2 Relatives Arrested in Girl’s Death : Crime: New evidence leads to murder charge for aunt of Marquishia Candler. Grandmother, who falsely reported the child missing from a mall, is held as an accessory.

The aunt and grandmother of a 5-year-old girl whose body was found five weeks ago in the Mojave Desert were rearrested in Los Angeles on Friday. The aunt was charged with murder and the grandmother with being an accessory to murder.

The aunt, Renee Lloyd, 32, and grandmother, Bertha Toombs, 49, were initially arrested in September when the body of Marquishia Candler was found east of Victorville. But both were released two days later after police said they did not have enough evidence to hold them.

The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office said new evidence from the girl’s body led to the arrests on Friday. Details about the new evidence were not immediately disclosed.

Prosecutors said that in addition to the murder count, Lloyd is charged with corporal injury to a child in an incident that allegedly occurred May 8, 1991. In addition to the accessory count, Toombs is charged with child endangerment. Both women, who remained in police custody, are charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Bail was set at $1 million for Lloyd and $250,000 for Toombs.

Neighbors and medical officials have said that Marquishia and one of her brothers may have been victims of child abuse while living at Toombs’ home in Ontario during the spring of 1991. Toombs was being paid by the state to care for the two children and seven of their siblings and cousins.

Lloyd and Toombs told Culver City police Sept. 22 that Marquishia had disappeared during a shopping trip at the Fox Hills Mall. In the days that followed, Toombs appeared on television to ask help in finding the missing girl.

When police summoned Lloyd and Toombs to the Culver City station for further questioning Sept. 28, the women admitted that the first story was a fabrication. They said that Marquishia had drowned accidentally in a bathtub at Toombs’ home in Ontario.

The women told police they panicked after the girl died and Lloyd dumped Marquishia’s body beside a lonely stretch of road in the Lucerne Valley. Lloyd directed police to where the body was found and both women were placed under arrest. At that time, Lloyd was booked on suspicion of murder and Toombs was booked on suspicion of being an accessory to the crime.

When Lloyd and Toombs were released two days later, officials stressed that neither woman had been exonerated and promised that the investigation would continue.

Investigators said custody of Marquishia and four of her siblings had been awarded to Toombs because Marquishia’s mother lives in a drug-rehabilitation halfway house and her father is in state prison.

Culver City Detective Sgt. Hank Davies said in September that an allegation that Marquishia had been abused was filed by medical personnel in May, 1991, after the child was taken to a hospital in San Bernardino County with a broken leg.

Toombs said the girl had fallen from a swing, police said. But Davies said doctors became suspicious when they discovered signs of earlier bone fractures. However, records indicate that no action was taken against Toombs at that time in connection with the fractures.

Dorothy Durston, 33, who knew several of the children as a neighbor and an aide at their elementary school, said she had reported to authorities that she thought two of the foster children--Marquishia and a 5-year-old boy--were victims of child abuse. The school principal was notified, Durston said, “and someone was supposed to go and check it out.”

Durston said that in recent months, she noticed that Marquishia, who was painfully thin, was eating the lunchtime scraps left by other kindergarten students. Durston said that when she asked Marquishia about it, the little girl said that her aunt was not feeding her breakfast.