Fetal abduction

Fetal Abduction is the kidnapping of an unborn child by forcing a pregnant mother to comply with an early cesarean, and then taking the fetus directly from the mother’s womb. The mother is usually murdered, or does not survive the cesarean process, and depending on the age of the fetus, sometimes the child does not survive either.

Abductor Profile

Fetus abductions often happen at the hands of a friend, and are almost always done by a woman. According to “Abductions from the Womb”, an article by Dr. Marlene Dalley, “In most cases of fetus abduction, the abductor befriends the pregnant victim, all the while planning to kill her and extract the baby by Caesarean section, obviously risking the baby's health and life. Unlike infant abductions, the fetus abductor is so determined to give birth to a child that she actually acts out the fantasy of delivering the baby herself, rather than kidnapping one already born.” The abductees carried out such crimes because they felt a desire to form or strengthen a partner relationship, and to live out a fantasy of their own of delivering a child. The people who commit such a crime are often unable to have children of their own, or cannot get pregnant again, and pressed for time, merely take advantage of another woman’s pregnancy. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s spokesperson Cathy Nahirny stated in 2007, “"Many times the abductor fakes a pregnancy and when it is time to deliver the baby, must abduct someone else's child”. These women begin with a fantasy, a dream of being pregnant, and rather than wake up from that dream, they take someone else’s.

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

According to BBC News article, “The Women Who Kill for Babies” by Chris Summers (2007), “The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in Virginia says there have been nine fetus abductions or attempted abductions since 1987. That compares with 251 infant abductions between 1983 and September 2007.” The numbers have gradually been increasing since then. Summers continues by saying: "We still do not understand why this small group of perpetrators goes to the extreme of abducting a still pregnant woman and cut the infant from her body. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the female abductor has found it difficult to abduct an infant from a healthcare facility, and is pressed for time."

Fetal Abduction Cases

1987

The first recorded fetal abduction happened in 1987 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Cindy Ray was eight months pregnant when she was kidnapped at Kirkland Air Force Base outside a prenatal clinic. Darci Pierce was nineteen years old when she strangled to death the pregnant woman. She used her car keys to open Ray’s womb, snatching the unharmed fetus, Millie. Millie lived on, and Darci faced life in prison for her crime.

1995

Deborah Evans was murdered in her apartment in Addison, Illinois. Jacqueline Williams, her boyfriend Fedell Caffey, and her cousin Lavern Ward snuck into the woman’s home and shot Evans in the head. She had three children, and was pregnant with a fourth. Two of Evan’s children were murdered along with their mother. Evan’s murderers then proceeded to cut through her womb with scissors, and remove the fetus. One of the children, a baby boy, survived, as did the fetus and the three were sentence to life in prison.

1996

In Tuscaloosa, Alabama seventeen year old Carenthia Curry was murdered by her friend, twenty-nine year old Felicia Scott. Carenthia was abducted by her friend on a night out. She was found three months later stuffed in a garbage can at the bottom of a fifty-foot ravine with several gunshot wounds to the head, her torso sliced open. The baby girl Curry was carrying survived, and her “friend” was jailed for life.

1998

Margarita Flores was eight months pregnant when she received a seemingly friendly phone call from Josephina Saldana, who offered her gifts of baby furniture and a free one-year supply of diapers for the expectant mother. Flores could not have known that when she went to the warehouse to collect her prizes from Saldana that she would not be leaving it. Josephina was caught at a hospital the day afterwards carrying a dead fetus that she claimed to have just given birth to. She was brought to prison, found guilty of her heinous crime, though did not live out her full sentence before hanging herself in incarceration.

2000

Teresa Andrews lived in Ravenna, Ohio. She was twenty three, pregnant, and shopping when she ran into Michelle Bica, the woman who would soon be the end of her. Thirty nine year old Bica was pretending to be pregnant when she ran into Teresa, and the two exchanged addresses, a supposedly innocent move, maybe a beginning to a new friendship. That is until Bica started stalking Teresa. She invited the woman to her home, then killed her, extracted the fetus she was carrying, and buried the woman in her garage. The baby survived, and Bica showed her off as her own, that is until the FBI began asking questions. In fear of punishment for her crime, Bica shot herself.

2003

Carolyn Simpson of Okemah, Oklahoma was twenty one years old and six months pregnant when she was shot and killed. She worked at a casino, where her murderer, Effie Goodson, age thirty-seven, was a regular customer. Goodson offered to give Carolyn a ride home, and Carolyn was later found in a ditch two miles away from her abductor. The baby, removed from the mother’s womb three months early, did not make it. When Goodson brought the fetus to the hospital, the child was pronounced dead and it was discovered that she was not the mother. Goodson was found unable to stand for a trial, and three years later was sentenced to life in prison.

2004

Bobbie Jo Stinnett died of strangulation at the age of twenty three by the hands of thirty seven year old Lisa Montgomery. The two had known each other previously; they were both rat terrier breeders in a dog show circuit, and Montgomery had even emailed the victim, telling her that she wished to purchase one of her dogs. Montgomery faked a pregnancy, and on December 16th she drove from her Kansas home to Skidmore Missouri and destroyed someone else’s. After strangling the expectant mother, the woman cut open Bobbie Jo’s abdomen, and stole her one month premature daughter. An hour later the victim’s mother found her body, and less than twenty four hours later Victoria Jo Stinnett, the victim’s stolen fetus, was found healthy in Melvern, Kansas. Lisa Montgomery was incarcerated.

2006

Jimella Tunstall was murdered in St. Louis, Illinois by her childhood friend Tiffany Hall in 2006. She had been pregnant. Jimella was knocked unconscious, her unborn baby cut from her abdomen with a pair of scissors. Neither survived the attack. Jimella’s corpse was left in a vacant lot, but the killing did not stop there. Jimella had three children, ages one, two, and seven. Hall, still on her rampage, drowned the three children, and left them in the washer and dryer machines in the family’s apartment.

2008

Araceli Camacho Gomez of Kennewick, Washington, age twenty seven, was stabbed to death by twenty three year old Phiengchai Sisouvanh Synhavong. Gomez’s hands and feet were bound with yarn throughout the attack, and her fetus was cut from her womb with a box cutter. The child survived the vicious attack. Synhavong called the police for help, and attempted to pass the fetus off as her own. It became apparent, very quickly, that she was lying, and guilty of the crime.

2008

Andrea Curry-Demus, after spending eight years in prison for murder, murdered again. She had stabbed an expectant mother to death in a devious ploy to obtain the unborn fetus and take the baby for herself. When that did not work she seized a child from a hospital. Eighteen year old Kia Johnson knew none of this. In the town of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, Kia, another expectant mother, was murdered, and her fetus ripped from her womb by the same crazed woman. Kia’s body was later found in Curry-Demus’s apartment. The baby survived.

2009

In Worchester, Massachusetts, the body of twenty three year old Darlene Haynes was found; she was eight months pregnant, her fetus missing. “The fetus was not recovered at the scene and detectives are searching for this fetus, which, according to medical personnel, could survive but will need medical attention immediately,” police said. Two days later, Julie A. Corey, 35, along with her boyfriend, Alex Dion, was arrested at a homeless-shelter in Plymouth, N.H. The baby, Sheila Marie, weighed 4-1/2 pounds and was in good health. Julie is being prosecuted for kidnapping charges. [1]