By Tom Coyne and Tom Lobianco
Chicago Sun-Times
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — To assist her dying father, Tarah Souders made a choice: She moved her three young girls to a run-down trailer park in rural Indiana to help take care of him as his lungs rotted from emphysema.
She knew it could be dangerous. The park of about two dozen homes was teeming with convicted sex offenders, with one living at nearly every address. She worried about neighbors with sex offense records who had been helping her father get by, according to trailer park residents. And before she arrived, she even asked her father if her children could be at risk for abuse from two specific men - including a suspect now accused in her daughter’s death.
“He said, ‘No. They will not touch your children. They’re doing everything they’re supposed to do,’” said Greg Shumaker, one of 15 convicted sex offenders who live at the park and the other man that Souders had inquired about.
Weeks later, police say, a horrific tragedy unfolded. Her 9-year-old daughter, Aliahna Lemmon, was brutally killed. Police say 39-year-old Michael Plumadore told investigators that he bludgeoned her to death with a brick, then dismembered her and hid her head, hands and feet at her grandfather’s trailer before dumping the other remains elsewhere.
Shumaker said Aliahna’s family moved there to help take care of 66-year-old James E. “Shorty” Lemmon, who also was a convicted sex offender and died Dec. 3. He said Lemmon was “getting old” and “had trouble breathing.”
Shumaker said he introduced Plumadore to Lemmon shortly after Plumadore moved into the trailer park, and Plumadore moved in with Lemmon a few days later. Shumaker said he knew Lemmon because they were both sex offenders and were in jail together.
Sheriff’s department spokesman Cpl. Jeremy Tinkel confirmed that Lemmon was a sex offender. Indiana Department of Correction records show he was convicted of child molesting in March 2006.
Paulette Hair, 45, a former manager at the trailer park who lives at a nearby trailer park, said she also knew Lemmon was a sex offender.
“He stayed out of everybody’s way,” she said. “Shorty couldn’t take care of himself very well.”
Shumaker said Plumadore briefly moved away, but returned when Souders asked him to care for her father.
Aliahna and her two younger sisters were staying with Plumadore for about one week because their mother had been sick with the flu.
Richard Patee, 58, whose trailer is next to where Plumadore was living, said he didn’t think it was odd that Aliahna’s mother had him watching the girls for an extended period.
“They had known each other for somewhere of three to four years, I know that, and he took care of their grandfather,” Patee said. “I didn’t see any reason to question it at all.”
Shumaker said it wasn’t unusual for Plumadore to watch Souders’ children “because the kids liked him.”
According to the affidavit, Plumadore told police that after beating Aliahna to death on the front steps of the home in the early morning hours, he stuffed her body into trash bags and hid her in the freezer. He said he later cut up her body with a hacksaw and stuffed her remains into freezer bags.
The next morning, Plumadore made a trip to a convenience store to buy a cigar, according to surveillance video.
Police said Plumadore told them he had hidden Aliahna’s head, feet and hands at the trailer and discarded her other remains at a nearby business. Police obtained a warrant to search the trailer on Monday and found the body parts.
Authorities didn’t say Tuesday why Plumadore killed the child.
Copyright 2011 Sun-Times Media, LLC
All Rights Reserved