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Profile 2013
Faithful Grace Tragic death of 7-year-old girl leads mother to new calling By Jennifer Chapman | The Tribune
W
hen Barbie Bias is asked to describe her only daughter, Annaliese Grace, she smiles. That alone is no small task. Less than a year and a half ago, her energetic and bubbly second-grader’s life tragically ended. The journey Barbie has taken since then is one intrinsically woven with faith. At just 7 years old, Annaliese was a loving and caring little girl with brown hair and big brown eyes. “She was so full of life,” Barbie said. “She loved to make people giggle. When she was with you, she was so focused on you and what would make you smile.” Barbie said Annaliese seemed to want everyone she was with to know how special they were. “She got into her fair share of mischief, but she did it with a smile and a laugh that just lit up the room,” Barbie said. “She was baptized just two months before she went to Heaven. She was a very special little girl.” Barbie, Annaliese, and Annaliese’s father, Matt Bias, had moved from Huntington, W.Va., to Indiana in 2010, and then to Anderson, Ky. During this time, Barbie and Matt started divorce proceedings. Barbie said Annaliese had told a licensed social worker that Matt was abusive, and the social worker recommended that she spend as little time with him as possible. But this was inadmissible in court due to the social worker being across state lines. “Nothing was finalized,” Barbie said. “Not even that we were separated.” Barbie was granted custody on Aug. 15, 2011, and Annaliese was to be returned to Barbie the following day. But she never saw her daughter alive again. On Aug. 16, 2011, rather than meeting at the police station to give Annaliese back to Barbie, Matt sent a text wanting her to meet him somewhere else, but Barbie stood firm that they would meet as planned. While Barbie was at work, she said the police came in with a social worker and spoke to her boss. “I heard my bosses gasp. I said, ‘What happened? Is my baby OK?’ The social worker shook her head no. They told me she was dead,” Barbie said. Barbie said everything that happened after that was a blur. She remembers going to the police station. A pastor from her church came in, knelt down in front of her, and said that Matt had shot Annaliese five times, though later they learned it was six, and had shot himself once. They both died at the scene. The one small comfort Barbie has about what happened is that Annaliese wasn’t awake when she died. “She went to sleep happy and woke up in Heaven,” Barbie said.
Annaliese Grace Bias