The mother accused of murdering her 5-year-old son made social media posts saying she believed he was possessed by demons before she killed him and abandoned him in a suitcase, an Indiana detective wrote in a probable cause affidavit last week.
Dejuane Ludie Anderson, 37, is now on the run from police who are canvassing the country in search of her. She faces a murder charge in the death of her son, Cairo Ammar Jordan, who police say likely died of dehydration before his body was dumped in a suitcase with “Las Vegas” emblazoned on it off a rural Indiana road in April.
Detectives publicly announced their search for Anderson on Tuesday, delivering long-awaited answers to residents of Southwest Indiana, who’d searched for answers about the boy and flooded a police tip line with thousands of calls for more than six months.
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The first break in the case came on June 29, when Indiana State Police were alerted that fingerprints left on a trash bag inside the suitcase belonged to Anderson, they said. A month later, more fingerprints were discovered and were matched to Dawn Coleman, according to the affidavit.
Coleman, 40, was arrested this week in San Francisco on charges of neglect and obstruction of justice. Sergeant Carey Huls of the Indiana State Police said Tuesday that deputies had hoped to nab Anderson as well, but she wasn’t there. It’s unclear what Coleman’s relationship to Jordan is.
A probable cause affidavit sheds light into the mental state of Coleman and Anderson, who appeared to become deranged, according to a series of social media posts about demons, vessels, and a possessed child in the months before Jordan’s death.
On April 12, just four days before the child’s body was found by a mushroom hunter, Anderson posted a tweet asking an Indianapolis priest for help with her son, who she claimed was possessed and violent.
“I have survived the death attacks from my 5-year-old throughout the 5 years he has been alive,” the since-deleted post said, according to the affidavit. “I have been able to weaken his powers through our blood. I have his real name and he is 100 years old. Need assistance.”
Earlier posts from both women allegedly shared a similar tone.
Anderson wrote about “protection spells” and “reversal spells” regularly on Facebook, the affidavit says. In a Jan. 5 post, she allegedly wrote: “Offer reversal spell, protection spell, activating your DNA, exorcism, hex/curse.”
“This is a whole demon in a child body,” Anderson posted, the affidavit says. In a separate post on Feb. 19, she allegedly mentioned “a very powerful demonic force from within my son.”
Coleman frequently posted to social media as well, the affidavit says, and her creepy Facebook profile remained public on Thursday.
“I’m using my blood for this ritual,” Coleman wrote to Facebook on Jan. 5, the affidavit notes.
The posts themselves weren’t the only signs of trouble before Jordan’s murder. His mom was arrested twice earlier this year—once in Louisville, Kentucky, for shoplifting, and once in South Carolina, where she allegedly led officers on a 30-mile police chase after she fled a traffic stop.
The affidavit said South Carolina officers eventually reached Anderson because she ran out of gas. Even then, however, the 39-year-old resisted, allegedly locking her car doors with Coleman—who she later claimed was her sister—in the passenger seat, and Jordan also inside, the affidavit said.
Officers say they busted through the car’s rear window and took Anderson into custody. She spent the night in jail, while Coleman and Cairo were sent to a nearby Hilton to sleep, the affidavit said.
Anderson’s arrest and Coleman’s stay at the Hilton would prove key in Indiana detectives’ investigation. The fingerprints obtained during booking in South Carolina is what led them to identify Anderson as a suspect, and cops were able to obtain Coleman’s cellphone number from the hotel stay, the affidavit says.
That led Indiana detectives to trace location data from the duo’s phones to being near the site where Jordan’s body was abandoned two days before the suitcase was discovered.
Police said Jordan’s body had no trauma when it was found. His cause of death was determined to be from electrolyte imbalance, which cops wrote is rare in children without neglect from their caretakers.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Sergeant Huls called Coleman’s arrest bittersweet.
“It’s bitter because no matter what progress is made, what happens in a case, we’re still dealing with the tragic death of a precious young child,” Huls said. “Bitter in that way, but the wheels of justice do turn.”
Jordan was buried in June at a Salem, Indiana, cemetery about 35 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. A police chaplain said during a memorial service that the then-unidentified child was an “unknown angel.”
Jordan’s father, Vincent C Jordan, found out about his son’s death on Monday in a call from police. He said Anderson had taken Jordan away from him in 2017 during a custody dispute and that he’d been searching for the boy ever since.
“Today my heart is broken into a million pieces,” Jordan posted to Facebook, along with photos of the boy.
Had Jordan still been alive, his sixth birthday would have been Monday.
