Remains of another girl found

Christian encased the girl's body in concrete. Two months after the slaying, he and Angel's mother, Angela Melton, and the woman's two other children drove West with the body. Near the California-Arizona border, Christian stopped and dumped the concrete block in the desert. Then he drove away.

Angel's disappearance came to light after Melton applied for food stamps in California and a caseworker determined that one of her children was missing.

Christian admitted killing the girl. Prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to second-degree murder in 1996 in exchange for helping them find the body. He led investigators to the rural area, but searches failed to find her.

Then on Saturday afternoon, a woman who spends her winters in the desert was out taking photographs of a marshy area west of Winterhaven when she noticed a concrete block.

She "pushed it with her foot, and it basically popped open," Gary Hayes, Imperial County's deputy coroner, said Monday.

In the concrete, the woman could see skeletal remains.

"It appears to be Angel's remains, based on the location and the entombment of the corpse, and even the position of the corpse and the mold of the body and everything from the cement. It appears to be the same person," Hayes said.

A fire in recent years had cleared out much of the area's vegetation and likely fractured the concrete block, making the discovery possible, chief deputy coroner Rick Macken said. Authorities hope to examine DNA to confirm the remains are those of the little girl.

Angel's death provoked national outrage and led to a new law in Missouri that in 1995 changed the priorities of social workers so that they act in the best interest of a child, rather than toward the goal of keeping families intact.k<