The unspeakable horror continues apace.

Retroactive abortion in East St. Louis...

Pioneer Press: A friendship gone terribly wrong

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — By all accounts, Tiffany Hall and Jimella Tunstall were like sisters, survivors in a place defined by crime, poverty, crumbling buildings and potholed roads. With numbing grief, the families of the two quiet loners are trying to fathom how things went so horrifically wrong.

Hall, 24, is jailed on $5 million bond, accused on Saturday of killing Tunstall, 23, and the fetus that authorities say was cut from her womb, perhaps with scissors.

Later Saturday, a furious two-day search for Tunstall's missing children ended with another grisly discovery: the children's decomposing bodies stuffed in the washer and dryer at their apartment.

Preliminary autopsies Sunday show they were drowned, said Ace Hart, a deputy St. Clair County coroner. There were no signs of physical abuse or trauma on the children and toxicology tests were pending "to see if they were poisoned or possibly drugged," he said.

While in custody, Hart said, Hall told investigators she killed the children at another location, then hauled them home and hid them in the washer and dryer.

Refusing to discuss a motive, prosecutors say Hall killed Tunstall, who was seven months pregnant, on or about Sept. 15. Later that night, Hart says, Hall was taken to a hospital after she summoned authorities to Frank Holten State Park, where police found her with a dead baby she claims she delivered stillborn.

The baby girl showed no signs of trauma and an autopsy the next day failed to pinpoint a cause of death.

"We didn't even figure it was a homicide," Hart said.

During a funeral service for the baby, Hall confided in her boyfriend that the child belonged to a pregnant woman she killed, and the boyfriend then told police, Police Chief James Mister said.

By that time, authorities already had found Tunstall's body and a scissors near the sprawling state park where Hall had summoned police six days earlier.

By the next morning, investigators were imploring the media and public to help find Tunstall's three children, who they said were last seen four days earlier with Hall. A frantic search by dozens of law enforcers, volunteers and cadaver dogs proved fruitless. Though investigators had been inside Tunstall's apartment on Friday to get photographs of the missing children, they found nothing unusual there, Hart said. They returned Saturday night when Hall, who has two children of her own, "fessed up where the kids were," Hart said.

Police found 7-year-old DeMond Tunstall's body in the dryer and Ivan Tunstall-Collins, 2, and Jinela Tunstall, 1, in the washer.

"Any time you have three deceased children, it's a very emotional time," Illinois State Police Capt. Craig Koehler said. "All these investigators have worked tirelessly with one outcome in mind — to find these children alive."

Pray for us, Saint Louis.