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Teen Arrested In Connection To Portage Slaying

Woman Found Buried In Back Yard

UPDATED: 10:22 am CDT June 20, 2007

A 15-year-old girl on Tuesday was arrested and tentatively charged in connection with the death of her mother in Portage.

VIDEO: Watch The Report | SLIDESHOW: View Images Of Portage Investigation | READ: View Portage Investigation Court Documents

Columbia County court records allege the girl helped bury her mother in the back yard of her Portage home. The details emerged as part of an ongoing investigation into the alleged activities that occurred in the house, including homicide, child abduction and abuse.

The girl was booked into Columbia County Jail and tentatively charged with being a party to first-degree intentional homicide on Tuesday, jail officials confirmed.

Search warrant documents shed new light on the bizarre death of the woman that Columbia County officials identified as Tammie A. Garlin, 36, of Sanford, Fla. An autopsy by the Columbia County coroner determined that Garlin was strangled.

Besides Garlin's death, the court documents also detail how an 11-year-old boy found in the closet of the home was tortured, WISC-TV reported.

Portage police began investigating the case last Thursday when Florida authorities asked them to check for a missing child at a house in the 300 block of West Oneida Street.

According to the documents, one of the home's occupants, Candice Clark, allegedly abducted her 2-year-old daughter from Florida. Officers originally found Clark, the missing child, two other infants, an adult woman identified as Michaela Clerc and a teenage girl at the home.

Under questioning later, Clerc told police that an 11-year-old boy could be found in a closet at the house. When police returned, they found the boy in a second-floor closet with burns and injuries on his head, thigh and torso. The boy, who identified himself as "Andrew," is being treated in the burn unit at University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. Clerc told authorities that she had burned the boy several times with hot water, WISC-TV reported.

Authorities said that they also uncovered information about the killing of the mother of Andrew and his 15-year-old sister who was found at the home.

The teenage girl, identified with the initials "FMG" in the court documents, said that another occupant of the home, 25-year-old Michael Sisk, kicked her mother in the stomach. The teen said that she helped load her mother into the trunk of a car, according to the documents. The mother was apparently left in the trunk during a trip to Wal-Mart and then overnight. The girl told investigators that she heard her mother sigh during the trip to the store.

The girl said that she helped Sisk dig a hole in the back yard the next day and helped Sisk lower the body into the hole. She told police that after her mother was buried, she and Clark planted flowers on top of the grave, according to the documents.

Sisk, Clark and Clerc are scheduled to make their first appearances in Columbia County Court on Wednesday afternoon.

Stay tuned to WISC-TV and Channel 3000 for continuing coverage.




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