Declared dead suspect wants indictment thrown out

2/20/2012 11:44 AM
HOLBROOK MOHR
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Attorneys for a man who was declared dead and later charged in the kidnapping and killing of a Las Vegas girl have asked a judge to dismiss one of the indictments against him.

Thomas Steven Sanders was declared dead in Mississippi in 1994 after he abandoned his family seven years earlier. He surfaced years later as suspect in the deaths of 12-year-old Lexis Roberts, whose body was found Oct. 8, 2010, by hunters in Louisiana's Catahoula Parish, and her mother, 31-year-old Suellen Roberts, whose body was found the next month in northwestern Arizona's Yavapai County.

Sanders was indicted in Louisiana in November 2010, charged with kidnapping resulting in the child's death. A second indictment in January 2011 added the charge of using a gun in a crime resulting in death.

Read more: http://www.ksro.com/news/article.aspx?id=1765936