Ciara Jobes was just 2 years old when social workers began to worry about her welfare.

They were concerned about parental neglect even before her infant sister died of a cocaine overdose. Social workers and court officials kept up supervision on and off for more than a decade, until a judge granted custody of Ciara to a close family friend nearly three years ago.

The judge, lawyers and family members felt the decision was the best chance at giving Ciara a normal life after documented neglect at the hands of her parents. Now, those officials have been left to sort out what went wrong with the woman who had given officials hope that Ciara might live a normal life.

On Wednesday, authorities discovered 15-year-old Ciara's badly emaciated and bruised body in the Southeast Baltimore home of her legal guardian -- a death a veteran detective has described as the most brutal and torturous he has ever encountered. They have charged her guardian, Satrina Roberts, 31, with first-degree murder. Roberts was denied bail yesterday during a brief hearing.

Ciara "seemed happy with Satrina," said Kendra Randall, a lawyer who represented Ciara's interests in the court proceedings three years ago. "I'm shocked that this happened. ... I didn't think this would ever happen. You really would have hoped she ended up in better conditions. She was such a sweet girl, with such a great personality."

Randall declined to comment on specifics of Ciara's dealings with court officials; Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan, who approved the guardianship, also declined to comment. But sources familiar with the girl's history of supervision since she was a year old described a life common to many with parents addicted to drugs.

Ciara was born in 1987 to Jackie Cruse and Irvin Jobes. A year later, the couple had another child, Charlotte, and social workers began taking an interest in the family after receiving complaints about possible neglect of the children, according to sources familiar with the children's supervision.

Infant sister dies

Even as the children were being supervised, tragedy struck the family -- an apparent result of their mother's drug addiction. One-year-old Charlotte Jobes accidentally ingested cocaine and died in July 1989. Later that year, citing a homicide investigation into Cruse and Jobes, social workers petitioned the courts to take custody of the Ciara and her two half-brothers, the sources said.

The judge granted the request, sources said, and for a year Ciara and her half-brothers, Christopher Clark Jr., who was born in 1986, and Cornell Timmons, a newborn, were placed in foster home.

It is unclear whether the death resulted in criminal charges, but in January 1991 officials determined the family's home life had improved and returned Ciara and her brothers.

During the next few years, even as social workers apparently continued to monitor the family's progress, sources said. But in 1998, social workers again petitioned the courts to take custody of the children. Social workers said fathers of the children were no longer involved in their lives. They worried about drug abuse by Ciara's mother, who was becoming increasingly ill from her long battle with AIDS.

The children were being sent to school poorly clothed and fed, and dirty, sources said.

Initially, a judge declined to take custody away from the mother and ordered Jackie Cruse to undergo drug treatment and testing. But Cruse never showed up for the treatment, sources said, and the children continued to appear hungry.

In June 1998, a Circuit Court juvenile master ordered the Baltimore Department of Social Services to take custody of the children. The half-brothers were sent to group and foster homes; Ciara was sent to live with Roberts, then 26, a family friend who later passed a criminal background check.

During the next two years, social services supervised Roberts and Ciara, as officials decided what to do. In January 2000, Kaplan ordered the end of social workers' supervision and granted Roberts full custody.

During the next two years, Roberts became an increasingly controlling figure in Ciara's life, her relatives have said. Eventually, Cruse's two sons returned home -- apparently after she graduated from a parents class at Patterson Park Learning Center in 1999.

But Cruse's health deteriorated. In July, she died.

Contact wanes

Cruse's mother, Iva Cruse, then petitioned the courts to be granted full custody of her two grandsons.

"I can love them like their mother wanted," Cruse wrote in a petition for custody filed in August. "I promised my daughter on her deathbed that I would keep them together."

Iva Cruse also wanted custody of Ciara, but officials had made their decision to have Ciara live with Roberts. Though Iva Cruse and other relatives tried to keep in contact with Ciara, they say, they found it increasingly difficult. Roberts did not even allow the teen-ager to attend her mother's funeral, they said.

Police say that Ciara had not left her house in the crowded O'Donnell Heights housing project since late in the summer. Roberts told detectives she began locking Ciara in an unlighted, unheated room when she could no longer discipline the teen-ager, police said.

Roberts did not feed Ciara, police said, and beat her with her fists and other objects. The girl became so malnourished, police said, that she could not stand in recent weeks. Roberts told detectives that she could hear the girl dragging herself across the room's floor.

It is unclear when Roberts stopped feeding the child. But experts said the girl's weight -- 73 pounds -- suggested she had been suffering for many weeks.

"It sounds like it's been going on for quite a while," said Dr. Robert Black, chairman of the department of International Health of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Experts said that Ciara was short for her age -- 4 feet, 9 inches tall -- but that her malnutrition possibly stunted her growth.

Even for that height, her weight was quite low -- the median weight for 15-year-old girls her height is 114 pounds. Fewer than 5 percent of American girls that age weigh less than 90 pounds. As Ciara's body was deprived of crucial nutrients, it began to break down. "Basically, the body is eating itself," Black said.

Sun staff writers Michael Stroh and Laurie Willis contributed to this article.