A mother who went on the run two years ago after her 5-year-old son was found dead inside a suitcase in the Indiana woods was arrested in a suburb of Los Angeles after someone recognized her and called police.
Dejuane L. Anderson was taken into custody March 14 in Arcadia, California, after authorities received a tip from an alert citizen.
Local authorities moved in alongside the U.S. Marshals Service, spotting Anderson as she tried to board a public train and placed her in handcuffs.
She is being held at the Los Angeles Police Department detention facility, pending extradition back to Indiana to face arraignment.
She faces charges of murder, neglect of a dependent resulting in death, and obstruction of justice in the April 2022 death of her 5-year-old son, Cairo Jordan, who was found discarded in a heavily wooded area off Holder Road in South East Washington County — his body stuffed inside a carry-on size luggage bag.
Anderson’s arrest comes several months after her admitted accomplice, Dawn Elaine Coleman, received a 25-year sentence in November after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder while confessing that she helped cover up the child’s death.
Previously, Coleman made a deal with prosecutors to eventually testify against Anderson in exchange for a lighter sentence as several charges against her were dismissed, including neglect of a dependent resulting in death, aiding or inducing murder, and obstruction of justice.
Following Anderson’s arrest, investigators with the Indiana State Police Department immediately flew to California to try to ascertain her movements and whether she had help to remain a fugitive.
Ironically, police had been searching for Anderson in the Los Angeles area and believe she could have spent part of her time on the lam lying low in San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, or Houston.
Indiana State Police Sgt. Carey Huls expressed relief that Anderson was finally behind bars but called the moment “bittersweet” because of the cruelty of Cairo’s death.
“It’s still a sorrowful, a somber moment in the investigation,” Huls said during a news conference to announce the arrest, according to Law & Crime. “But it’s a thing we’ve looked forward to and anticipated for almost two years now.”
A hiker searching the woods for mushrooms stumbled upon the discarded bag on April 26, 2022.
The “very distinctive suitcase” was imprinted with a panoramic view of the Las Vegas Strip.
Inside was the lifeless body of a small child with no identification. The boy showed no signs of trauma, and no family connections could be made initially, as no one came forward to claim the boy’s body or to report a missing child.
Authorities found fingerprints on trash bags that had been used to package the boy into the suitcase, while cellphone records eventually led to Coleman and Anderson as suspects.
Investigators also tracked down the boy’s biological father to Atlanta, Georgia, where Anderson is originally from.
Six months after Cairo’s body was found, the Washington County Circuit Court issued felony arrest warrants for the two women in October, while federal authorities joined the dragnet to find them.
Coleman was arrested in San Francisco on Oct. 19, while Anderson slipped away and eluded authorities for nearly two years until her arrest last week.
Coleman told investigators that she and Anderson were living together in Louisville, Kentucky, when one day she witnessed Anderson sitting on the boy’s back while he was facedown on a mattress, claiming the child was already dead when she walked in.
Coleman, of Shreveport, Louisiana, admitted to helping Anderson put the boy’s body into a suitcase and driving with her to Indiana to dump the remains in the woods.
Before the boy’s death, his mother posted troubling messages on social media in which she claimed her son was possessed by demons, saying he desperately needed an exorcism, according to court documents.
Search warrants for the women’s social media accounts turned up old photos of Anderson with the same type of suitcase in which the body was found, as well as images of a boy who matched the remains in the suitcase.
Officials said Jordan died from an electrolyte imbalance “most likely caused by gastroenteritis, which in common layman’s terms would be vomiting and diarrhea, and that resulted in dehydration.”
