Kimmi Hardy had told people for months she was going to have a baby, and even wore maternity clothes and held a shower after the birth.
She did, in fact, have a baby - but it wasn't hers.Hardy had lured a new mother to her home, shot her to death with two bullets in her head, hid the body and took the woman's 6-week-old baby boy as her own, police said.
Her scheme began to unravel when one of the guests at her shower realized the baby was not a newborn and called the FBI.
Hardy, 36, was charged Monday with murdering Theresa Lund, 34, and jailed on $2 million bond.
Hardy had already been charged with kidnapping and other counts after police, acting on the guest's tip, found the baby at her home on Sept. 18. At the time, Hardy said she had bought the child for $3,000 from someone out of state.
But her husband, Robert, eventually told police about the plot and led officers to Lund's body on Friday. He will probably be charged as an accessory, Lee County Attorney Mike Short said.
Kimmi Hardy started telling people she was pregnant in April or May, according to court papers filed Monday. She bought a .38-caliber handgun on July 31, and asked a gun dealer if it was "capable of killing someone, and if so, at what range," the papers said.
Lund and her baby, Paul, were reported missing Aug. 28 after her car was found in a store parking lot. That day, Kimmi Hardy - who police said was a casual acquaintance of Lund - told friends and family she gave birth to a boy in her trailer home.
But after police found Paul and identified him using footprint records, Robert Hardy told police about the slaying.
He told authorities his wife shot Lund on the morning of Aug. 28 in the basement of their home and hid the body in a crawl space off the laundry room in their home in Keokuk, a Mississippi River town of 13,500 in the southeast corner of Iowa, court papers said.
He told police he wasn't home during the slaying, but later helped his wife get rid of the body and hide evidence. Lund's body was found along railroad tracks.