A Texas mom has been sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday for disposing the body of her two-year-old daughter into a lake and tried to cover up the crime by carrying a life-size doll she claimed was the child.

According to a New York Daily News report, suspect Tiaundra Christon was found guilty of tampering with a corpse after the 2018 disappearance of her daughter, Hazana Anderson.

Two years ago, Christon told police that she had lost her daughter in a park in Texas. 

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Investigators said that Christon traveled with her boyfriend, co-defendant Kenny Hewett with Hazana from College Station Houston. The three stayed at a Houston Downtowner Inn.

Christon was then seen on surveillance videos pushing a stroller when she returned to College Station. She then called 911 on Oct. 28, 2018, to report that her daughter went missing from a city park.

Searchers later found a life-sized doll wearing identical clothes to the ones Christon told police Hazana was wearing when she went missing.

The mother eventually admitted to the police that she and Hewitt had sexually and physically abused the girl to death in the Houston hotel room. She had tried to cover up the crime by pretending that the doll was Hazana.

Investigators also learned that Hazana had died days earlier and that the mother and her boyfriend had dumped the body in a lake, based on Galveston County District Attorney's office's statement, as reported by People. 

A coroner could not determine the cause or time of the child's death. Christon was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday after being charged of tampering with a human corpse. 

In November 2019, Hewett received the same sentence after pleading guilty to an identical charge. 

The Investigation

According to a probable cause affidavit, Hewett left the hotel with the child to get food on Oct. 19, 2018. He returned 30 minutes later with the toddler crying.

The affidavit said Hewett then started beating the child with a belt and told Christon to do the same. But Hewett believed that Christon was not beating the child hard enough. He then resumed the beating by himself. 

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Christon told police that she noticed her daughter slipping in and out of consciousness. She and Hewett then responded by placing Hazana in a bathtub, hoping that it would revive her.

Christon said she noticed that the child had been sexually abused. She noticed it when she lifted Hazana from the tub.

Christon told police that she and Hewett used a hairdryer to warm her up, but the hairdryer had burned the child's skin.

Christon said in the affidavit that Hazana died that night. She then hid the body inside a plastic bag in the backseat of her car for three days. On Oct. 23, she and Hewett wrapped the bag with rope and attached a heavy rock to it.

The district attorney's office said that Christon later led authorities to her daughter's remains, who was recovered by a dive team in Moses Lake and was identified on the scene.