Since she couldn't eat sandwiches or snacks, she resorted to stealing pet chow from the bowls of her family's pets. Of course, when the starving girl got caught with handfuls or mouthfuls of cat or dog food, she was slapped or struck with a long-handled spoon. When these pummeling blows made her cry, she was sent off to a barricaded tiny alcove off to the kitchen or locked in her bedroom.

Such was the tragic life for 7-year old Tausha L. Lanham, according to statements given by neighbors to state police in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in the months before she died in her small bedroom in her family's Washington County apartment.

Armed with these statements, as well as testimony from two state troopers, a Washington County district justice was able to order Tausha's mother, Michelle Tharp, and Tharp's live-in boyfriend, Douglas Bittinger, to stand trial on homicide and charges in her death.

Following 2 1/2 hours of testimony in a preliminary hearing, District Justice Lawrence Celaschi ordered Tharp, 29, held for court on charges of homicide, endangering the welfare of a child, concealing the death of a child and abuse of a corpse. Bittinger, 25, was also ordered held for court on the same charges as well as a charge of aggravated asault. Both are being held without bond in the Washington County Jail.

The two were originally arrested April 19, after Tausha's emaciated body was found wrapped in a sheet inside garbage bags just off a country road near Follansbee, West Virgina. The girl weighed less than 12 pounds.

Several tests and an autopsy made by West Virginia Deputy Chief Medical Examiner James L. Frost revealed that Tausha had died of severe "malnutrition... due to starvation" and ruled her death a homicide.

When Tharp and Bittinger told police on April 18 that she had disappeared or had been abducted while they shopped at the Fort Steuben Mall in Steubenville, Ohio, a huge search for Tausha ensued. After questioning further, Bittinger later changed his story to the police and told them he had struck Tausha when she cried while her mother was still working at Gabriel Brothers department store in South Strabane. The details of what actually happened were relayed to state troopers. Tharp found her daughter lying sideways and motionless on her bed "with foamy stuff coming out of her mouth" when she went to awaken her the next morning. Fearing that the authorities would sieze her other two daughters, Tharp opted not to take her to the hospital. Instead, the couple put Tausha in the car and drove around Burgettstown, then went to Empire, Ohio, and Follansbee.

After buying plastic trash bags at a convenience store, the couple wrapped Tausha's body up, left it under a bush, and drove away.

Following Tausha's death, neighbors and relatives gave statements to police in which they contended that she had been beaten, starved and abused before she died.

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