In November 2021, Brittany Hall told police her 8-year-old daughter was missing from the hotel where the family had been living.
Amari, who wore glasses, had been wearing a Tweety Bird jacket over blue-and-white pajamas, her mother told Gwinnett County police.
But Hall knew exactly what had happened to the little girl. And investigators soon realized the child was never missing.
Amari had been beaten to death, placed in a trash bag and left in the woods, about 15 miles from the HomeTowne Studios at 7049 Jimmy Carter Blvd. that had been her temporary home, according to investigators.
Hall, 31, pleaded guilty this week to felony murder, 11 counts of cruelty to children, concealing the death of another and making false statements, the Gwinnett district attorney said Wednesday. She was sentenced to life in prison.
“This mother failed to protect her children and joined in the abuse,” DA Patsy Austin-Gatson said in a statement. “This ended tragically. We continue to pray that her siblings can heal from the abuse they endured and that this plea brings closure to them and their extended family.”
The plea comes nine months after Brittany Hall’s girlfriend, Celeste Owens, was convicted of murder and 19 other charges. She was also sentenced to life without the possibility of parole plus 235 years.
Judge Angela Duncan called the crimes “the most heinous evil that I have ever seen” in her career after the trial for Owens ended in December.
Credit: Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office
Owens began serving her sentence at Pulaski State Prison in Hawkinsville on Dec. 30, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Owens and Hall were already in jail by the time Amari’s body was found. Investigators believed Hall’s other two children living with the couple had been abused. When the child’s body was found, the charges were upgraded to murder.
The children’s grandmother, Barbara Wright, testified in the previous trial that Hall and the kids had previously lived with her. But Hall had moved out and didn’t tell Wright where they were living.
During the trial, jurors saw cellphone videos of Owens abusing the three children. A Gwinnett investigator appeared to hold back tears as the videos were shown in court.
Arrest warrants indicated Amari’s death was caused by multiple blows to the head and that Brittany Hall waited nearly two days to report her daughter as missing. Investigators previously said they believed Owens hit the girl, then after her death, placed her body in a trash bag and abandoned it.
Investigators searched Owens’ phone and found web searches on the day of the initial report that included, “What to do when a child just doesn’t listen,” “Lakes near me,” “How do sewers on the streets work,” “Why do kids run away,” “How do I report someone missing” and “U-Haul: Customer Account.”
More than a dozen videos recorded by a “nanny-cam” and uploaded to the phone showed the adult couple beating all three children, investigators said.
Police also found surveillance footage showing Owens renting a U-Haul van that she subsequently drove to DeKalb County with the child’s body, the DA’s office said.
Zaire Hall, then 9, testified during the Owens trial that one morning her mother couldn’t wake up her sister.
“She got put in a container with a lid and put in the trunk of a car,” Zaire testified. “They took her to the ‘bad kids’ hospital.”
Testimony explained that the “bad kids hospital” was used as a scare tactic against the children.
Wright has custody of her two other grandchildren, along with her husband, she told the jury during Owens’ trial.
“My heart is broken in millions and millions of pieces,” she said. “My heart is empty. I miss Amari so much.”
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