When Mary Foster got the phone call from her jailed sister, Melanie Emerson, she had to ask, again.
She had to ask the question that's swirled through the family constantly during the last six months, ever since Emerson's 3-year-old daughter, Tatiana, died on Aug. 27, 2014. Investigators charged Emerson's boyfriend with homicide the next day and hauled him away to jail.
"Well, is there anything you didn't tell me? Did you do anything?" Foster asked her sister this week.
No, her sister said. I did not hurt her.
"She's told me many times that she didn't know anything about it, she was at work [that day]," Foster said.
But police don't buy it. Emerson, 22, was arrested Wednesday and charged with aggravated child endangerment -- which means investigators believe she knew Tatiana was being abused and failed to protect her.
The child suffered brutal, ongoing abuse and was raped before she died, according to her autopsy, conducted by the Hamilton County Medical Examiner's Office. Tatiana was covered in bruises, scratches and old scars. Her ribs were healing from a recent fracture and she had a belt-buckle-shaped bruise on her backside.
Melanie EmersonEmerson's boyfriend, Rhasean Lowry, 35, brought the girl to a Chattanooga hospital on Aug. 26 and told police she had fallen down some stairs at the motel where the family had been staying.
But evidence contradicted his story. Motel security cameras showed Lowry placing Tatiana's unconscious body in his car and then stopping to pay for another night at the motel before heading to the hospital. Lowry was arrested and charged with felony murder, aggravated child abuse, rape of a child and making false reports.
On Wednesday, he was indicted on one charge of child abuse for allegedly beating Tatiana's 5-year-old brother. And when he was indicted, so was Emerson, for Tatiana's death. She was jailed on a $25,000 bond.
There was no smoking gun, no new evidence that suddenly cropped up and led to the charges, said police investigator Matthew Puglise, just evidence collected throughout the months-long investigation.
He declined to say exactly what that evidence was, since the case is ongoing.
Foster was working to post her sister's bond Wednesday.
"All I know is my sister was good to those kids," she said. "I really didn't see her or Rhasean ever punch them or anything. I don't know. I never saw something like that. Because I would have said something."
Emerson is scheduled to appear in Hamilton County Criminal Court on March 27, seven months to the day after her daughter died.
Contact staff reporter Shelly Bradbury at 423-757-6525 or sbradbury@timesfreepress.com with tips or story ideas.