The last day of Talia's life started with a spanking.

That's what her father told investigators in the hours after her death.

He told them he used his brown Levi's belt, the one he had used on her nearly every day for almost four months. Sometimes he hit the child so hard, old wounds would open and blood would spatter on her bedroom walls, he said.

That final morning, July 16, Naeem Williams said he struck his daughter on her backside and she fought him. When she fell to the floor of her room, squirming to get away, he hit her back and her legs.

Talia, he said, kept moving, trying to avoid the blows.

Williams said he hit his daughter 10 to 15 times before he was satisfied that the 5-year-old girl understood his discipline.

"Think about what you did," Williams said he told the child.

What she did — Talia's crime in the eyes of her father, a Schofield Barracks soldier — was to spit toothpaste all over the bathroom sink.

But her pain did not end that morning, as revealed in statements to authorities by her father and her stepmother, Delilah Williams.

Copies of the signed statements made to Army investigators in the first hours after Talia's death were given to media this week by a South Carolina attorney representing the child's biological mother.

They detail repeated abuse that Talia's father explained as "just discipline."

Both Naeem, 25, and Delilah Williams, 21, have been charged with murder. Naeem Williams, an Army specialist, faces life in prison under military law. Delilah Williams, however, faces a possible death sentence under federal sentencing guidelines.

SLOW TO CATCH ON

In separate statements to authorities, the couple complained about Talia, saying she was slow to catch on.

The couple was living at Schofield Barracks when they got custody of Talia last December from the child's biological mother, Tarshia Williams, of Orangeburg, S.C.

Talia would urinate and defecate on herself, ruining clothes and pushing Delilah Williams to remove the bed from Talia's room because she kept soiling it as well.

"I used to hit her with a belt and it would work for that moment and afterwards she was the same," Delilah Williams told investigators.

She stopped hitting Talia in March or April because the child began to fight back, at times digging her fingernails into her stepmother's arms.

"She would never cry, though," Delilah Williams said. "She would only scream at the top of her lungs, but would not cry."

Talia slept on the bare floor because her father removed everything else from the room as further punishment. His punishment did not end with that, Delilah Williams said.

"My husband would sometimes hit her with the belt and sometimes he would take her into the bedroom and would not allow me in," she told investigators. "It sounded like he was hitting her with his fists, but I could not see what he was doing, but she would have bruises and such. I saw cuts on her back and they were actually scars and these were from a belt that Naeem used on her."

DIDN'T MEAN TO HURT HER

Talia was left in her room that final day.

It isn't clear from the statements if she spent the entire day there, but about 5 p.m., her father said he returned to her room to see if she was hungry.

He found that she had wet herself. Angry, Naeem Williams said he ordered Talia to get undressed and get into the shower but he felt she was playing around and when the child went to a hallway, he told her to go to her room.

"When she turned around to go to her room I popped her and she fell to her knees and then fell over onto her face," according to his statement to investigators. "Then she didn't get up. I told her to get up but she wouldn't. I think she was trying to get up because I could see her head move back and forth."

A "pop," Naeem Williams told authorities, was an open-handed slap. He also stated that he would sometimes sneak up behind her and punch her with his closed fist.

"If there are knuckle impressions on her body, they would be mine," he said.

The "pop" in the hallway was hard and driven by swirling emotions, he told investigators.

"I was disappointed and sad and angry all at the same time," he said.

But he said he did not intend to injure her.

"I just wanted to discipline her," he said.

As Talia lay on the hallway floor, she began to wheeze, prompting her father to scoop her up and place her in the bathtub where he splashed cold water on the child.

Then he said he moved Talia to her room, placing her on the empty floor.

Delilah Williams said she looked at her stepdaughter and told her husband to leave the girl on the floor. Fifteen minutes later, the couple heard the child wheezing.

"You could see her chest rising and then she would stop and then start," Delilah Williams told authorities.

The couple noticed a discharge oozing from the child's mouth, a sign Delilah Williams equated with death from having worked in a hospital emergency room. Talia had stopped breathing, too, but Naeem Williams said he felt her heart and it was still beating.

Delilah said she could not find a pulse, however, and said the child was dead. Naeem said he agreed.

"I told my wife, 'Hey, I don't think she made it,' " Naeem Williams told investigators.

But they decided to wait before calling for help because Delilah was worried that authorities would take away her 4-month-old baby when they discovered Talia. So she called her cousin in 'Ewa Beach to come and take the baby and waited.

"My wife was scared about what would happen," Naeem Williams told investigators. "We talked about what may happen to us and our family, if we'd be together."

An hour after they discovered Talia was unresponsive, the couple called 911.

Meanwhile, with Talia still on the floor, Naeem Williams said he used a household cleanser to wash the blood-stained walls in her bedroom.

"I didn't want investigators to come over and think I was abusing her," he told investigators.

'I LOVED HER'

Emergency crews descended upon the couple's apartment at Wheeler Army Airfield.

Paramedics tried to revive the child, but succeeded only for a moment before she became unresponsive with no pulse. She had vomited and they suspected a head injury.

At Wahiawa General Hospital, emergency room doctors pronounced her dead. An autopsy by the Honolulu Medical Examiner found that Talia died of "inflicted head trauma due to battered child syndrome."

When investigators sat down with Naeem Williams before dawn on July 17, he told them he was only trying to teach Talia when he hit her with his belt.

Then they asked him how he felt about the child. Naeem Williams didn't hesitate.

"I loved her."

HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION

STATEMENT OF NAEEM WILLIAMS, THE FATHER

STATEMENT OF DELILAH WILLIAMS, THE STEPMOTHER