Baby Be Mine (17 page)

Darci now had the baby she wanted—but somehow she needed to get her hands on a birth certificate so that she could successfully claim that the child was her own. She drove to a car dealership where a friend worked and told her that she had just delivered a baby. The friend took her to the local hospital where Darci told her husband earlier in the day that she was scheduled for labor induction.

The physician took one look at her and, skeptical of her story, performed the gynecological exam. Darci's pant legs were covered with mud and blood. Something did not look right. When he performed his examination, his suspicions were confirmed—there was no physical evidence that Darci had given birth to a baby. He called authorities and she was taken into custody.

At trial, the defense argued that in addition to borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, Darci suffered from atypical disassociative disorder that made her incapable of controlling her actions—and thus she was legally insane at the time she committed the crime.

The prosecution expert—the renowned Dr. Phillip Resnick—agreed with the defense on the first two disorders, but argued that, rather than suffering from disassociation, she had antisocial personality disorder. His diagnosis was not consistent with an insanity defense.

The jury split the difference, finding her guilty but mentally ill. Their decision sent Darci to prison, where she would remain for at least 30 years. At that time, her condition would be reassessed, possibly giving her a change in status.

In Brownsville, a Texas town on the border with Mexico, an abduction occurred in 1992 that was strange enough to be chronicled in the “News of the Weird” column in newspapers across the country. Rosa Botello met Laura Lugo, a 27-year-old pregnant woman, at a social gathering in town. Rosa introduced Laura to her sister Paulyna, who lived in the nearby town of McAllen. Paulyna claimed that she, too, was pregnant.

The two sisters cultivated a friendship with Laura. They included her in shared meals, shopping excursions and hours of conversation. Laura was 8 ½ months pregnant and living from one welfare check to the next when the sisters made her an offer that was too good to be true. She needed a prenatal checkup they told her. It will be our gift to you, they
said. The sisters took Laura to an appointment at the Brownsville office of Paulyna's obstetrician, Dr. Mauricio Bierstadt.

After a cursory examination of Laura, the doctor spoke with the two sisters. He then asked them all to meet him in his office across the border in Matamoras, Mexico. Laura was confused by this and was at first reluctant to go. Rosa and Paulyna made light of the doctor's instructions and promised they would all go shopping afterward, thus luring Laura across the border.

In his Mexican examination room, Dr. Bierstadt gave Laura an injection that caused her to lose consciousness. While she was under, Dr. Bierstadt performed a caesarean section and gave the baby to Rosa and Paulyna. When Laura regained consciousness, nurses told her that her baby was gone. And the Botello sisters were gone, too.

Laura battled for two years to regain custody of her child. It was a difficult fight, since Paulyna—through bribery or trickery—was able to obtain a birth certificate showing that the baby boy was her biological child and his father was a Mexican drug lord. Laura maintained her constant refrain that she gave birth to that baby until the courts decided to resolve the issue by ordering DNA testing.

The genetic analysis was still in process when the Botello sisters changed their story. Now, they claimed that the baby was not the biological child of Paulyna, but it was rightfully her baby just the same.

Laura approached them, they said, because she wanted to get an abortion. Instead of giving her the money for that procedure, they convinced Laura to allow them to pay the medical expenses of carrying the child until birth if she would give the baby to them after it was born. Laura agreed, they claimed, to let Paulyna have the infant.

In 1994, DNA testing proved conclusively that the 2-year-old the Botellos named Jorge Daniel Alaniz was Laura's biological child. The court awarded custody to her. The punishment handed to the sisters was light. Prior to trial,
Paulyna spent 62 days sitting in a Mexican jail awaiting extradition to the United States. Aside from that time, neither of them faced any imprisonment. They both received a sentence of 3 years probation.

Laura enjoyed the reunion with her baby for eleven weeks. She disappeared on December 21, 1994. Her charred skeleton—riddled with bullets—was found by authorities six months later. In October 1997, an informant told police that a woman named Janet Ramirez was with Laura Lugo when she died.

When Janet was arrested on theft charges in April 1998, police questioned her about the death of Laura Lugo. She confessed to being involved in the murder. Janet was the mistress of Randall Ledbetter, a U.S. Border Patrol agent based in Arizona, and saw Laura as her romantic rival for Ledbetter's affections.

Janet's first plan to eliminate the competition was to make Laura look bad in Ledbetter's eyes. Janet—identifying herself as Laura Lugo—made threatening phone calls to Ledbetter's wife. The calls frightened her and she told her husband. Ledbetter was infuriated and determined to make the calls stop. That was when, according to Janet, Border Patrol Agent Ledbetter hired Brownsville Police Officer Roberto Briseno to kill Laura. Janet claimed to be present when Briseno received his payment from Ledbetter—a handful of bullets and $1,000 cash.

Janet and Briseno convinced Laura to go with them to a remote location under the pretense of a rendezvous with Ledbetter. There, Janet said, Briseno shot Laura six times.

Janet Ramirez pled guilty to murder and received a 20-year sentence. She testified at the trial of the two former officers of the law.

The jury, however, did not find Janet's testimony credible. They acquitted both Roberto Briseno and Randall Ledbetter. Justice was not something Laura Lugo ever received—not during her short life and not even after her death.

*    *    *

Jacqueline Williams, of Addison, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, had three children, but she wanted one more. Her boyfriend Fedell Caffey wanted a boy. Her cousin Laveme Ward knew where she could find one. Debra Evans, his former girlfriend and the mother of his 19-month-old son, Jordan, was pregnant again—with someone else's child—and the baby she carried was a boy. Debra had already picked out a name—Elijah.

Jacqueline set the stage for the abduction. In April 1999, she began a charade of pregnancy. She said her baby was due in August. After friends threw a baby shower for her early in that month, she moved the due date forward to October. That month passed and still Jacqueline had no baby.

On November 1, she told her probation officer that she gave birth that day. On November 9, she told him that she named her son Elijah. But Jacqueline still didn't have a baby.

Early in the evening of November 19, Jacqueline checked to make sure that Debra Evans' live-in boyfriend James Edwards had left the house for work. Then Jacqueline left her home with boyfriend Caffey and cousin Ward.

Debra Evans didn't know she had anything to fear that night at 9 when she opened the door and let the trio into her apartment. She sat on the love seat chatting to Jacqueline about her pregnancy and about her three children: 10-year-old Samantha, 8-year-old Joshua and her little toddler Jordan.

Ward interrupted their small talk and flashed $2,000 cash in Debra's face. He wanted to buy the baby she was carrying. Debra refused. Ward towered over her, yelling in her face. Debra would not budge—she would not sell her baby. Ward pulled out a small automatic handgun and shot Debra in the head.

Caffey and Ward dragged Debra off the love seat onto the floor between the small sofa and the coffee table. While Jacqueline looked on, Caffey used a pair of poultry shears to slash Debra's belly, cutting some of her small intestines on his way to her womb. Ward kneeled by Debra's head, stabbing her in the neck with a knife.

Caffey pulled the baby out of Debra's body and cut the umbilical cord. Little Elijah wasn't breathing. Caffey was ready to drop him and run. Jacqueline snatched the infant from his hands. She blew into his nose and mouth. The newborn wailed and began to breathe on his own.

While Jacqueline dressed Elijah, Caffey and Ward headed down the hall to the children's bedroom. They stabbed and slashed Samantha's throat seven times. Joshua ran from the room screaming that the bad men were hurting his sister. Jacqueline dropped a Winnie the Pooh baby blanket on top of Debra's body, but it was too small to conceal the lifeless form from Joshua. At the sight of her, he ran into the bathroom and threw up.

Jacqueline headed for the back door with the baby in her arms. Joshua threw his arms around her legs and begged her not to leave him in the house with the bad men. She took him out to the car with her. For a few brief moments, the little boy felt safe. Then they were joined in the car by Caffey and Ward.

Little Jordan—not yet 2 years old—was left home alone with only the bloodied bodies of his dead mother and older sister for company. When James Edwards got home from work, the bewildered little boy met him in the kitchen. A frantic Edwards checked his wife and her daughter for any signs of life—then he called 9-1-1.

Jacqueline dropped Joshua off at the home of her friend Patrice Scott to spend the night. She told Patrice that Joshua's mother was shot in a drug deal and was in the hospital.

Joshua whimpered in his sleep all night long and cried as soon as he awoke.

“Are you worried about your mama?” Patrice asked.

Joshua nodded.

“Don't worry. She's at the hospital. She's okay.”

“No. No she's not. She's dead. My sister's dead.” He told Patrice about the burglars who broke into his home. As the shocked woman listened, he told her the names of the men who killed his mother and sister.

Patrice confronted Jacqueline when she arrived around 9 that morning with a newborn infant in her arms. Jacqueline called Joshua a liar, but the little boy stood his ground and sealed his fate.

He could identify the attackers. They could not afford to let him live. Jacqueline forced him to swallow iodine in an attempt to poison him. She and Caffey tried to strangle him with a rope, but Patrice intervened and saved his life—for a few minutes more.

Out in the car, Jacqueline held Joshua while Caffey stabbed him to death. They dumped his body ten miles away behind a building in Maywood.

Jacqueline Williams and Fedell Caffey were found guilty and given the death penalty. Laverne Ward received a life term in prison. But the death sentences would not stand.

In January 2003, Governor George Ryan made a startling pronouncement about the ultimate punishment: “Because our three-year study has” found only more questions about the fairness of the sentencing; because of the spectacular failure to reform the system; because we have seen justice delayed for countless Death Row inmates with potentially meritorious claims; because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious—and therefore immoral—I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

“This is a blanket commutation. I realize it will draw ridicule, scorn and anger from many who oppose this decision.”

He wrapped up his address with a quotation from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: “The imposition of the death penalty on defendants in this country is as freakish and arbitrary as who gets hit by a bolt of lightning.”

That week in Illinois, 171 prisoners sat on Death Row. Ryan granted full pardons to four men, reduced the sentences of three others to the point that they would be released within weeks, and commuted the death sentences of 160 men and one woman—including Jacqueline Williams and Fedell Caffey—to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The families of many of the victims were outraged. Among those speaking out was Sam Evans, Debra's father: “All he talked about is the death penalty issue, which, for this governor, is to be expected. He is not very concerned with individuals, just with issues.”

The people of Illinois still argue whether Ryan was motivated by politics or by principle.

Twenty-nine-year-old Felecia Scott of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, had two boys before her hysterectomy in 1994. The next year, she was living with a new boyfriend, Frederick Polian. Felecia was convinced that she needed a baby to maintain this relationship. She told her partner and her mother that she was pregnant.

Felecia befriended an expectant 17-year-old, Carethia Curry. She told the teenager that she was pregnant, too. Using this bond she earned the girl's trust.

Carethia was in her ninth month on January 31, 1996, when Felecia invited her out for pizza. After dinner, the two women returned to Felecia's apartment to talk and relax.

Instead of socializing, Felecia shut the door and pulled out a gun. She shot Carethia twice in the head. The pregnant girl was fatally injured, but still alive when Felecia kneeled beside her with a knife and a pamphlet opened to a diagram of a cesarean section. Felecia cut Carethia from breast bone to pubic bone. She made a bisecting cut and removed the baby from the dying girl's body.

Felecia crammed a dying Carethia into a plastic garbage can and sealed it shut with duct tape. When Frederick Polian arrived at the apartment, Felecia showed him the newly born baby, telling him she'd just given birth at home. She asked him to dispose of the trash can she filled with the bloodied towels and blankets she'd used during the birth and in the clean-up afterward.

Felecia took the baby to a hospital in Birmingham for a checkup. Frederick drove outside of that town and dropped the makeshift plastic casket into a fifty-foot ravine.

The next day, Carethia's family contacted police and reported her missing. The authorities questioned Felecia, since she'd been the last person to see the missing girl alive. When they asked her about the infant in her possession, she showed them the paperwork about “her” baby's birth from the Birmingham hospital. She made it through that interview, but knew it was only a matter of time before investigators uncovered her medical history and learned she was incapable of giving birth to a child.