Teen Confesses to Murdering Friend

Tuesday, December 19th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) â€” A teen-age girl led police to the body of a longtime friend after telling officers that she and three others murdered the young woman for telling authorities about a burglary.

Christine Smith, who first told police that her longtime friend Misti Mayo had been raped in an alley and disappeared with her 4-month-old son, recanted her story Saturday, police said.

Smith, 17, then led investigators to Mayo's naked and battered body in a field near Interstate 20 in Shreveport, La. Smith said she and three others dumped the victim after abducting and beating her Dec. 7.

Smith said Mayo, 18, was attacked for giving police information about a tire shop burglary they committed the day before.

Police said Mayo and her son went out with the group the night of the attack, thinking they were going out to eat. But Jamien Nickerson, 22, displayed a knife in Mayo's car and began beating her, police said.

Mayo died en route to Shreveport when her head was wrapped with packaging tape to stifle her screams, police said. Oil was poured on her body, presumably to cover fingerprints, police said.

The group abandoned Mayo's baby, Donte, in a minivan parked at a restaurant east of Dallas, police said. The boy was found unharmed and placed with a foster family.

Smith, Nickerson, Edwana Williams, 17, and Terrell Robinson, 19, were arrested Saturday on aggravated kidnapping warrants. They were being held Tuesday on $500,000 bond in the Tarrant County Jail. Police said capital murder charges would likely be filed against them after Mayo's autopsy was completed.

Mayo's family members said they were shocked that a childhood friend could have been involved in her death.

``They were together nearly all the time,'' Emmett Mayo, Misti Mayo's cousin, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.