A 25-year-old man has been charged in the abduction, sexual assault and death of a five-year-old girl from central Minnesota.
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Zachary Todd Anderson has been booked in the Crow Wing County Jail Saturday on suspicion of first-degree murder and kidnapping of 5-year-old Alayna Ertl of Watkins, Minnesota.
An entrance to Wilderness Park Estates leads into the area that Alayna Ertl was found Saturday in the southern portion of the residential park, located about 3 miles east of Leader in Cass County.
A preliminary autopsy found the child was strangled.
The girl’s cause of death has been ruled homicidal due to strangulation and blunt force trauma.
Anderson was charged Tuesday with murder, criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping and motor vehicle theft.
Anderson’s conditional bail was set at $1 million.
According to the Star Tribune, Anderson does not have a previous criminal record outside of traffic violations. The father, presumably, knew of the relationship between Anderson and the girl’s father.
Anderson, who had been spending the night with the Ertl family, was also missing.
According to Port St. Lucie police, the two children were cousins and were playing at the grandparents house.
At 8:30 a.m., Alayna’s parents discovered her missing.
The vehicle had been discovered at a cabin owned by Anderson’s family in rural Cass County.
It was just before 2 p.m. that authorities received a call from the defendant’s father, saying he was aware that Anderson was the subject of an Amber Alert.
Authorities went to the cabin and found the truck. No one was in it or in a cabin on the property, the BCA stated. The other pair, using K-9 officers, found Anderson, himself, in a swampy area on the land.
Anderson was arrested. When asked about the girl, he responded, “What girl?” but later said she was hidden in the swamp under some debris, and he showed the officers the location.
Police said he told them Alayna was hidden in the swamp under some debris.
Cass County investigators went to that property where they found the stolen truck empty in a ravine in an apparent attempt to hide it.
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“She was an animal lover, a princess, a singer, a great friend to everyone she met, and was our peanut”, the obituary said.
