Former New Mexico resident Sam Ray, who now lives in Utah, was saddened but not shocked to learn that a pregnant woman in a Chicago suburb had been murdered and the child she was carrying plucked from her womb.
Ray lived through a similar nightmare eight years ago.In March 1987, Ray's wife Cindy, 23, was kidnapped from a parking lot at Kirtland Air Force Base, taken to a secluded mountain area and strangled. A car key was then used to perform a crude Caesarean section, and the near-term fetus removed.
The child survived and police later arrested Darci Kayleen Pierce who, like one of the suspects in the Chicago case, had pretended to be pregnant prior to the kidnapping of Cindy Ray.
Authorities in Addison, Ill., said Jacqueline Williams, 28, faked a pregnancy until she could get a newborn to claim as her own. Williams, along with her boyfriend, Fedell Caffrey, 22, and Debra Evans' former boyfriend, Levern Ward, 24, were charged with murder and aggravated kidnapping.
Pierce was found guilty of murder but mentally ill. She was sentenced to life in prison, and will be eligible for parole in 2017. She is now 27.
"People in Albuquerque probably can't believe this happened again," said Sam Ray in a telephone interview Monday with the Albuquerque Journal. "But yeah, I can believe it . . . I live with it every day. I have a beautiful 8-year-old girl who looks just like her mom."
Ray was in the Air Force at the time his wife was murdered. He left the Air Force after the slaying, remarried 1 1/2 years later and now is an assistant principal at Utah's Provo High School. The child stolen by Pierce is named Amelia.
"She's doing wonderfully," Ray said. "She sings in a choir and has a beautiful voice. She wants to be a cheerleader and a professional singer."