Arraignment Postponed for Big Bear City Woman Accused of Killing Her Daughter

The Big Bear City woman accused of murdering her 4-year-old daughter, and then covering up the crime for two years with an elaborate story about sending the girl overseas, made her first court appearance Friday in San Bernardino Superior Court.

With her long, dark-blond hair falling over her face, Sharon Gill, 47, only nodded as attorneys pushed her arraignment back to Feb. 20.

Gill allegedly told police and relatives that in 2002 she had sent Lillian to a facility in Milan, Italy, that handles autistic children. However, the U.S. State Department and the international police authority Interpol checked, at the request of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, and determined that the girl never left the country and never lived overseas.

The stay-at-home mother of three was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of murder.

Her husband, John, who works as a restorer of Chris Craft wooden boats at Holloway’s Marina in Big Bear, remains under investigation and declined to comment about the case Friday. Police received an anonymous letter in October warning that the child might be in danger. Lillian, who would be 6, was last seen in March 2002.

Gill was arrested at her older daughter’s home near Anaheim. Her lawyer, Richard Moss, declined to comment on the girl’s possible whereabouts and said it is too soon to respond to the allegations. “I have to absorb what the evidence is against my client. I really can’t talk about the circumstances of the case,” he said.

The Gills recently separated, Moss said, and Sharon Gill was living with her daughter. John Gill is trying to regain custody of 6-year-old son James, recently taken into protective custody.

Lillian’s body has not been found. Sheriff’s investigators used dogs to search the Gills’ home last weekend but found nothing, they said.

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Times staff writer Lance Pugmire contributed to this report