Telluride Daily Planet: Unusual religious activity of some sort appears to have played a part in the deaths of the two young girls whose bodies were found just south of Norwood on Sept. 8, the arrest-warrant statement filed by the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office suggests.

The statement, also known as an affidavit, was unsealed by San Miguel County District Judge Keri Yoder during a hearing on Thursday following a joint request by the Daily Planet and KOTO Community Radio. The local news outlets obtained the document Monday morning.

The two children — identified last week by the Coroner’s Office as Makayla Victoria Roberts, 10, and Hannah Elizabeth Rosalina Marshall, 8 — were placed in a 1999 Toyota Sedan on property off County Road Y43 at different points during the summer. From May to the time of their arrests in early September, a group of two Haitians, a Jamaican and a woman believed to be from the southeastern U.S. were living on the property, which belonged to a Norwood resident who befriended them, according to the affidavit.

The document says the two girls were banished to the car as  punishment — and at some point, food and water were withheld —because their spirits were “unclean from a previous life,” the Norwood resident and fifth suspect, Frederick Alexander Blair, 23, told sheriff’s deputies.

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