Police say the 2-year-old girl was killed on Christmas Day and her remains were thrown away weeks before she was reported missing.
ENTERPRISE, Ala. — The mother of a missing Alabama toddler has been charged with capital murder and abuse of a corpse after investigators said she killed her daughter on Christmas Day, placed her body in a duffel bag and left it in an apartment complex dumpster.
The charges against Adrienne Reid mark a sharp turn in a case that began before dawn on Feb. 16, when police were called to an apartment on Apache Drive after Reid said her 2-year-old daughter, Genesis Reid, was gone. Investigators now say the report was false and that Genesis had not been seen since Dec. 25. The child’s remains have not been recovered, and officers, sheriff’s deputies and search specialists have shifted their attention to a tightly mapped section of the Coffee County landfill as they try to find her and build a homicide case that prosecutors say could bring the death penalty.
Enterprise Police Chief Michael Moore announced the new charges on March 9, a date that would have been Genesis’ third birthday. Moore said detectives spent weeks retracing the mother’s account, checking witness statements, reviewing electronic evidence and collecting surveillance footage before they concluded the little girl had been killed at home after returning from a Christmas visit with relatives in Dothan. A neighbor’s camera, Moore said, became the break in the case. Investigators say the footage shows Adrienne Reid at about 11:30 p.m. on Christmas night walking toward the apartment complex dumpster with a rolling duffel bag. Police say another video taken two days later shows her going back to the dumpster area carrying toys and other belongings believed to have belonged to Genesis. “Through the careful and methodical work of investigators, we have reached the heartbreaking and horrific conclusion” that the child was killed by her mother, Moore said as he described the evidence gathered so far.
The new allegations came after an earlier arrest tied to the original missing-child report. Police said Adrienne Reid reported around 3 a.m. on Feb. 16 that Genesis was missing and that the front door of the apartment was open. By the next day, detectives said they found inconsistencies in her story and charged her with false reporting to law enforcement authorities, a Class C felony. As the search widened, prosecutors identified Reid as the only known suspect and said publicly that she was the one person who knew where Genesis was. Authorities also asked for help locating a woman known as Moriah, described at the time as a person of interest who might have key information. Cadaver dogs searched areas near the home but did not find evidence of remains. Officers said then that Genesis had not been seen in several weeks, a finding that helped move the timeline back into late December. Reid has remained jailed, and her defense attorney, David Harrison, has argued that investigators are relying on assumptions rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
The case has shaken Enterprise, a southeast Alabama city where police repeatedly described the investigation as both personal and exhausting. Moore said investigators followed leads across multiple states, interviewed witnesses, examined digital records and kept pressing even when early searches produced little. By the time of the murder announcement, law enforcement officials said they had executed 37 search warrants and involved more than 75 officers and specialists during different stages of the inquiry. Those details helped explain why the investigation stayed active for weeks after the first arrest. Public appeals also changed over time. Early briefings focused on finding a living child. Later statements from the district attorney and police showed growing concern that the case had become a homicide disguised as a disappearance. The emotional weight of that shift was clear in official comments, with Moore saying the city grieved together and needed to keep moving forward with facts rather than rumor. For many residents, the case also reopened a hard question that still has no answer: where Genesis is now.
That question has pushed the investigation into the landfill system that serves the area. Coffee County Sheriff Scott Byrd said search planners used truck schedules and GPS data from landfill equipment to narrow the likely dump zone to about 200 feet by 100 feet, with trash stacked 8 to 10 feet deep. Searchers have warned that recovery work in a landfill is slow, dirty and uncertain. This week, Team Adam, a specialist unit of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, joined the effort to assess the site and help improve the chance of locating remains. Richard Leonard, a senior program manager with the team, said searches of that kind are like looking for a needle in a haystack because every bag and container may have to be opened and checked by hand. The legal case is also moving on a separate track. Reid now faces the capital murder and corpse abuse counts in addition to the false-report case, and prosecutors have signaled they intend to seek the death penalty. Harrison, her lawyer, has said the state will still have to prove its theory in court.
Outside the courtroom, the case has carried a different kind of record: the sound of officials trying to explain a child’s death without yet being able to return her to those who loved her. Moore spoke in blunt terms at the March 9 briefing, saying the city had reached a terrible conclusion but would not stop searching. Leonard, from Team Adam, spoke more clinically about landfill work, yet his description only underscored how hard the task may be after so much time has passed. Those voices reflected two parts of the same reality, one emotional and one procedural. Neighbors supplied the video that police say changed the case. Officers supplied the timeline. Search experts are now supplying the manpower and method. What is still missing is Genesis herself. That absence continues to shape every update from police, every filing by lawyers and every hour spent at the landfill.
The case now stands at a stage where the criminal charges are filed, the defense is contesting the state’s theory and the search for Genesis’ remains is still underway. The next milestones are expected to come from court proceedings and from any recovery effort at the landfill.
Author note: Last updated March 13, 2026.