Rilya Wilson's older sister attended the trial of the South Florida woman accused of murdering the foster child on Monday, saying that she wishes she could see her again.
"I really wish that I had a chance to meet her but unfortunately I won't have that chance to meet her," said Brandy Sims, who is now 18.
Geralyn Graham, 66, faces life in prison if convicted in the murder of 4-year-old Rilya, who went missing in 2001 and whose body was never found. It was more than a year before officials discovered she had disappeared.
Sims' name originally was Randy, and her birth mother gave up her, Rilya and their sister Rodericka for adoption. Sims was adopted by community activist Willie Sims and his wife, Bonnie Sims, when she was very little. She said she doesn't remember Rilya because they never really lived together, but her father says there was a day, at Brandy's fourth birthday party, when Brandy held Rilya, who was only two at the time.
"I really don't recall her, per se, but I remember as a little girl, seeing her on the television and seeing she has the same last name as me," Brandy Sims said.
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Graham, who was Rilya's caretaker, has insisted she did not kill her. Her attorneys maintain that there is no evidence that Rilya is dead, let alone that Graham killed her.
"Justice in my mind is to have something to say that that person is no longer going to hurt people, that person is no longer going to be a person to harm other children or any person the way they hurt my sister," Sims said, as the trial entered its third week of testimony Monday.
Sims added: "I feel that I am loved, I am cared for, and that's what I want for other kids."
On Thursday, former Department of Children and Families investigator Barbara Toledo testified that Graham's story that an unnamed DCF worker took Rilya away for psychiatric evaluations and never brought her back didn't add up.
Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who has attended the trial on two other occasions, was there again on Monday.
"If I were on the jury, my question would be, if not you, Ms. Graham, than who?" Wilson said.
