Women Who Committed or Attempted Murder to Steal Someone's Baby

When it comes to grisly and horrific crime stories, few are more shocking than those involving fetal abduction. Attackers attempt to remove a baby from its mother's womb via an impromptu "surgery," often killing the mother and the baby in the process. These types of creepy stories are more common than one might think, with more than a dozen reported cases of fetal abduction or attempted fetal abduction occurring in the US alone in the last 30 years.

The strangest cases involve women so desperate for a baby who plot to kill new mothers to kidnap their newborn child, sometimes successfully. What kind of deep psychosis causes these treacherous acts is not always clear: sometimes it's because a woman has been caught in a lie where she's been faking a pregnancy, while other times it appears to stem from a deep grief felt after the loss of her own baby. And sometimes, there appears to be no discernible reason at all. 

In November 2016 Yesenia Sesma shot and killed an old friend who had just given birth to a baby girl named Sophia. Sesma fled with the girl and started telling other's she was her child.

Sesma, 34, lived in Dallas at the time of the killing. She went to her old friend Laura Abarca-Nogueda's house in Kansas to visit the new child. Abarca-Nogueda’s body was discovered by her boyfriend later that day. Authorities were able to track Sophia to Dallas, where she had been passing Sophia off as her own child.  Sesma had been faking a pregnancy in Texas for several months before stealing Sophia. 

After Sesma’s arrest, another Kansas woman, Adriana Portillo, contacted authorities and told them about an alleged encounter she’d had with Sesma back in July 2016. Portillo was pregnant at the time, and said Sesma - who was using a different name - invited her over to see some clothes and a TV she was giving away. When she arrived with her two others daughters, she said Sesma threatened her with a knife and tried to force her to bind her own children with duct tape. Portillo and her daughters managed to escape and called police, and Portillo said she was surprised to learn Sesma was not still in custody. She said Sesma had been obsessed with having a daughter, but for some reason was unable to get pregnant. 

Teka Adams was 29, homeless, and pregnant in 2010, but she wasn't unhappy. She'd cleaned up her life after a stint with drugs and had married a fellow recovering addict, Ronald Bell. The couple had met at a D.C. homeless shelter and both were excited about the baby. 

Soon Adams struck up a friendship with Veronica Deramous, a visitor to the shelter who told her she worked for a service that helped pregnant homeless women like her, and offered to give her baby supplies. On the morning of December 2, 2010, Deramous picked Adams up to take her to the storage facility, but said they had to first stop by her apartment. When they arrived, Deramous enlisted the help of her teenage son to tie Adams up. Deramous held Adams captive for three days, and at one point, tried to cut the baby out of Adams' womb using a box cutter.

Adams was finally able to escape and successfully delivered a healthy baby girl named Miracle. Deramous was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison. According to court testimony, Deramous told relatives and her boyfriend that she was pregnant even though she was not. 

Tiffany Hall murdered her friend Jimella Tunstall in September 2006 in an attempt to steal Tunstall's unborn child. The two east St. Louis women were friends and both of them were mothers, though Hall had custody issues prior to the killings over allegations of abuse.

Hall's attempt to cut out Tunstall's unborn child after she had murdered her was a failure, and the baby did not survive. Hall then went to a nearby park where called police, saying she had given birth to a stillborn child after being sexually assaulted. Police found Hall holding a dead baby, but did not find the baby's death particularly suspicious.

Hall then went to the father of Tunstall's children. She told him Tunstall had asked her to pick the children up, to which he obliged. At her home she drown the three children - ages one, two and 7 - in the bathtub.

At a funeral Hall arranged for the baby, she confessed to her boyfriend that the child was not hers - it was Tunstall's - and that she had murdered Tunstall to steal the baby. Hall told authorities after her arrest that she had considered taking the unborn baby for "quite some time" and bought supplied a week before the attack to prepare. 

Andrea Curry-Demus was sentenced to life in prison for murdering 18-year-old Kia Johnson in an attempt to take Johnson's baby from her womb. But that wasn't the first time she tried to steal a baby. Before her arrest in 2008, Curry-Demus had stabbed a pregnant woman in 1990 to steal her baby and tried to kidnap another baby from a hospital that same year. 

Curry-Demus was sentenced to life for the murder of Johnson. The two women met while they were both visiting inmates at the Allegheny County Jail in 2008. Curry-Demus, who was 40 at the time, befriended the teen and at one point offered her a ride home and some used baby clothes. The teen agreed and accompanied Curry-Demus to her apartment in Wilkinsburg, PA. There, Curry-Demus drugged Johnson, bound her with duct tape, and cut her baby from her womb. She then wrapped Johnson up in plastic and shoved her behind the bed, leaving her to suffocate and die. 

Curry-Demus attempted to pass off Johnson's son as her own, but hospital tests showed that wasn't true. She made up a story about how she'd bought the baby from a woman who was addicted to crack cocaine. Her neighbors would soon report a foul odor coming from her apartment, which led police to Johnson's body. 

Johnson's son, Terrell, was given to his grandparents. 

In September 1998, Josefina Saldana posed as a charity worker and lured an expecting mother to her home on the promise of free diapers and baby furniture. Margarita Flores, 40, and her unborn child were both killed by Saldana in her Fresno home. 

The next day, Saldana went to the hospital with the dead fetus, saying she had prematurely gone into labor. But hospital tests showed Saldana was not - and had not - been pregnant. Police arrived at the hospital and arrested her. A month later, Flores's remains were found in Tijuana, Mexico. 

Saldana maintained she had offered to buy Flores' baby, and Flores induced labor on her own but delivered a stillborn child. Saldana hanged herself in her cell three days after she was convicted of two counts of murder, saying she was too humiliated by the entire episode. 

In September 2006, new mother Stephenie Woods was preparing to take a nap at her home in Lonedell, MO. Woods had two children: one-year-old Connor and her newborn, Abby. Before Woods to get to sleep, Shannon Torrez knocked on her door. Torrez told Woods her car had broken down. Once in Woods' home, Torrez brandished a knife and a gun and stabbed woods in the chest, back, and hands. She then strangled her until she was unconscious. 

Torrez fled the scene, taking baby Abby with her. Woods awoke to find  Torrez had not only kidnapped Abby, but taken her landline and her cell phone. Woods ran three miles to the nearest house in her rural town. Torrez, on the other hand, tried to pass off Abby as her own, but her family became suspicious. 

Torrez had been pregnant, but secretly miscarried without telling her family. She conspired to kidnap Abby to take the place of her own baby. After realizing the baby Torrez had was someone else's, her family turned her over to police. Torrez lived down the street from Woods when she abducted the baby. 

Torrez's husband has since left her, and she's been sentenced to 30 years in prison. 

Dynel Lane, 34, was sentenced to 100 years in prison for the attempted murder of Michelle Wilkins, 26, in Colorado. Lane posted an ad on Craigslist in the spring 2015 that she was selling baby clothes. Wilkins responded to the ad and went over to Lane's house to peruse the items for sale. When she arrived, Lane bashed Wilkins over the head with a lava lamp and used the broken pieces to slash her in the neck. Lane then cut open Wilkins' belly and removed her unborn daughter before leaving Wilkins to die. 

The baby did not survive, but Wilkins did. She was able to lock herself in Lane's basement and call police. Because of Colorado laws, Lane could not be charged with the baby's murder, but she was charged with attempted murder, assault, and unlawful termination of a pregnancy.

In 2011, expecting mother Victoria Perez, of Oakdale, LA, vanished after visiting her doctor. For many years, no one knew what happened to Perez or her unborn baby. Then in early 2015, three children came forward with a disturbing tale about their mother that solved the mystery of Perez.

Police said Pamela Causey-Fregia, 32, killed Perez at their home so she could take her baby. Prior to Perez's abduction, Causey-Fregia told her husband she was pregnant in an attempt to dissuade him from leaving her. When he moved to Texas, she and her youngest daughter went to a local hospital to scout out babies to steal. 

When she spotted a very pregnant Perez, she concocted a ruse about having baby clothes to give away and lured Perez to her home. There, Causey-Fregia beat her to death and tried to cut the baby out of her womb. When that failed, she burned the body before ultimately burying the bones in her yard. Causey-Fregia's three children were at home during the murder. 

In 1995, 28-year-old Jacqueline Williams already had three children, but her boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, 22, wanted to have another. Unable to conceive, Williams began faking a pregnancy to appease Caffey, but became stressed about the rouse. Her cousin, 24-year-old Lavern Ward, proposed a solution. His ex, Deborah Evans, was about to give birth to his son. The baby would be Evans' fourth child, and she was planning to have labor induced in five days.

On the night of November 16, the Williams, Ward, and Caffey went over to Evans' apartment in Addison, IL. Evans lived there with her boyfriend - who was at work at the time - and her three children: Samantha, 10, Joshua, 8, and Jordan, 2. Jordan was Evans' biological son. 

Though Evans had a restraining order against Ward, she let them in. Ward offered her $2,000 for the baby, but Evans declined. Evans was shot in the head, and the trio cut open her stomach and removed the baby boy inside. Williams performed CPR on the child and cleaned him off. Meanwhile, Ward and Caffey stabbed 10-year-old Samantha to death. The three then left with the baby and Joshua, but left Jordan behind. The next day, after realizing Joshua was a witness to their crimes, they slit his throat and dumped his body in an alley. 

Police, already suspicious about why Jordan would be left unharmed but the other children killed, were led to Ward after another one of his exes had some disturbing news. She said Ward told her he had murdered Evans and would kill her too if she didn't leave her new boyfriend. 

All three are currently serving life sentences for Evans' murder. The baby, named Elijah, and Jordan were raised by their maternal grandfather. 

Giseleangelique Rene D’Milian, 47, orchestrated a bizarre scheme to kidnap at least two babies to prove to her married boyfriend that she "gave birth" to twins. 

The saga began on January 3, 2015, when a gunman burst into a Long Beach home and shot Eddy De La Cruz, Jackie Honorato and De La Cruz's brother, Jose. The gunman then kidnapped Honorato and De La Cruz's three-week-old baby Eliza. Honorato would later testify she could hear Giselangelique tell Eliza, "I'm your mommy now." All three adults were severely wounded, but all survived. 

The following day, Eliza’s body was found in a dumpster in San Diego County. Investigators determined she had likely died due to asphyxiation. 

For a while, the whole thing was a bizarre mystery. Why shoot three adults and kidnap an infant just to kill her? But once investigators were able to speak to Jackie, the truth behind what happened to her daughter emerged. Jackie had been approached by a woman she did not know earlier in the day who inquired about baby Eliza. Jackie did not think it odd at the time. However, police used surveillance video to discover that the inquisitive woman, later identified as Giselangelique, had been tailing Jackie and Eliza for some time.

They soon also able to link Giselangelique the attempted kidnapping of another baby. In that case, Giselangelique and Anthony McCall, the same man accused of shooting Eliza's parents and uncle, allegedly beat another new mother with a bat in an El Segundo hotel room and tried to kidnap her 4-month-old. They were foiled when witnesses heard the scuffle in the room and the would-be kidnappers fled.

The motive is even wilder yet. Giselangelique had apparently told her married boyfriend that she’d given birth to a set of twins while he was abroad and that he was the father. However, because that was a lie, she had to produce not one, but two babies to keep the deceit going. So, she recruited her kidnapping crew and set to work on one of the most senseless, brutal crime sprees in history. 

The voice said, “I’m your new mommy,” according to Honorato. “That was the last thing I heard,” she said.

Prosecutors believe D’Milian and McCall also tried to kidnap a second baby in February 2015.

Police allege Eliza’s kidnapping and death were part of a chain of events set in motion when Giseleangelique Rene D’Milian, one of the defendants, told her married boyfriend last year that she had given birth to the couple’s twins.

But she was never pregnant, Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna told reporters at a news conference in March. To cover her lie, she allegedly used a fake charitable organization to find mothers with infants and steal their babies.