Jacqueline Annette Williams had three children and wanted one more. The baby boy she took home, however, was not her own. He was stolen from the womb of a murdered woman, cut out by scissors, authorities said.
The newborn appeared healthy, said the police officers who found him, belying his violent entry into the world four days before his due date.Williams, boyfriend Fedell Caffey and her cousin killed Deborah Evans, then sliced her body open and plucked out the boy, prosecutors said. They also stabbed Evans' 10-year-old daughter to death, and abducted and later killed her 8-year-old son, they said.
"This is unimaginable," said Joe Birkett, chief of criminal prosecution for the DuPage County state's attorney. "You could not give a horror writer a better script."
A judge on Monday ordered Williams, 28, Caffey, 22, and Levern Ward, 24, held without bond on charges of murder and aggravated kidnapping. They could face the death penalty if convicted.
Evans apparently didn't realize the danger late Thursday when she let into her suburban apartment the couple and Ward, a former boyfriend who fathered her 17-month-old son, Jordan.
Caffey fatally shot and stabbed the pregnant woman, then he and Ward killed her 10-year-old daughter, Samantha, Birkett said.
Caffey then cut open Evans' body with scissors, and Williams extracted and resuscitated the baby, authorities said. Relatives said Williams has some training in nursing. Jordan was found unharmed early Friday in the bloody apartment.
The three abducted the newborn and Evans' 8-year-old son, Joshua, police said. Hours later, they allegedly slashed the older boy's throat and dumped his body in an alley. The Chicago Tribune quoted unidentified authorities as saying the group also tried to kill Joshua by poisoning him with iodine and strangling him.
Caffey's cousin, Terrence Forest, said Caffey called him early Friday "and said he just had a son."
Williams, who can no longer have children, had been pretending she was pregnant so she could claim the newborn as her own, prosecutors said. The state took custody of her three children.
The baby, named Elijah as his mother had intended, was said to be doing well at a hospital Monday. Upon his release, Elijah will be taken to a relative's home, where Jordan is staying.
Investigators got their first break when someone they won't identify reported seeing and speaking to Joshua in Williams' town house in Schaumburg, another Chicago suburb.
Police went to the town house Friday night, but authorities said Williams and Caffey were gone, possibly to kill Joshua and dump his body in an alley in Maywood, about 10 miles away. The two were arrested when they returned, and Ward was arrested later.
All three have long criminal records. Williams' includes convictions for theft and forgery; Caffey for attempted theft, domestic battery and unlawful use of a weapon.
Ward was released from a prison work camp in January after serving a three-year sentence for striking a police officer while trying to enter the home of a former girlfriend.
Ward also had beaten Evans in the past, according to her cousin, Fred Moody.
Neighbors said Williams and Caffey moved last summer to the town house. There were many visitors, including police who were called to quell fights.
One neighbor, Chris McElroy, said he called police after an altercation that ended when Williams walked out of the home with a bloody face.
"The way the world is now, there's nothing that could really surprise me," neighbor Jerry Clark said. "But it really shocked me that it happened out here."
It happened elsewhere. In 1987, 19-year-old Darci Pierce of Albuquerque, N.M., was accused of abducting a pregnant woman, strangling her and performing a crude Caesarean with a car key to remove the baby.
She was later found guilty but mentally ill and sentenced to life in prison. The baby girl survived.