Slain Girl Identified as Montessori School Founder’s Descendant

A girl who turned up dead on a Santa Ana street corner three months ago has been identified as the 15-year-old great-great-granddaughter of the founder of the Montessori schools.

Hanna Denise Montessori was identified late last week after an acquaintance saw her photograph in local newspapers and called the Santa Ana Police Department to report that the girl once mentioned living in a place called Peachtree City. The tip led investigators to Georgia, where they learned that Hanna was a ward of that state and had run away from a suburban Atlanta group home in September 2003.

Being able to put a name to the girl’s face was a huge break for police, who believe that Hanna was slain but had few leads about how her body ended up dumped on a street in a middle-class neighborhood Jan. 19.

“This will open up new avenues for investigators to pursue,” Sgt. Carlos Rojas said Monday.

After the teen was found in Santa Ana, she was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where she was pronounced dead from head injuries. Details of the autopsy are being withheld.

Hanna was a descendant of Maria Montessori, an Italian educator who opened her first school in 1907 and became architect of the Montessori “method” of teaching that emphasizes individual thinking. Its philosophy has been adopted by thousands of schools and training centers around the world.

Her father, Derek Montessori, said the family is planning legal action against the Division of Families and Children Services in Georgia as well as local authorities in that state. He contends that they failed to follow the proper steps to report the girl missing.

“The system failed so badly,” he said Monday. “And the system cost a 15-year-old girl her life.”

Interviews with Montessori and authorities paint a portrait of an idyllic life that unraveled after her parents’ divorce. Hanna’s troubles began after her parents separated, Montessori said. She was 11, the second of the couple’s three children. She became a rebel, he said, doing drugs, smoking and getting into other mischief. She blamed her problems on her parents, he said.

“She always wanted us to get back together,” Montessori said from his home in Portland, Maine, where he lives with his second wife and their children.

Instead, Hanna moved with her mother from the family’s home to one apartment after another, first in Maine and then to Atlanta, he said.