System overload — Child's death still elicits anger, sorrow

OGDEN — It was about 5 a.m. on a summer morning, and a little girl awoke to the sounds of activity in the living room.

Courtney Jo Flemal was crying when she left her bedroom, witnesses say. Her mom had been up all night, playing Nintendo with a male friend and the woman took her daughter back to bed. No one ever saw the 3-year-old girl alive again.

It is not clear what happened in those wee hours of June 4, 1994.

What is clear is, a police dog found little Courtney Jo's body shoved under a bush in the Ogden City Cemetery three days later. The medical examiner saw evidence of blunt force trauma, including hemorrhages on her neck and bruises on her arms, legs and torso. There was swelling in her brain.

Later, police found clumps of Courtney Jo's hair next to the mattress in the bedroom.

What is also clear is Shelly Flemal, Courtney Jo's mother, pleaded guilty to murder in the case, and she demonstrated a "depraved indifference to human life," as identified by state law.

It is also clear Shelly Flemal had been on a meth binge for several days when her daughter died.

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"You are loved and will be greatly missed, but you are now in a far better place." — Courtney Jo Flemal's obituary

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Courtney Jo Flemal fell through the cracks. The 3-year-old girl paid with her life for a mother addicted to methamphetamine and a system that failed to recognize what was happening in the Flemal home.

Today, 10 years after Courtney Jo's death, the details of her case illustrate the most devastating outcomes of a child's life with a mother addicted to methamphetamine.

And a study of 500 pages of court documents, police records and interviews with detectives and Division of Child and Family Services workers show Courtney Jo died despite the warning signs of her mother's history of violence toward another child, a long record of drug abuse, multiple complaints to child welfare officials about the girl's well-being and a filthy home that had all the signs of being a meth house.

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"I'm scared. I'm very scared. We're going to find her. They're going to bring her home. She's going to be OK." — Shelly Flemal in a television interview June 7, 1994, after reporting her daughter missing.

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Her daughter disappeared from near the swings at Ogden's Liberty Park, Shelly Flemal first told police. The girl's 1994 disappearance caused a communitywide search.

But three days later, Vickie King's search dog keyed in on Courtney Jo in a nearby cemetery. The girl was so tiny, King said later, she looked like a doll.

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