SMITHFIELD -- Jonathan Douglas Richardson, accused of murder in the death of 4-year-old Teghan Allyssa Skiba, told investigators that bipolar disorder causes him to be short-tempered and that he "lost it," according to search warrants.
According to the warrants, Richardson, 21, told detectives that "little things set him off" and that when Teghan urinated and defecated in the bed they shared, he whipped her with an extension cord.
Teghan died Monday evening at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, where she had been transferred over the weekend with severe head injuries and bruises, cuts and human bite marks all over her body. Medical workers at the hospital told investigators the child also had injuries indicating she had been sexually assaulted.
Richardson took her to a hospital in Smithfield on Friday and told medical workers that she had fallen out of bed, according to police. After seeing her injuries, the medical staff called law enforcement officials.
Richardson was charged that same day with felony child abuse with serious bodily injury. Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell said it was the worst case of child abuse his officers had ever seen.
After Teghan died Monday, deputies filed first-degree murder charges against Richardson. He is being held at the Johnston County jail without bail.
At a court appearance on the murder charge Tuesday morning, Richardson was granted a court-appointed attorney. A judge set his next appearance for Aug. 5.
According to the search warrants released Tuesday, Johnston County sheriff's deputies seized a shotgun, a knife, an extension cord, a guitar string, a rifle, a camera and pieces of duct tape from the outbuilding where Richardson and the girl were living, behind his grandparents' home. They also found a "green leafy substance" and drug paraphernalia, according to the warrant.
Richardson had been living in the building with the child and her mother, Helen Reyes, who was his girlfriend. Reyes left July 6 for Army Reserves training in New Mexico. Investigators said the building had no plumbing and little furniture except for a mattress.
Bizzell said Reyes returned to North Carolina to be with her daughter over the weekend. Reyes could not be reached Tuesday.
Teghan's father, Jerry Skiba, is in the Wake County jail, charged with felony drug trafficking.
The Wake County Department of Social Services also has launched an investigation. Reyes lived in Raleigh before moving in with Richardson.
DSS spokesman Wil Glenn said the department would not have a report for some time.
The grandparents
Richardson's grandparents, Wade and Helen Creech, have lived in the Brogden community for decades. Their home on two-lane Old Sanders Road is well kept with cheerful garden ornaments and plantings. The building where Richardson had been staying is one of several tidy outbuildings on the property, which sits between soybean fields about 6 miles southeast of Smithfield.
Dennis Pollock has known the couple for the nearly 20 years he has been pastor of Tee's Chapel Free Will Baptist Church on Brogden Road. The Creeches attend a different church, he said, but he sees them often at a community store where people stop for breakfast biscuits and to catch up with neighbors.
"The only thing I can say is, I have a 4-year-old granddaughter, and if my daughter told me today that she was going to leave her in the Creeches' care, I'd be tickled to death," Pollock said.
"I hear people talk, saying, 'They should have known what was going on in their back yard.' I understand that. But we know people that, their teenagers down the hall were doing terrible things on the computer, and they didn't know about it.
"I know that the Creeches did not know that that child was being abused or they would have done something about it."
Pollock said the Creeches were trying to help their grandson by giving him a place to live. He had stayed in their home in the past, Pollock said.
Richardson's criminal record includes a conviction for simple assault and injury to personal property that, according to court records, is from an incident in 2007 when he broke the windshield of a girlfriend's car during an argument.
He was also convicted in Wayne County in 2008 of driving while impaired, state records show.
Reyes spoke of fear
Bizzell said that in interviews with investigators, Reyes said that she was sometimes afraid of Richardson.
"You would think that if she was afraid of him, and if she knew the conditions that she had resided in with him, that she would have used some common sense before leaving that child with him in those conditions."
Neighbors said Tuesday that they didn't know Richardson or the girl, but they spoke highly of the Creeches.
"They're wonderful people that have been victims in all this," said Vicky Smith, who lives next door.
Tommy Harris, another neighbor, said he knew Richardson was living in the cabin out back but didn't think much of it. "That wasn't my concern," Harris said.
"This investigation is in no ways over," Bizzell said. "Anybody who was directly or possibly indirectly involved that meets the level of a crime ... we're certainly going to be pursuing them.
"Somebody's got to stand in for the little girl."
Staff writer Thomasi McDonald and news researcher Peggy Neal contributed to this report.
