Funeral Closes Tragic Tale of 2-Year-Old’s Drowning in ’87

For nine years, a heavy copper box lay on a shelf--just another piece of evidence in yet another crime against humanity.

It was an urn.

It contained the ashes of 2-year-old Righteousness Duvall. And on Wednesday, her remains were finally laid to rest on the bottom floor of a mausoleum in Covina Hills, just two days after her alleged killer was sentenced in a Los Angeles courtroom.

The ceremony brought closure to a tragic story in which Rex Singh, the boyfriend of the little girl’s mother, allegedly drowned her in a bathtub in front of three of her sisters because she had eaten his cake.

It offered a measure of relief to a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department’s child abuse unit, who kept tabs on the siblings, made sure that they wound up with the same adoptive parents and joined with other officers to pay for Wednesday’s ceremony.

And it gave Righteousness’ surviving sisters a place to pay their respects to the little girl with frizzy hair and dark eyes.

Dressed beautifully in matching outfits, six sisters, now ranging in age from 10 to 18, recounted the tale of little “Right-chee.”

On May 20, 1987, as they played in their home on Berendo Street in the Westlake area west of downtown, Righteousness helped herself to some chocolate cake that had been left out. She ate the cake with her hands, smearing the icing over her face and clothes.

“We tried to wipe it off because we knew he [Singh] would get mad,” said Consciousness Duvall, 14, who was 5 at the time.

Singh saw little Righteousness covered with cake and ordered her and her 3-year-old twin sisters--Eternity and Unity--to take a bath, Consciousness said.

Consciousness recalled how she was in the bathroom, helping Unity dry off, how Eternity was sitting up in the tub and how Singh was sitting on the rim of the bathtub, with his arm held firmly down in the water. And how she was aware that Righteousness was in the water.

She remembered her mother and Trinity returning to their home just as the paramedics carried the girl’s lifeless body on a stretcher out of the house. “I saw foam coming out of her mouth,” Trinity said.

Det. Vivienne Gomez, who attended the funeral, said she walked into the Rampart Division that night and saw the mother and the girls who had been brought in for questioning. She said she recognized them from a case she had investigated just a year earlier in which another boyfriend of the mother had been accused of molesting some of the girls.

Gomez says she will never forget the terrifying words that came from the twins: “Him held her head under the water ‘cuz her ates him’s cake.”

Gomez personally posted fliers throughout Los Angeles to try to find Singh, but said he had fled to Lancaster, Pa.

Meanwhile, the mother had Righteousness’ body cremated and put a box with the ashes in the ocean after the funeral, police said.

Several months later, the box washed ashore in Redondo Beach. It made its way to the coroner’s office and then, years later, to the LAPD evidence locker.

“She was drowned. Then her mother tossed it in the ocean. And then she [Righteousness] came back to say something has to be done about it. It’s like from a novel. Like one of those mysteries,” said Det. Federico Sicard, who worked the final stages of the case.

Shortly after the girl’s death, police said, the mother left her remaining six daughters to join Singh, who officials say was dealing drugs across the country. The children were taken in by their natural father, but their lot didn’t improve much.

They shared a one-room apartment near MacArthur Park. The girls claim the father was a heroin addict and drug dealer.

They were eventually taken away by child welfare authorities, who put them into separate foster homes until a La Puente couple took in the twins. When Elizabeth and Herbert Osborne learned that the twins had four sisters, they painstakingly tried, with the help of Det. Gomez, to adopt all of them.

The Osbornes have since converted the patio of their four-bedroom house into three separate rooms so that each girl can have her own sleeping quarters.

“I was a foster mom and my house was empty. These are my girls,” Elizabeth Osborne said. “Ask ‘em.”

In 1994, federal drug agents arrested Singh on suspicion of narcotics trafficking, along with another one of the mother’s grown daughters from a previous relationship. The daughter bargained her sentence by telling authorities that she knew that Singh was wanted in California for murder.

“When we hear about that, it was like, ‘Oh, boy. Here we go again.’ A lot of pain took over,” said Spirit Wallace, 16.

Once Singh was convicted in federal court of interstate narcotics trafficking, he was brought to Los Angeles. Last month, he pleaded guilty to child abuse with great bodily injury--the strongest charge in the death of Righteousness that prosecutors were confident of proving, given the tender age of the witnesses. Monday he was sentenced to six years in prison.

After the brief service Wednesday morning, the surviving sisters wiped away their tears.

“That he pleaded guilty to just child abuse got me mad. But I guess I should be grateful he was sentenced at all,” Trinity said. “She [Righteousness] was a question mark lingering in our minds.”

Most of the police officers who came to the funeral cried during the service.

Officer Eduard Funes, who had been working the child abuse unit at the time of the slaying, said after he heard the story of what had happened, he bought a cake on his way home from work and gave it to his 5-year-old daughter.

“I told my daughter, ‘You eat it with our hands. Put your hands all over it.’ ”