THE BABY-FACED KILLER He said he’d lifted her into the air, like his wrestling idols
A young girl was dead. Was it really just child’s play gone wrong?
Clearing away the dinner plates, Kathleen GrossettTate stifled a yawn.
She was going to take a nap before starting her night shift as a State Trooper for the Florida police.
First she checked on her son, 12-year-old Lionel, and her friend’s daughter, Tiffany Eunick, 6.
Despite the age and size difference – Lionel already stood at nearly 6ft tall and weighed over 11½st – they were playing nicely together.
She’d met Tiffany’s mother, Deweese Eunick-paul, when she’d moved to Broward County.
Both women were divorced. Lionel had only been living with his mother for a month.
Before becoming a State Trooper, Kathleen had been in the Army, serving around the world, including the Middle East during the Gulf War in 1991.
Lionel had lived with various family members, but now the pair were looking forward to laying down some roots. Building friendships was high on Kathleen’s list of priorities, so she was pleased they’d found Deweese and Tiffany.
Now, she was watching the little girl for her friend.
And, seeing the kids playing happily, she headed up to bed for a nap.
She’d no idea how long she’d been asleep when a noise from downstairs woke her.
She could hear a faint moaning but didn’t go downstairs to investigate. Kids! she thought.
But at 11pm, Deweese received a frantic phone call from Kathleen.
She was asking if Tiffany had asthma, as the little girl wasn’t breathing.
Deweese dropped the phone and started screaming, ‘My baby is gone.’
She was in total shock, rushed straight to the hospital.
And, tragically, it seemed her mother’s instincts were right. Tiffany was dead. But how?
Kathleen explained Lionel had rushed to her room saying Tiffany wasn’t breathing.
She’d run downstairs, started CPR on the girl.
But it was too late.
She thought back to the moaning she’d heard.
‘If only I had gone downstairs,’ she wept.
If only she had. Because, two days later, the results of the postmortem showed Tiffany’s death had been caused by another person, and in a horrifically brutal manner.
It transpired that Tiffany had a crushed skull, broken ribs, and more than 30 internal bruises. Her liver had been shredded and pushed through her rib cage.
These weren’t injuries that she could’ve sustained herself. So the finger was being pointed firmly at Lionel.
The police now believed that he’d killed Tiffany.
But when they questioned him, he claimed it’d all been a terrible accident.
The World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) fan claimed he’d just been showing off his moves. He claimed he’d lifted Tiffany into the air, like his idols from the wrestling ring did, and slammed her down onto the table.
But little Tiffany didn’t get up like the wrestlers did on television…
The community were shocked and horrified.
It shocked the Broward State Attorney’s Office, too. They decided to charge Lionel as an adult – with first-degree murder.
Prosecuting attorney Kenneth Padowitz said the severity of Tiffany’s injuries had prompted him to try Lionel as an adult.
And in January 2001, the trial began into the murder of Tiffany Eunick.
Lionel sat quietly in court, in neat trousers and shirtsleeves, often doodling on a pad.
By now, Lionel was 13. He was still maintaining that his love of wrestling had been the contributing factor behind Tiffany’s tragic death.
He never took the witness stand. Instead, his defence
team entered a video re-enactment, saying Lionel was only imitating wrestling moves he’d seen on TV.
Padowitz said, ‘Lionel is describing on the tape how he accidentally threw Tiffany against a pole that held up the staircase and then she went into a wall. One of the main problems was that this whole area was filled with boxes. And there was an exercise machine that was right in the spot… So the way Lionel described this occurring could not possibly have been true.’
He said her injuries were similar to those she would have sustained by falling from a three-storey building, and claimed that Lionel wanted to get rid of Tiffany because he had a crush on her mum.
Deweese even testified that when Lionel found out her daughter was dead, he shrugged before asking if he
could live with her and have Tiffany’s toys.
As the trial drew to a close, Padowitz offered the teenager a chance to reduce the charge to second-degree murder with a plea bargain – he’d receive only three years in a juvenile facility, followed by one year of house arrest and 10 years of probation with counselling and therapy. But Lionel, his mum and defence team rejected the offer. Kathleen thought the jurors would ‘see the evidence for what it was’ and acquit her son. Lionel’s lawyer insisted that he had simply been engaging in child’s play that went very wrong. Instead, on 25 January, the jury unanimously convicted Lionel Tate of first-degree murder. And, just days after