Gizzell Ford’s grandma guilty of murdering the 8-year-old girl 
 
 Gizzell Ford, a straight-A student, was seen by almost everyone who crossed her path as a “blessing” — a lovely, bright, smart girl. 
 
 The 8-year-old, in her diary, expressed a desire to have a fulfilling relationship with her paternal grandmother nourished with deep conversation and love. 
 
 But all Helen Ford gave Gizzell was hell. 
 
 Tying her to a pole attached to her father’s bed, Gizzell was used as “punching bag,” whipped with a belt and deprived of food, water and sleep for days, Cook County prosecutors said. 
 
 “That child suffered a slow, painful, agonizing death,” an incensed Judge Evelyn Clay said Thursday before finding 55-year-old Ford guilty of murder in a case that raised criticism of how the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services handles matters that involve child abuse. 
 
 Gizzell died of strangulation in the summer of 2013, but an autopsy also showed she suffered from blunt force trauma, child neglect and “evil” child abuse, Clay said as court spectators sobbed quietly. 
 
 Ford, who prosecutors said never showed remorse nor shed a tear over her granddaughter’s brutal death, remained stoic when Clay delivered her emotional ruling. She later blew kisses to her loved ones as sheriff’s deputies took her away. 
 
 RELATED STORY: Gizzell Ford’s family will continue lawsuit against DCFS, doctor 
 
 Ford may have squeezed the “life out of Gizzell’s broken body” but she had been slowly killing her for days in the “filthy, disgusting” West Side apartment where maggots latched on to the girl’s skull, Assistant State’s Attorney Jennifer Coleman said. 
 
 “Even if she didn’t strangle her, she wasn’t going to let her walk out of that apartment alive,” the prosecutor said. 
 
 Gizzell’s father, Andre Ford, was a willing participant, cheerleading the torture as he withered away from a chronic degenerative disease. 
 
 But Andre Ford — who died in 2014 while in custody in Cook County Jail for his daughter’s murder — wasn’t physically capable of the abuse, Coleman said. 
 
 In their closing arguments, Coleman and her partner, Ashley Romito, went over the girl’s journal before and after she started living with the Fords to illustrate how the abuse affected her. 
 
 “People say I’m smart, courageous and beautiful,” the honor roll student known as “Gizzy” wrote at the time she was a “healthy, strong and vital,” prosecutors said. 
 
 After the child was taken to live in the 5200 block of West Adams, her tone became more somber. “I hate this life. I really think that I’m a jerk,” she wrote. 
 
 “She [Helen Ford] first broke her body, then she broke her spirit,” Coleman said. 
 
 Fellow prosecutors sitting in court quietly sighed when Assistant Public Defender Jennifer Hodel said Helen Ford had “too much on her plate” and tied Gizzell up only because she tried to stab her father, her little cousin and tried to kill herself by jumping out of a window. 
 
 When mentioning the underwear the emaciated girl was seen wearing in a harrowing video and photos shown in court, Hodel said it was normal for some to wear so little on a hot summer day. 
 
 Helen Ford might have used questionable disciplinary methods, but she was in over her head caring for an adult bedridden son and other children, Hodel argued. 
 
 “That was the way Helen was trying to keep order, if you will, in that home,” Hodel said. “. . . Having too much on one’s plate. That’s what this case is about. Helen was overwhelmed. She was overworked. She was unable to overcome what was on her plate.” 
 
 If anything, Helen Ford should be convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Hodel argued. 
 
 Additionally, the defense attorney touched upon the DCFS case, mentioning how a judge took Gizzell away from her mother, Sandra Mercado, because they were kicked from home to home and were found wandering the streets at 2 a.m. 
 
 Romito said stories of Gizzell trying to attack family members were “unmitigated lies” by relatives who want to protect the “black-hearted” Helen Ford. 
 
 “What happened to Gizzell was an abomination. . . . It makes you lose faith in the human race,” Romito said, adding that the frail Gizzell had no chance against the nearly 300-pound, “obese” Helen Ford. 
 
 Then pointing to another one of Gizzell’s diary entries, in which the girl had written that she had “failed,” Romito adamantly said, “She didn’t fail. The system that gave her to those people failed.” 
 
 Members of the Mercado family who were in court Thursday declined to comment. 
 
 Sandra Mercado, and Gizzell’s grandfather, Juan Mercado, have sued the state Department of Children and Family Services and pediatrician Dr. Norell Rosado, but the case has been on hold as attorneys wait for evidence that had been in possession of prosecutors handling the criminal case, attorney Martin Dolan said. 
 
 Dolan said testimony in the criminal case against Helen Ford was chilling, and the timeline of the abuse showed numerous instances in which child welfare investigators should have taken action and stopped the abuse well before Gizzell’s death. 
 
 In a statement later Thursday, Dolan said Clay’s “decision shows not only that Gizzy’s grandmother was guilty but that this vicious murder could have been prevented, particularly if the doctor has done his job.” 
 
 “Clearly, the doctor who examined Gizzy just weeks before her tragic death, should have reported the visible instances of abuse,” the statement read. “All of the warning signs pointed that something was very wrong in this household and indicated that Gizzy was being abused on a regular basis. He failed to take steps to report the evidence of abuse, which would have removed her from the home, and placed into protective custody.” 
 
 When a few of Helen Ford’s relatives were asked if they wanted to comment after court Thursday, one woman raised her middle finger at reporters. ||||| In a rainbow-striped journal she'd scrawled her name on in pink marker, Gizzell Ford wrote about her love of school — the fun she had jumping rope, dressing up for a special day and even diagramming sentences. 
 
 Over the summer of 2013, though, the diary took on a much darker tone. The 8-year-old, nicknamed "Gizzy" and living with her father and paternal grandmother in an apartment on Chicago's West Side, wrote of her pain after being forced to squat in place for half the day and then made to stand "an hour or two." 
 
 "I know if I be good and do everything I'm told I won't have to do punishments," Gizzy wrote in pencil. 
 
 About a dozen pages from the journal entries were made public for the first time this week as her grandmother, Helen Ford, went on trial for Gizzy's murder. 
 
 Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune Garfield Elementary teacher Kathryn Wanicek holds a photo and handwritten note from her former student Gizzell Ford in 2013. Garfield Elementary teacher Kathryn Wanicek holds a photo and handwritten note from her former student Gizzell Ford in 2013. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) 
 
 As the abuse continued, the journals show the straight-A student dreamed of the start of school in August when she could leave home for the safety of fourth grade. But by July, her once-neat handwriting had become a jagged scrawl. 
 
 "I hate this life because now I'm in super big trouble," she wrote on July 11 while two cousins were away at summer camp. 
 
 Two days later, after officials missed opportunities to uncover the abuse in the weeks before, Gizzy's strangled and badly beaten body was found on the floor of her father's room clad only in a pair of torn green underwear. 
 
 Prosecutors say the 70-pound girl had been tortured to death, beaten literally from head to toe by a 275-pound grandmother who sometimes wore a belt around her neck that she used for punishment. 
 
 Cook County sheriff's office Helen Ford was found guilty of killing her granddaugher, Gizzell Ford. Helen Ford was found guilty of killing her granddaugher, Gizzell Ford. (Cook County sheriff's office) (Cook County sheriff's office) 
 
 In addition to the two journals entered into evidence at Ford's trial, Cook County prosecutors played cellphone videos showing Ford and Gizzy's father berating her for breaking rules as the terrified, emaciated girl was forced to stand — a sock or rag stuffed in her mouth. She was tied to her father's bed for days, denied food and water, and punished for trying to sneak a drink of water from the toilet, according to testimony. 
 
 The father, Andre Ford, who had long been bedridden with chronic scleroderma, died in Cook County Jail of an apparent heart attack in August 2014 while awaiting trial. 
 
 The wounds to Gizzy's face were so severe that a Chicago police forensic investigator with 30 years on the job began to weep as she described them in court — a highly unusual display of emotion from a seasoned crime scene professional testifying at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. 
 
 "I'm sorry, this never happens," Officer Nancy DeCook said as tears streamed down her face after she viewed a photo showing the deceased child's badly bruised face. 
 
 Judge Evelyn Clay, who is presiding over the grandmother's bench trial on six murder counts, could rule on her fate as soon as Thursday following closing arguments by lawyers. 
 
 Gizzy's death marked yet another indictment of the state's beleaguered and chronically underfunded child welfare system, which has operated under a federal consent decree for decades. An investigator for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services had visited the family's West Side home a month before Gizzy's slaying, and a child-abuse doctor who examined Gizzy found a suspicious injury on her buttocks weeks before her death but did not report any suspected abuse, a Chicago Tribune investigation found. 
 
 A Cook County judge had awarded temporary custody of Gizzy to her father eight months before her violent death. The father, an unemployed felon who lived with his mother in her apartment in the South Austin community, had argued the girl's mother was homeless and failed to get their daughter to school regularly. 
 
 Gizzy's maternal aunt, Frances Mercado, 32, testified at the trial that the Fords began making excuses why the mother's family couldn't see the girl. She said she dropped off an Easter basket for Gizzy in March 2013 but didn't see her again until four months later when she identified her body at the morgue. 
 
 Gizzy's half-brother, now 10, testifying in a soft voice with only his head visible above the witness stand, said he, too, had been physically abused by his grandmother during weekend visits to the home. He said his grandmother sometimes whipped him with a belt and forced him to do squats and hold a book above his head. He said his father was always bedridden and did not inflict any physical abuse. 
 
 The Tribune is not naming the boy because of his age. 
 
 The half-brother said he saw his grandmother hit Gizzy in the mouth with a spatula, force her to eat hot peppers and make her stand at length on one foot while holding her arms out. When Gizzy complained about the pain, Ford stuffed a sock in her mouth, he testified. When Gizzy began crying, the grandmother beat her with a belt, he said. 
 
 When prosecutors showed him a photo of his half-sister smiling, the boy began crying, pushing his glasses back onto his head and wiping his eyes with both hands. 
 
 "She was very nice," he testified. "She liked to make friends and stuff. She was very happy. She liked to play a lot." 
 
 Gizzy was tied to her father's bed for up to a week at a time and denied food and water, testified her cousin, Zamar Winters, now 16. Winters said Gizzy was only set free to use the bathroom, and he recalled her once trying to sneak a drink from the toilet. On her last Fourth of July, she had tried to jump out a second-floor window in an apparent suicide attempt, he said, but her grandmother grabbed her by the back of her shirt. 
 
 Prosecutors played video — taken by Gizzy's father on the grandmother's cellphone — that illustrated some of the abuse taking place. 
 
 "She's getting defiant," Andre Ford could be heard saying while videotaping his daughter as she kept her head down and swayed from side to side. "She says she wants me to kill her. She also says she wants to kill herself." 
 
 "Stand up! Do your squats!" the father ordered Gizzy. 
 
 "You see how she's acting?" the grandmother said. "She lies about every single thing." 
 
 Another video played in court began with the grandmother saying Gizzy "made herself throw up" to avoid doing squats. A sock or rag was stuffed in the child's mouth. 
 
 "They're the most haunting images any of us will see until the end of our days," Assistant State's Attorney Ashley Romito told the judge in opening remarks. "She had a terrific smile, beautiful, full hair and wonderful penmanship. What Helen Ford did to her reduced that child to something completely unrecognizable." 
 
 Each morning since the trial began Monday, Ford, 55, has walked slowly into Judge Clay's courtroom leaning heavily on a cane, wearing blue jail clothes and dark glasses with her hair in a ponytail. She has displayed no emotion, even when prosecutors displayed graphic photos of the crime scene, until Wednesday when she wept after declining to testify at the last moment. ||||| Like many girls her age, 8-year-old Gizzell Ford kept a diary. The cover was striped with rainbows, and she used a pink marker to record her thoughts. 
 
 For the first few entries, Gizzell — known to friends as “Gizzy” — wrote about typical third-grade things: jumping rope, school teachers, clothes and friends. 
 
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 But her life in Chicago seemed to derail in the summer of 2013, as she began detailing abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of her grandmother. 
 
 “I know if I be good and do everything I’m told I won’t have to do punishments,” Gizzell wrote. She described how she had been forced to squat for hours and told to stand in one place for “an hour or two.” 
 
 She wrote that she looked forward to the start of school again in August, when she would be out of the house. 
 
 “I am going to be a beautiful smart and good young lady,” she wrote one day. “I can do anything I put my smart mind to. People say I’m smart and courageous and beautiful.” 
 
 Gizzell Ford Handout 
 
 “I hope that I don’t mess up today because I really want to be able to just sit down, watch T.V., talk and play with everybody,” Gizzell wrote in that same entry. “I am going to be great all day.” 
 
 Later, she added a postscript. “Not true,” she wrote. “I failed.” 
 
 On July 11, 2013, she wrote her last entry: “I hate this life because now I’m in super big trouble.” 
 
 Gizzell was dead the following day, and her body was found soon after. Authorities say she was discovered in her grandmother’s trash-filled apartment, where she’d lived with her father for several months. 
 
 She had been strangled and badly beaten. 
 
 Helen Ford, 55, is on trial for her granddaughter's murder. Cook County Sheriff 
 
 Horrifying Accusations of Abuse 
 
 After Gizzell died, police arrested Gizzell’s father and grandmother. In court documents obtained by PEOPLE, investigators allege that her father directed the attacks, while her grandmother carried them out. 
 
 The grandmother, 55-year-old Helen Ford, is now on trial for murder. The father, Andre Ford, died in 2014 of a rare skin disease that caused him to have a heart attack. 
 
 In court on Wednesday, the prosecution introduced Gizzell’s diaries as well as other disturbing evidence against Helen. Prosecutors played cellphone video that allegedly showed her berating the terrified girl for breaking house rules. Gizzell stood silently, a sock stuffed in her mouth. 
 
 Prosecutors said that in the course of her abuse, Gizzell had been tied to a bed for several days. They also alleged that she was denied food and water and punished when she tried to sneak a sip of water from a toilet. 
 
 “They’re the most haunting images any of us will see until the end of our days,” Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Ashley Romito said of the evidence, in her opening at the trial. 
 
 “[Gizzell] had a terrific smile, beautiful, full hair and wonderful penmanship,” Romito said. “What Helen Ford did to her reduced that child to something completely unrecognizable.” 
 
 Andre Ford died in 2014 Cook County Sheriff 
 
 Wrenching Testimony 
 
 The testimony took its toll on witnesses: A veteran Chicago police forensic investigator broke down on the stand when she was shown photos of Gizzell’s body, describing the injuries as some of the worst she has seen in her 30 years on the force. 
 
 “I’m sorry,” said Officer Nancy DeCook as she wiped away tears. “This never happens.” 
 
 Gizzell’s 10-year-old half brother also took the stand, testifying about abuse that he, too, had allegedly received at the hands of his grandmother. Speaking softly, the boy told the judge that Helen would beat him with a belt. He said that she forced him to do squats as a punishment. 
 
 The boy testified that he had seen his grandmother use a spatula to hit Gizzell in the mouth. He also said that she would force the girl to eat hot peppers or stand in contorting positions for hours on end. 
 
 If Gizzell cried out in pain, the boy said, Ford would stick a sock in her granddaughter’s mouth. 
 
 As he described his little sister, the boy burst into tears. “She was very nice,” he said on the stand. “She liked to make friends. She liked to play.” 
 
 Helen, weeping, decided on Wednesday not to testify. 
 
 Defense: Self-Inflicted Wounds? 
 
 Helen’s public defender, Judie Smith, acknowledged the tragedy of the case in her opening statements. But she characterized the defendant as “overworked, overwhelmed and overcome” with the daily responsibilities of taking care of a bedridden son and three grandchildren. 
 
 Smith also alleged that many of Gizzell’s injuries were self-inflicted. 
 
 “She was a tragically troubled young lady,” Smith said. “She coped by inuring herself.” 
 
 The case is a non-jury trial which began Monday. A judge could render a verdict as early as Thursday afternoon.
– A Chicago woman was convicted Thursday of torturing her granddaughter to death, with the 8-year-old's diary serving as key evidence of the toll the horrific abuse was taking on her, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Gizzell Ford started the diary in third grade, according to People. In pink marker and a neat hand, she wrote about clothes, friends, and teachers. The Chicago Tribune reports she liked dressing up for school and diagramming sentences. “I am going to be a beautiful smart and good young lady,” Gizzell wrote. But by the summer, the neat handwriting was gone. "If I be good...I won’t have to do punishments,” she wrote. Her last entry on the day before she died in July 2013: "I hate this life." Gizzell was abused by her 55-year-old grandmother, Helen Ford, at the instruction of her bedridden father. She was forced to squat or stand in place for hours on end, tied to a bed for days, and kept from eating or drinking. When she tried to sneak a drink from the toilet in the maggot-infested apartment, she was punished. Prosecutors say she was used as a "punching bag." Gizzell reportedly tried to kill herself days before her death. A police officer broke down in tears in court describing the worst abuse she'd seen in 30 years. And the judge says Gizzell died a "slow, painful, agonizing death." Prosecutors say Helen Ford, found guilty of murder, never showed remorse. Gizzell's father, Andre Ford, died of a heart attack in 2014 while awaiting trial.