Joanne Hunter sat on the front porch of her parents’ house south of Peculiar on a perfect spring evening with a million questions. Sleep had been impossible, and she didn’t want her picture taken. Looked too wild, she said.

PHOTO: The Star-Herald

The 20-year-old was in a fog, and it wasn’t going away anytime soon.

“They’re not human,” she said, shaking her head and looking at the ground.

“Anyone that can do that and have no feelings is not human.”

The dark-haired, blue-eyed woman had just hours before heard on television details of the charges against her former boyfriend and his cousin – accused murderers of her 5-month-old daughter, Avee Marie.

The former boyfriend, Moreno Antonio Salinas, 19, Lake Winnebago, and his cousin, Allen Tyrone Green, 20, Kansas City, are both being held in the Cass County Jail in lieu of $1 million bond after their arraignment last week on first-degree murder charges.

In court documents, Green told detectives about a plot to shake the baby to death and make it appear accidental or illness-related by leaving no marks.

During an interview with Green eight days after the baby’s April 22 death at Children’s Mercy Hospital, Green told detectives about a plot to kill the child during an Easter weekend visit. The baby was hospitalized for four days beginning Easter Sunday, suffering from seizures, but was eventually discharged after a battery of tests.

The cousin told officers that from Easter weekend until the child’s final seizure more than two weeks later, “Salinas made numerous attempts to kill (the baby) by throwing her onto a bed, hanging her upside down shaking her and flipping her up and down by her feet and squeezing the air out of her chest,” according to a probable cause statement.

“I wanted to go to court this morning,” Hunter said. “But my detective didn’t want me to go until she had gone over the probable cause statement with me. She wanted me to hear that first, and it’s disgusting. It’s heartless and cold.”

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Hunter first met Salinas in December 2008, and it had been an on-again, off-again relationship.

“But never really what you would call rocky,” she said. “We only argued like two times the whole time we’ve been talking.”

She said Salinas “has been violent with others, but he only threatened me one time and that was a long time ago. He didn’t really threaten me, he just said that he was ‘going to’ do (something violent), but didn’t because he cared so much.”

When she became pregnant just over a year ago, she said Salinas wanted her to have an abortion.

“But I couldn’t do it, because it’s my decision. Everything happens for a reason, and I got pregnant for a reason. So I was going to change my life and do whatever I could to take care of her – give her a good life.”

Baby books, and shows about infant care on cable became her staple.

Meanwhile, Salinas disappeared from her life.

“He called me on July 4, I remember that. I also remember asking myself why he was calling me. I didn’t even let him see me pregnant until October.”

Joanne’s mother, Amy, said Salinas showed up at the hospital just prior to the child’s late November birth, “but disappeared before she was born and didn’t show up again until January.”

After a brief appearance in January, Joanne Hunter said she didn’t have contact with the baby’s father again until just before Easter weekend.

“He called me and said ‘I want to see you guys. The baby really does need to know who her daddy is, and I want to help you guys out when I can.’”

She said she didn’t feel she had any reason for concern, though her daughter “really didn’t seem comfortable with him.

“I thought it was just because he would randomly pop in and out. She was only really comfortable with me and my mom and (a friend).”

When Salinas began showing up in early April, it was always with his cousin, and they would spend the night in the house, she said.

“He was family, Reno told me. He just wanted to help out with the baby.”

And Joanne felt fine with both young men around, even though she never left them alone with the baby for long, she said.

“I didn’t think it was possible for them to hurt her. The way they acted, it was like she was the best thing since sliced bread when they were over here. I just couldn’t picture them hurting her.” [...]