Controversy surrounds the “baby hatch,” a place where desperate parents in China can leave a baby they can’t care for. The increasing number of abandoned newborns has overwhelmed the government system, causing hatches to shut down. One family faces criminal charges after finding out they left their baby to die at a closed “hatch.” Seth Doane reports.

A mom in St. Louis returning home from a trip to a beauty store reportedly walked into her apartment to find her 9-month-old daughter and the baby’s father both dead in a “senseless” murder-suicide, according to police and loved ones.

“It’s not something I can unsee,” Micah Lawery, mother of Ophelia Lawery-Daniels, told local CBS affiliate KSDK last week about walking in and discovering her daughter’s lifeless body next to the child’s father, Zacchaeus Daniels, 21, after he took Ophelia’s life and his own on Feb. 28, according to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. Authorities announced Thursday that they were investigating the incident as a murder-suicide.

“Something that is burned into my brain,” Lawery said.  “I don’t need to close my eyes to see it.”

A mother in Michigan was arrested last week for the death of her 18-month-old daughter, who suffocated between the driver’s seat and front door of the woman’s pickup truck after being left with three other kids while her mom grabbed lunch for her husband, police say.

Angelica Linda Arechiga, 27, of Grand Rapids, is charged with “child abuse: leaving a child in a vehicle resulting in death” for the October 2024 incident, according to local NBC affiliate WOOD. It’s reportedly the first time that the charge has been handed down to anyone in Kent County. The station spoke to Arechiga after her arrest last week about what allegedly happened that day to her daughter, Juliet Magdelena.

“I just want people to know that this was an accident,” Arechiga said while crying, per WOOD. “Yes, I could have done things differently that day. But I’ve learned from my mistakes. If I could go back in time to change things, I would, but I can’t.”

A Tennessee elementary school teacher who became pregnant with the baby of one victim and had the baby has learned her fate.

Alissa McCommon, 38, was sentenced on Friday to 25 years without parole for rape of a child, statutory rape, and sexual exploitation of minors, prosecutors said in a Friday press release. She was also sentenced to community supervision for life on the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry as a Violent Sex Offender and was ordered to have no contact with the victims. She’ll also have her teaching license revoked.

“These convictions and sentence demonstrate the continuing commitment of law enforcement and the District Attorney’s Office to aggressively investigate and prosecute child rape and sexual abuse cases in this District, especially where there are minor child victims,” said Mark E. Davidson, the District Attorney General for the 25th Judicial District in the press release. “We are glad that we were able to achieve finality, certainty, and closure for the victims and their families and the Tipton County community in this case.”

A Maryland mother and licensed clinical counselor is in jail after she allegedly drowned her 3-month-old daughter in a bathtub at their home.

The Montgomery County Police Department said in a press release that its communications center received a 911 call shortly after noon Sunday from the defendant, 37-year-old Mackenzie R. Colgan, saying she drowned the girl at their house in the 7300 block of Summit Avenue in Chevy Chase, just outside of Washington, D.C. First responders rushed to the home and tried to save the girl. But doctors at a hospital pronounced the girl dead.

More from Law&Crime: Mom arrested in toddler son’s drowning death allegedly fell asleep while he was in the bathtub

According to a probable cause arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, Colgan took the baby from family members around 11:40 a.m. Sunday and said she was going to take the girl upstairs and bathe her. About 20 minutes later, Colgan came downstairs and told the girl’s father and her husband that the victim was dead, the affidavit said. The father ran upstairs and tried to give the baby CPR and told Colgan to call 911.

Officers took Colgan to the police station for an interview. Post Miranda, Colgan allegedly told detectives that she woke up the morning in question with a plan to “end everything.” She was going to kill her two kids and her husband, she allegedly told cops. Colgan said she filled a baby bath with water and placed it into a larger tub.

“She then said that she turned the baby to face away from her and held the victim’s head under the water until she knew the victim was dead,” cops wrote. The girl’s name was redacted from the affidavit.

A Wisconsin man is in custody after allegedly throwing an 8-month-old baby boy against a wall in a Milwaukee home.

Jalin A. White, who according to court records is 20 years old, is facing charges of child abuse with great bodily harm and child neglect. He’s at the Milwaukee County Jail on a $100,000 bond.

More from Law&Crime: ‘Reset to a newborn’: Mom’s fiance ‘bear hugged’ her infant son to get him to stop crying, police say

Prosecutors described the alleged abuse during White’s first appearance in front of Milwaukee County Court Commissioner Andrea Bolender.

“Your statement (was) he hit the wall hard. You heard the bang of the wall,” Bolender told White, according to a courtroom report from local ABC affiliate WISN.

The child is at the hospital but is not expected to survive, authorities say.

An Alabama man was sentenced to life in prison for stabbing a pregnant woman in the throat a dozen times, killing her and her unborn child in Georgia.

Curteze Avery, 30, was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences in the deaths of Breanna Burgess and her 20-week-old unborn child. Prosecutors indicted him in October for malice murder and feticide. Avery will become eligible to seek parole in 2052, but the parole board will be authorized to reject his request, officials said.

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Legal History

Was wrong person executed in death of Lindbergh baby? Ex-judge’s book and DNA quest raise issues

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 11, 2024, 10:22 am CDT

Updated: A court case and a book by a former judge are raising questions about the guilt of German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a man convicted and executed in the 1932 kidnapping and death of the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles A. Lindbergh.

Lawyer Kurt Perhach is asking a New Jersey appeals court to reverse a judge’s 2023 ruling that rejected his client’s bid to test saliva on stamped ransom envelopes to determine whether Hauptmann is the killer, report the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and New Jersey Monthly.

The judge had reasoned that the state’s open-records law “is not the vehicle by which a citizen can march up to a museum and demand that the custodians of historical artifacts and documents surrender the state’s treasures for analysis, alteration and destruction.”

Hauptmann’s great-great niece and her aunt have provided DNA samples that could help answer the question whether their late relative is indeed guilty.

A retired California judge, Judge Lise Pearlman, is not part of that lawsuit, but she is promoting a theory that Lindbergh is a potential suspect. She says that Lindbergh was fascinated with eugenics and had been conducting research with Dr. Alexis Carrel, a surgeon and an organ transplant pioneer.

“My theory is that the child was operated on,” Pearlman told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We think at the very least that his carotid and probably his thyroid were taken out and kept viable for 30 days. We think he died on the operating table. And I think Carrel conducted the operation with Lindbergh’s permission—and Lindbergh was likely present at the operation.”

She suggests that Carrel had operated on the toddler and removed organs to see whether they could be preserved outside the body for use in transplants. The goal may have been to help Lindbergh’s sister-in-law, who had a damaged heart valve.

An autopsy of the toddler had revealed that all his organs were missing, except for his heart and liver, according to the New York Times. And there appeared to be no blood in the woods where the body was found. Investigators had attributed the missing organs to animals feeding on the body.

Pearlman points to other clues—there appeared to be no vermin on the body, and the toddler’s face and feet may have decomposed more slowly than the rest of the body. That could mean that chemicals had been used.

Hauptmann was arrested in 1934 after he used a $10 gold certificate that was part of a ransom payment to buy gas. Hauptmann had claimed, however, that a man had asked him to hold the gold certificates before he died in Germany.

Some dispute Pearlman’s theories, including David M. Friedman, who wrote The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever. He called Pearlman’s ideas “malicious garbage” in an interview with the New York Times. He acknowledged, however, that he had not read Pearlman’s book.

Updated March 12 at 9:10 a.m. to report that David M. Friedman said he had not read Judge Lise Pearlman’s book.

Massachusetts‘ highest court reinstated the first-degree murder conviction of a woman who in 2009 killed her former neighbor and cut her open to steal her baby.

A jury in 2014 convicted Julie Corey of first-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping of 23-year-old Darlene Haynes. But five years later her felony murder conviction was tossed, with a judge saying that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove she committed aggravated kidnapping during the killing. Corey also appealed for a new trial on the grounds that she had ineffective counsel, but that was denied.

On Monday, the Supreme Judicial Court reversed the lower court’s decision and reinstated the first-degree murder conviction.

Haynes’ landlord entered the Worchester apartment on July 27, 2009, over concerns about her pets. The landlord was met with a “very foul” smell when he entered the apartment. He walked into a bedroom closet and pulled on a blanket when a “leg fell out.” Haynes, who was 8 months pregnant at the time of her death, had an electrical cord around her neck along with a nine-inch incision on her abdomen. The baby was gone.