Family Hopes Girl’s Burial Will Heal Pain

The body of a 3-year-old girl found entombed 10 months ago in a concrete block in Willowbrook will be buried today, after a private service that grieving family members hope will bring closure and healing.

The little girl’s mother, Rakeisha Scott, 23, won’t be there. Nor will Scott’s boyfriend, Randy Foster, 22. They are charged with murdering her.

They remain in jail, separated from other prisoners because of concern for their safety, their attorneys said.

It’s probably best that they aren’t coming to the service for Milan Scott-Wilson, said Foster’s father, Bill. There is too much grief among the child’s extended family, too much anger whenever family members talk about it.

“We’re just trying to get through this the best we can,” Milan’s great-grandmother, Hattie Johnson, said. “She was an angel, a sweet child.”

Bill Foster barely knew Milan. But without him, her body might never have been found, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials have said.

He turned his son and Scott in to police after the young man told him on Father’s Day that Milan had died accidentally in the bathroom several months earlier. His son told him that he and Scott, frightened by her daughter’s death, had put Milan’s body in a box and filled it with concrete, Bill Foster has said.

The box was allegedly left in the trunk of Randy Foster’s 1980 Buick Sykhawk parked in his father’s yard.

Foster said he mulled his son’s confession. Milan deserved better, he said.

He tried to convince the troubled young man to see his therapist and clear his conscience. Randy Foster refused. Telling his father had been hard enough.

Torn between conscience and desire to protect his youngest son, Bill Foster finally told Randy that he had to do something about the body. So on June 27, the elder Foster called the Sheriff’s Department.

Investigators retrieved the 190-pound block, and the body was gently chiseled out. The coroner’s probe, revealed during the preliminary hearing that began Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, failed to determine the cause of death. The body, which had been dismembered, was too decomposed, according to the testimony.

The prosecutor and defense attorneys are battling over whether videotaped and audiotaped interrogations of Rakeisha Scott and Randy Foster are admissible. Both defense attorneys say their clients are not guilty.

In court Thursday, Randy Foster told Judge Michael Kellogg about a photo of his and Scott’s baby that he wanted Scott to have. The boy is in foster care in Long Beach. Through their lawyers, the picture made its way across the table to Scott. She wiped tears as she cradled the photograph. It was more emotion, her family said, than they are used to seeing.

Foster said he has visited his son three times in jail. Randy Foster vacillates between anger and understanding for what his father did, the senior Foster said.

Bill Foster, who testified for the prosecution this week, said he is plagued by mixed feelings about his decision to call the Sheriff’s Department.

“My intentions,” he said, “were for this girl’s body to be handled in a dignified way.”

Today’s ceremony, paid for by the Crime Victims Assistance Program, may help ease the conflict and pain.

“Witnessing the burial will make it a little easier, I hope,” he said.

His family’s sorrow, Bill Foster also hopes, “will cause us to look at our children more closely and to be more observant.

“This shouldn’t happen to anyone else.”