It’s called Saranac Playground, and when the weather is nice it becomes a magnet for the children who live on the east side of Cleveland.

But in recent days, this small patch of green has been visited by a stream of mourners seeking to pay their respects to two little girls who were found there stuffed inside suitcases and buried in shallow graves.

In the days since the bodies of 8-year-old Mila Chatman and her half-sibling, 10-year-old Amor Wilson, were found on Monday, a shrine of stuffed animals and flowers has grown.

So has the mystery surrounding their deaths.

Their mother, 28-year-old Aliyah Henderson, has been charged with two counts of aggravated murder.

During her first court appearance on Friday in Cleveland Municipal Court, she was not asked about the tragedy that has landed her in handcuffs, shocked her hometown and drawn national attention.

Municipal Court Judge Jeffrey Johnson set Henderson’s bond at $2 million, citing “the nature of the allegations” and his concern for public safety.

Dressed in a blue sweatshirt and surrounded by court officers, Henderson remained impassive.

“Thank you” were the only words she uttered during the brief hearing, in response to the judge wishing her good luck.

Earlier, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kristine Travaglini revealed at the hearing that the bodies of the little girls were “badly decomposed.”

So far, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office has not said how and when the little girls died, but did confirm that a DNA investigation showed they were related as half-siblings.

Cleveland Police Chief Dorothy Todd said neither child had been dismembered.

Henderson, who lives near Saranac Playground, had another child living at her home when police took her into custody on Wednesday, Todd said earlier this week.

The Department of Children and Family Services has taken custody of the child, who appears to be in good health, Todd said. But she did not provide any other information about the child.

A man who had been walking his dog reported the grim discovery on Monday at the playground, which is located near an all-boys public school called the Ginn Academy.

Responding to the 911 call, Cleveland homicide detectives confirmed the man’s dog had located the body of a young girl, and they quickly found a second shallow grave with a suitcase that contained another body.

“It was like a pile of dirt, and she stopped to sniff … and she was taking too long,” Phillip Donaldson told WEWS-TV. “So I went back and looked, and it was a suitcase that was half-buried, and I pulled it up and looked in it, and it was a head. Somebody’s head in it.”

Donaldson said that pile of dirt had been there for at least a week.

On Thursday, Deshaun Chatman, who said he was the father of Mila Chatman, visited the spot where the girl had been buried. He told local reporters that he had not had any contact with his daughter for several years. He said Henderson kept “ducking” him and that he’d been in touch with DCFS numerous times about getting custody of Mila.

“I just feel useless,” Chatman said. “I couldn’t save my daughter.”

Asked about Deshaun Chatman’s assertion that he had been trying get custody of his daughter, Cuyahoga County spokesperson Jennifer Ciaccia in a statement called the girls’ deaths “a tragedy for their families and our entire community” and declined to disclose any further information, citing an active criminal investigation and confidentiality obligations under Ohio law.

NBC News has reached out to Henderson’s mother for comment.

Back in 2019, Henderson and her daughters were mentioned in a Cleveland Plain Dealer article about a local hospital’s program to help struggling families.

It featured a photo of a smiling Henderson holding then 3-year-old Amor on her lap and Henderson’s mother holding Mila, who was almost 2 at the time.

“I could really use the help,” Henderson said in the story.

The rare qualities that distinguished the Rev. Jesse Jackson — his fortitude as a civil rights leader, and the love he shared as a mentor, a friend and father — were praised time and again on Friday, as his family and a roster of luminaries, including three former U.S. presidents, gathered for Jackson’s funeral service on Chicago’s South Side.

Repeatedly, it came down to three words that Jackson made famous.

“I am! Somebody!” the crowd chanted in the House of Hope megachurch, repeating Jackson’s belief that every person matters, no matter their race or economic standing.

“He paved the road,” former President Barack Obama said. He noted that Jackson brought social change, and also proved, in the 1980s, that a Black presidential candidate could be taken seriously.

“His voice called on each of us to be heralds of change, to be messengers of hope, to step forward and say, ‘Send me,’” Obama said. “Wherever we have a chance to make an impact, whether it’s in our schools, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our cities.”

Jackson’s son, Yusef, gave vivid detail to Jackson’s commitment to helping those who need it most.

“I intend to die with my shoes on,” Yusef Jackson said, quoting his father’s refusal to let health problems stop him from aspiring to help people in war-torn Ukraine, and Americans struggling with food insecurity. Along the way, Yusef Jackson said, his father also managed to find time to share his love for his children and grandchildren.

“Keep hope alive,” Yusef Jackson said in closing, echoing another of Jesse Jackson’s mottos.

Speakers emphasized Jackson’s message of hope throughout the service, especially as some referenced the Trump administration. 

Obama said “it’s hard to hope” when “every day you wake up to things you just didn’t think were possible. Each day we’re told … to fear each other, to turn on each other and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all.” 

Former presidential candidate Kamala Harris said she predicted how President Trump’s second term would play out. 

“I’m not into saying ‘I told you so,’ but we did see it coming,” Harris said. “But what I did not predict is that we would not have Jesse Jackson with us to get through this.”

Several speakers credited Jackson for sowing the seeds that would carry them through storied careers. 

For Judge Greg Mathis, from the hit daytime television show Judge Mathis, hearing Jackson say “I am somebody” began a domino effect that would catapult him to success in the worlds of law and entertainment. 

“Those were the three words that I heard 50 years ago this month that changed my life forever,” Mathis said. 

He first met Jackson when he was a teenager incarcerated in Detroit. Jackson had stopped at the facility where Mathis was being held during a speaking tour. Mathis wanted to join Jackson’s cause right then and there. But it wouldn’t happen that fast. Jackson told Mathis to go to college first.

After graduating, Mathis worked on Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, and was later elected to a judgeship in Detroit. Years later, he reunited with Jackson to serve as vice president of Jackson’s nonprofit, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Then, Mathis got the offer to be on television. 

“‘Oh yeah, you gotta take this,’” Mathis said, recalling Jackson’s reaction. “‘But primarily, I want you to take this so that you can spread a message of hope to millions and millions of people who you will inspire to overcome their obstacles, as we’ve overcome ours.’” 

Obama reminisced about being a college student while watching Jackson’s first presidential debate.

“When that debate was over, I turned off that TV, and I thought the same thing that I know a lot of people thought, even if they didn’t want to admit it. That in his idea, and his platform, in his analysis, in his intelligence, in his insight, Jesse hadn’t just held his own. He had owned that stage,” Obama said. 

He continued, “And the message he sent to a 22-year-old child of a single mother with a funny name, an outsider, was that there wasn’t any place, any room, where we didn’t belong.”

One of the most emotional speeches came from NBA Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas, a longtime friend of Jackson’s who recalled meeting the civil rights leader when Thomas was a child in Chicago. In those days, Thomas said, his family was living in poverty, relying on a soup line for sustenance.

That’s when, Thomas said, he and his mother encountered Jackson walking down a street.

When Jackson saw the boy, he bent down and looked Thomas in the eye.

“When society was telling me I was a nobody, when society was telling me we don’t even want to go to school with you,” Thomas said, Jackson shared a different message.

“You are somebody,” Jackson told Thomas.

As investigators raced to find the person responsible for three killings in rural Wayne County, Utah, they used automated license plate readers and a victim’s own vehicle key fob to track their suspect – a man police said has no connection to the victims or the region that is known for its awe-inspiring landscapes dotted with quiet, small towns.

It would take just hours to pin down the suspect in a search that spanned multiple states in the Four Corners region of the Southwest – ending early Thursday with the arrest of 22-year-old Iowa resident Ivan Miller, who is charged with three counts of first-degree, aggravated murder, officials said.

Miller was taken into custody in Colorado, officials said –– more than 350 miles from where the bodies of three women were found at two locations in Utah.

Miller’s first court appearance is scheduled for Friday afternoon in Archuleta County, Colorado. He will be represented by a public defender, court records show.

The victims were identified as Margaret Oldroyd, 86; Linda Dewey, 65; and Natalie Graves, 34, Utah’s Department of Public Safety said.

Dewey and Graves, an aunt and niece who’d gone for a hike together, were found dead near a trailhead just outside the town of Torrey, Utah’s DPS said. The women’s bodies were found by their husbands who grew concerned when the pair didn’t return from their hike, Utah Highway Patrol spokesperson Lt. Cameron Roden said at a news conference Thursday.

Investigators found Oldroyd’s vehicle at the trailhead and deputies went to her home in nearby Lyman, where they discovered her body, Roden said.

After his arrest, Miller told investigators he spent a night in Oldroyd’s back shed and snuck into her house while she was out, according to an indictment filed in court Thursday. Miller “waited for her behind a door and shot her in the back of the head … while she was sitting down to watch television,” the indictment said.

Miller made efforts to clean up the scene before dragging the 86-year-old’s body to a cellar under the shed, where she was later found, the indictment read. He then stole her Buick Regal and traveled to the trailhead, investigators said. Miller told investigators “he did not like the car and wanted to find a different vehicle,” the indictment said.

At the trailhead, Miller said he saw Dewey and Graves get out of a white Subaru and shot them both, according to the indictment. Miller told investigators he stabbed one of the women in the chest multiple times because she was still moving, the document said.

He then admitted dragging their bodies into a ditch, where the two were discovered by their husbands, the indictment said.

Officials said Miller ditched Oldroyd’s car at the trail and drove away in the white Subaru. Miller also admitted stealing the women’s credit cards and using one to pay for gas, according to documents.

Investigators used a network of license plate scanners to track the Subaru “through southern Utah into northern Arizona and eventually into Colorado,” Roden said.

“Colorado law enforcement located the vehicle abandoned in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and after a brief search, took the individual into custody without incident,” Utah DPS said Thursday.

One of the husbands was also able to track the car’s location using an app that monitored the vehicle’s key fob, investigators said. Just after 9 p.m. Wednesday, the key fob appeared to be in Farmington, New Mexico — about two hours southwest of where Miller would later be taken into custody, according to the indictment.

Miller had a handgun and a large knife in his possession at the time of his arrest, according to police in Pagosa Springs.

Miller told investigators he killed the women because he needed money, according to the indictment. “Miller confessed that it ‘had to be done’ but he did not like to do it,” the document reads.

Miller, who lived in Blakesburg, Iowa, set out on a cross-country road trip about two and a half weeks ago, his brother, who spoke with The New York Times on condition of anonymity, said.

Miller’s brother said the two stayed in contact during the trip, and Miller mentioned crashing his truck after hitting an elk, according to the Times.

The brother was concerned about how Miller was traveling around after that and offered to bring him back to Iowa, which he declined, the Times reported.

After his arrest, Miller told officials that he had been staying at a hotel in the area for a few days after he hit an elk with his truck, which he then sold to a tow truck company, according to the indictment.

On Thursday, shaken residents across Wayne County placed pink ribbons around trees and fences in their communities as they remembered the three women who were killed in apparently random attacks carried out by a stranger.

“We wanted to honor our friend and neighbor,” Mary Sorenson, who put up ribbons around Lyman, told CNN affiliate KSL.

The Wayne County School District announced it would be closed for the rest of the week and would “have counselors in place to support students when we are back in session next week.”

In a statement Thursday, Torrey Mayor Mickey Wright described the multiple homicides as a “heartbreaking moment for our small, close‑knit community.”

“Our community is strong. In the coming days, we will support one another, check on our neighbors, and ensure that those affected by this tragedy are not alone,” Wright said. “We stand together today — in grief, in compassion, and in solidarity.”