The tiny body of baby Evelyn Boswell was found in March 2020.
Eighteen months after the body of 15-month-old Evelyn Boswell was found in a shed, her mother's murder trial has been scheduled.
Megan Boswell, 20, has been in custody since February 2020, when she was arrested on charges of giving false statements to authorities. Her trial on 19 felony counts has been scheduled for September 2022, a Tennessee judge ruled this week.
The mother was indicted by a Sullivan County grand jury in August on two counts of felony murder, one count of aggravated child abuse, one count of aggravated child neglect, one count of tampering with evidence, 12 counts of false reporting, one count of abuse of a corpse and one count of failure to report a death under suspicious or unusual circumstances.
Evelyn was reported missing by her grandfather, Tommy Boswell Sr., in February 2020. He said he had not seen the child since Thanksgiving. An Amber Alert was issued, and the baby's disappearance became a national news story.
"I don't know what happened, but I'm the one who called (children's services) and got this started," Tommy Boswell Sr. told a local station at the time. "I ain't slept nights. I've cried like a baby. I just want my grandbaby to come home."
After 17 days searching across three states, the child's remains were discovered on property owned by the grandfather who reported her missing. Megan Boswell is the only person charged in connection with her death.
The mother, authorities said, confounded investigators by giving conflicting statements about where her daughter was, and who had custody of her.
Megan Boswell had sole custody of her daughter.
Little Evelyn's disappearance engrossed people around the world. Why did it take two months to report her missing? When was she last seen? Where was she? And what on earth had happened to her?
From the beginning, authorities said they were hobbled by ever-changing statements from Megan.
In February 2020, after announcing the Amber Alert, Sullivan County Sheriff Jeff Cassidy told reporters the case was full of "conflicting information and inaccuracies," and that he believed Evelyn was actually last seen Dec. 10 or 11 by a babysitter.
“This is unlike anything I have ever seen,” he said.
Hundreds of tips poured into a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation hotline. None led anywhere. The state agency was so overrun by calls from people around the country who thought they had seen the missing child that extra operators had to be hired.
Evelyn's mother, then 18, was arrested six days after the alert was issued on charges of giving false reports to the authorities who were investigating her daughter's disappearance. Detectives said the teen mother gave a dizzying array of conflicting information about who last had custody of her daughter — from the child's biological father, to Evelyn's maternal grandmother, to an unnamed babysitter.
“The reason I didn’t report it or anything was I knew the person who had her, and I didn’t want them to run away with her,” Boswell told a local station two days after Evelyn was reported missing. "I’m just kinda worried, you know, about where they are at. What they’re doing with her at this point in time.”
Investigators have been tight-lipped about the case in an effort to protect the integrity of the case, they said. Megan Boswell has pleaded not guilty and is being held in lieu of $1 million bail. Her attorney has said he will seek a change of venue for the highly publicized case.
A cause of death for Evelyn has not been disclosed. Her autopsy determined her death was a homicide, but the coroner's report filed in court has been sealed.
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