Sheriff’s investigators have recovered a knife that may have been used in the murder of Teketria Buggs, and a car believed to have been used to transport the girl to a bridge, from which she was thrown into the Brazos River.
According to an affidavit filed on Wednesday, investigators executed a search warrant on Christmas Eve at 9907 Johnson Road, just east of the community of Orchard.
That address is the house where 12-year-old Teketria lived with her mother, stepfather and other relatives. The stepfather, Steven Carrington, confessed to killing the girl in that house on Dec. 3.
According to the affidavit, Carrington made his confession on Dec. 23, and said he killed Teketria by hitting her with unspecified “blunt instruments” and stabbing her with a knife. He told investigators he transported the girl’s body to the Brazos River bridge on F.M. 1489 in his mother’s maroon 1993 Lincoln Town Car. He told police he then threw the Buggs’ girl’s body into the river.
After a massive 10-day, multi-agency search, the body was recovered in the river, a few hundred yards from the bridge.
Carrington told detectives after disposing of the body, he returned to his house and “placed bloody items of clothing and a blunt instrument in a garbage bag on the trash pile located adjacent to the residence,” and on Dec. 4, “a family member burned the trash pile,” which contained the murder weapons and bloody clothing, the affidavit states.
Sheriff’s investigators served the warrant and seized the following:
→ A kitchen knife with a black plastic handle and a four-inch stainless steel blade with a bent tip;
→ Six blood samples;
→ Trash and ashes from a burn pile;
→ A 1993 Maroon Lincoln Town Car.
Detectives did not name the owner of the car, but said in the affidavit that the property is “controlled” by 73-year-old Dorothy Carrington. Dorothy Carrington is Steven Carrington’s mother.
Fort Bend Sheriff Milton Wright said on Thursday said Carrington “has pretty well stated” the knife investigators recovered is the knife he used to stab Teketria Buggs.
Carrington confessed to his stepdaughter’s murder a few hours after her funeral Dec. 23.
It was his second such confession in two weeks; on Dec. 16 he admitted to the 1998 killing of Corey Brooks.
Brooks, 21 at the time of his death, also had lived on Johnson Road , on the same property where Teketria Buggs lived.
At a press conference at the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office last Saturday, Chief Deputy Craig Brady discussed details of Carrington’s most recent confession.
Carrington, 31, told investigators on Friday that he’d been smoking crack cocaine on the night of Dec. 3 and was in a utility room at one end of the house he shared with Teketria Buggs, her mother and other relatives.
According to Brady, Carrington told detectives the Buggs girl approached him, but he was hallucinating and thought it was Brooks, whom he’d already admitted to killing. Carrington confessed to hitting the girl in the head and knocking her down. At that point, he told investigators, he could see that he’d just hit Teketria. But she got back up and, he said, he again believed it was Brooks. He hit the girl in the head again and stabbed her.
Then, he told investigators, he put her body in a car, drove to the same nearby bridge over the Brazos River where he admitted disposing of Brooks’ body seven years ago, and threw Teketria Buggs into the water.
Brady called Carrington “cold and calculating,” and termed his statements about the hallucinations “self-serving.” Brady said information gathered in the case has led him to believe Carrington sexually assaulted the girl.
Investigators don’t have evidence necessary to prove that belief, Brady said. However, the medical examiner’s office said a preliminary autopsy shows the young girl had been sexually active “for some time.”
“If we can show sexual assault was involved, then we can upgrade the charges to capital murder,” Brady said.
Wright said the department is waiting for more results from the medical examiner before asking the district attorney to take charges to the grand jury in the case.
Carrington eventually will face either first-degree murder or capital murder charges in his stepdaughter’s death, and already has been charged with first-degree murder in Corey Brooks’ death. He is in the county jail on $500,000 bond.
