A woman whose fetus had been cut from her womb -- perhaps with scissors -- was found dead in an overgrown lot on Thursday. Investigators recovered what may be the stolen fetus and searched the woods for the victim's three children.
A 26-year-old woman who police say was with the children when they were last seen on Monday was taken into custody. Police said she held a funeral earlier this week for what she claimed was her stillborn child; investigators are now analyzing those remains to see if they are the stolen fetus.
Authorities provided few details of the investigation and stopped short of calling the woman a suspect in the slaying of 23-year-old Jimella Tunstall, saying only that she was a person of interest.
"Our main concern at this point is trying to find the children alive," State Police Captain Craig Koehler said.
Dozens of searchers scoured Holten State Park in East St. Louis for Tunstall's children, ages 1, 2 and 7. Investigators would not say what led them to believe the children were there.
East St. Louis Police Chief James Mister said the boyfriend of the woman in custody reported that she told him during the funeral on Thursday that she killed a pregnant woman to get the fetus.
An autopsy showed that Tunstall's death was "very graphic and very brutal," said Ace Hart, a deputy coroner.
She died of a wound by a sharp object to the abdomen, possibly a pair of scissors that was found near her body, he said.
"We're thinking it's scissors," Hart said.
Hart said the woman in custody summoned police to Holten Park on Sept. 15, saying she had gone into labor. The dead baby, taken to a hospital, showed no signs of trauma and an autopsy failed to pinpoint a cause of death, he said.
The woman would not let doctors examine her and offered conflicting reasons for why she went into labor, alternately saying she had had consensual sex and was sexually attacked, Hart said.
"We're not rushing to judg-ment," East St. Louis prosecutor Robert Haida said. "We are taking our time and waiting on reports from investigators."
Authorities declined to say whether there was any connection between the victim and the woman in custody.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS