket and taken to the woods. By the night of 5/17/1997, Compton and Kiser were in jail, accused of murder in the 1st degree.