News of the Week by Diane Fiore Autopsies completed on 7 Utah babies found in garage; police, prosecutors to review results

Fox News Megan Huntsman’s booking photo in a Utah County jail after being arraigned for smothering or suffocated six of her newborn babies soon after giving birth

Huntsman, 39, acknowledged to police that she killed six of the babies, put them in plastic bags and then packed them inside boxes in the garage of her home south of Salt Lake City over a decade from 1996 to She told police one of the babies was stillborn Neighbors have described Huntsman as a nice, quiet woman who was trusted to take care of children and generally seen as a good person.

Huntsman was arraigned Monday, April 16th on six charges of murder and ordered held on $6 million bond. She did voluntarily turn herself into police When asked by Judge Steven Hansen what she thought of the size of the bail, Huntsman, speaking via closed circuit TV from the Utah County jail, stared blankly and responded, "That's fine."

Huntsman's estranged husband, Darren West, discovered one of the babies' bodies in a cardboard box in the garage of their Pleasant Grove home last weekend while he was cleaning up West, lived with Huntsman during the decade she said the births and deaths occurred, but he was in federal prison on drug charges from 2006 until January 2014 The couple's three daughters were living in the house the entire time, they are now ages 20, 18 and 14

DNA tests will reportedly be conducted by the FBI to determine the father and mother of each infant Police do not consider 41-year-old West, a suspect or a person of interest at this time, even though he is believed to have fathered all of the infants.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) On Sunday, April 13, 2014, Pleasant Grove Police investigators enter the home where 7 dead babies were discovered on April 13, year-old Megan Huntsman was arrested and booked on suspicion of six counts of murder. Police say she may have had the babies and killed them all over the last decade. Police believe she gave birth to the babies then killed them over the past decade, according to a police news release. The home where the babies bodies were discovered

Questions continue to swirl around Megan Huntsman’s dark and disturbing case, including how people — including her husband — apparently were unaware she was giving birth to children almost every year for a decade No one knew the woman was pregnant with her two eldest daughters until she gave birth to them at a hospital. Huntsman also has a 14-year-old daughter who somehow escaped the serial filicide by their mother One of Huntsman’s longtime Pleasant Grove neighbors has said she had noticed Huntsman go through some weight fluctuations through the years, but never thought she was pregnant. Even Huntsman’s West Valley City boyfriend, James Brady, told ABC4 that he did not know she was pregnant last year until she miscarried.

April 21, 2014 court appearance By Jessica miller The Salt Lake Tribune Provo Criminal charges against a woman accused of killing six of her babies likely won’t be filed until her court appearance next week.

UTAH DOES CARRY THE DEATH PENALTY Utah Criminal Code Title 76 Chapter 5 Section 202 Offenses Against the Person Aggravated murder. (1) Criminal homicide constitutes aggravated murder if the actor intentionally or knowingly causes the death of another under any of the following circumstances: Murder 2) Criminal homicide constitutes murder if: (a) the actor intentionally or knowingly causes the death of another;

Monstrous women who kill The first year of life of a child is the riskiest for a mother when it comes to committing filicide(murder by parent) Cheryl Meyer, a psychologist at Wright State University in Ohio and co- author of several books on the subject, said it's probable that a mother kills a child somewhere in the U.S. once every three days. Mothers who kill their children tend to fall into five categories, according to Meyer's research on dozens of cases: killing of a newborn, killing through abuse, being assisted or coerced by a partner, killing purposely and killing through neglect. The last category includes women who leave children in a bathtub or a hot car and come back to find them dead

On the evening of October 26, 1997, Susan Dianne Eubanks committed the unthinkable when she shot and killed her four children execution style at her home in California to seek revenge against her ex- husband. In March of 2013, a German court convicted a woman of manslaughter and sentenced her to ONLY nine years in prison for killing five of her newborn babies In Texas, Frances Newton was executed at the age of 40 by lethal injection for the April 7, 1987 murder of her husband, Adrian, her 7-year-old son, Alton, and her 21-month-old daughter, Farrah. It has been 12 years since Andrea Yates was first convicted of drowning each of her five children in the bathtub in a Houston suburb Diane Downs shot her three children, with the intention to kill them all. She confessed later that her children got in the way of her love, since her boyfriend didn't want to share her with them.

CITATIONS (Salt Lake City Tribune) (Utah criminal code) ( first hearing) (Monstrous mothers article)