Journey into Darkness (24 page)

As a parent, it’s impossible to imagine going from the exhilaration and joy of finally seeing your new baby to the terror and devastation of learning your infant is gone: that the “nurse” who told you she needed to take the baby to the nursery for tests or the “hospital administrator” who offered to take the child for the customary photos disappeared with the infant. New mothers, often exhausted from the physical and emotional experience they’ve just been through, have literally handed over their infants to abductors. Other times, a woman dressed as a nurse has simply snatched a baby from the hospital nursery and walked out of the hospital, sometimes hiding the child in bulky clothing or a large shoulder bag, but other times making no effort to conceal the baby.

While most of the time the abductors take the child from the hospital, they’ve also been known to abduct from the baby’s home. Answering an advertisement in the local paper for a baby-sitter, for example, they wait for the mother or other family member to leave the room and simply take the baby.

Obviously, these offenders don’t look suspicious or nobody would hand over a baby to them. From my early work and by the more recent studies, we can draw a pretty clear profile of this type of offender. Nearly always female, often overweight, infant abductors appear perfectly normal. Many have responsible jobs and most have no criminal record. We’ve seen two age group clusters: sixteen to twenty-one and thirty-two to forty-five. These ages represent the typical beginning and end of childbearing years, which is apparently
very significant to this type of subject. Infant abductors suffer from low self-esteem and their sense of self-worth may be based on their ability to be wives and mothers. Many have older children from earlier successful pregnancies. Without a young child to care for, they feel inadequate, as though their existence has no value. The crime is tied to these complex emotional needs and not the traditional motives of greed (such as a kidnapping with a ransom demand), sexual gratification, or power.

The precipitating stressors will be different, too. While an inadequate man may murder a child after he’s lost his job or been dumped by his girlfriend, a female infant abductor’s stresses are more likely related to childbearing: a recent loss of a child through miscarriage, stillbirth, or even abortion; the approach of menopause; a recent hysterectomy; or a threatened end to a relationship that the woman may feel could be saved by a new baby.

These offenders operate with a curious blend of intelligence and denial. A lot of thought and planning goes into the abduction, including months of lying to their husband or lover and family and co-workers as they feign pregnancy. Their act is so complete that they change body size, go to regular “doctor’s appointments” (which they may have their partner drop them off for), make preparations for maternity leave, shop for things for the baby, and talk about the upcoming birth. We have seen reports of women going so far as to steal a pregnant woman’s urine sample at a doctor’s office, or taking someone else’s sonogram to show their partner. They can be so convincing people will throw showers for them. Their partner, often someone significantly older or younger than they are and usually somewhat gullible, can get caught up in the excitement of planning as well. The hospital abductor will do research, visiting nurseries and maternity units several times before the abduction to get the lay of the land, figure out which hospital represents the lowest risk for them, and also judge the size of the infant population they’ll get to pick from on any given day. They read through birth announcements and baby-sitter-wanted ads to research an abduction from home. In either case, they will lie, impersonate, use trickery and deceit to such an extent that they may believe they are getting their own baby. Some
develop symptoms of false pregnancy. All are in denial of the fact that in nearly every case they will be caught. In fact, in many cases, they are turned in by the very loved ones and friends they show off their new baby to when the child is recognized from media coverage of the abduction.

The abduction itself, whether planned for nine months or just a few hours, shows signs of that planning. In a hospital setting, the abductor has nurse’s garb to wear, knows where everything is located, and is even able to convince other nurses that she belongs there. Her ruse is often scripted and she knows the names of mothers and infants so she can also impersonate a visiting family member. Abduction from a home is less risky since there are fewer authorities and other people to interfere and protect the infant. Victim selection isn’t nearly as important to them as choosing the site and means of the abduction. Because their need is simply to have a child, they’re not preferential in their choice of victims as far as sex goes, although most select a baby of their own race (or that of the supposed father).

While most of the time these offenders are not violent, if force is used to obtain the baby it is usually applied in home abductions or outside a hospital. The abductor may take an infant at gunpoint in the parking lot of the hospital, or may use a weapon to overpower a parent at home. The harder it has been for the abductor to obtain an infant (if she’s made several attempts which have been thwarted just before the abduction) the greater the likelihood that she will turn to violence and take greater risks out of desperation.

In some cases, the subject will go so far as to murder a parent or other caretaker obstructing her.

Joan Witt, a thirty-year-old new mother, was killed trying to defend her four-day-old daughter, Heather, from an abductor. Nineteen-year-old Wendy Leigh Zabel shot Witt several times and shot and stabbed the baby’s grandmother as she abducted the child from the Witts’ home in Jacksonville, Florida, in November of 1987. Zabel was desperate to have a baby. She’d been trying for years.

In planning the abduction, she visited the nursery at the hospital where Heather was born. But the hospital was too much of a high-risk setting for her to snatch the child there. Tracking down the Witts days later, she knocked on the
door pretending to be in labor and asked to use their phone to call her husband. The infant’s mother and fifty-six-year-old grandmother were the only ones home at the time and they acted solicitously toward Zabel, advising her that Heather had just been born at nearby Baptist Medical Center and she should go there. After they let her use the bathroom, Zabel emerged with a gun and a knife and ordered them to hand over the baby.

According to Zabel, what happened next surprised her. She knew the mother instinct was strong but she didn’t think she’d actually have to resort to force to get the baby. When she moved toward the baby’s crib, however, both women tried to stop her. She stabbed the grandmother and then shot her as Joan grabbed the baby and ran outside for help. There, Zabel shot her once in the leg and twice in the abdomen before grabbing the baby and fleeing.

Zabel’s MO coincides with patterns of behavior observed with most infant abductors: the crime took place during the day; she used a verbal ruse to get into the victim’s house so there was no sign of forced entry; and the crime scene obviously showed signs of a panicked or hurried retreat. Before the abduction, Zabel and her partner had been preparing for the baby for months, purchasing baby things, telling his co-workers about the pregnancy. Reportedly, no one who knew the couple was suspicious about the infant, despite the fact that Zabel had been “pregnant” about eleven months at the time of the “birth.” Although originally charged in the abduction, Zabel’s companion was later dropped as a suspect when his alibi for the afternoon of the murderabduction held and it could not be proven that he knew the baby wasn’t really theirs. He also agreed to take, and passed, a polygraph.

Unlike the many infant abduction cases that are solved following tips from the community, Zabel was undone by the gun she used in the attack, which she discarded on the side of the road not far from the victim’s home.

Zabel had never previously been in trouble with the law. In fact, her father was a retired highway patrol sergeant in her home state of Wisconsin. In an interview taped about four years after the abduction and murder, Zabel said she’d always suffered from low self-esteem. She felt she was unattractive:
too tall, too fat, and not pretty. She reportedly also suffered a false pregnancy, which gave her expectancy more credence with friends and family members.

Wendy Zabel is serving three consecutive life terms earned in a deal that enabled her to avoid the death penalty by pleading guilty to armed kidnapping, first-degree murder, and attempted first-degree murder, without the option of an appeal.

The media is often key to the quick recovery of a missing infant, and the way the case is played in the papers and on television can be critical to the level of care the baby receives from the abductor. The event should not be characterized as a kidnapping or abduction, and the perpetrator should not be referred to as evil. You want to avoid panicking the abductor, causing her to flee and/or harm the infant. Also, instead of stressing punishment to the offender, news statements should emphasize the safe return of the baby. You want to reach out to the abductor’s friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers, who will be sympathetic to the victim’s family and quite possibly suspicious about the new baby.

One case that was solved following a lead phoned in to police by an anonymous caller was of interest to my unit in part because of how well it followed the elements of a classic infant abduction. Around 9:30 on the morning of June 20, 1988, a woman posing as a hospital nurse visited Renee McClure, a new mother at the High Point Regional Hospital in High Point, North Carolina. The “nurse” told Mrs. McClure that her son, Jason Ray, needed to go to the nursery to be weighed. Shortly thereafter, a real nurse entered the room and figured out what happened. Local police were contacted immediately and the FBI joined the investigation that afternoon.

The anonymous call came in the next day, along with a walk-in witness who corroborated the caller’s information. Based on those leads, police and FBI agents arrested Brenda Joyce Nobles for the abduction, along with her daughter, Sharon Leigh Slaydon, who figured out the baby wasn’t her mother’s but had not turned her in. Jason was found at their home, hidden in a back bedroom closet. His hair had been
cut off in an apparent attempt at a disguise but he was otherwise in good condition.

From interviews with Nobles and Slaydon, we learned that Nobles’s boyfriend (who was about seventy years of age) would not marry her unless she could have his child. He especially wanted a son. Since she’d had a hysterectomy years earlier, which she didn’t tell him, she knew she’d have to find another way to accomplish this. In December of 1987, she told him and other family members that she was pregnant and started eating heavily so her body would transform convincingly. Slaydon had a baby at High Point in May of 1988 and Nobles took that opportunity to familiarize herself with the maternity ward. On June 19, 1988, Nobles visited another relative at the hospital and again stopped by the nursery. When she saw Jason McClure, she decided to put her plan into action.

According to Nobles’s boyfriend, on the morning of June 20 she told him she wasn’t feeling well and thought she might go into labor that day. When he returned home from work later, he found “his son” in bed with Nobles, who told him she’d given birth that morning in an outpatient clinic in town. He was so excited he invited friends and relatives to come over and celebrate the boy’s birth, never questioning her story or the child’s true identity. Someone, however, was suspicious enough to make the call, and in the end Nobles received a sentence of twelve years in prison for the abduction.

As both the Zabel and Nobles cases illustrate, these offenders are not particularly criminally sophisticated and they often leave a trail investigators can follow. Despite wearing a nurse’s disguise, for example, they show their face to people before and during the commission of their crime—giving police a description they can start publicizing immediately. They often discard parts of their disguise at the crime scene, leaving valuable fingerprints and other forensic evidence linking them to their crime.

They also tend to strike close to home. Investigators can often get quick leads by looking at the hospital’s records of recent miscarriages or stillborn births. The abductor may have applied for a job at the hospital or even worked there before. In abductions from a home, often someone can give
a description of the getaway vehicle. But the most important leads come from those close to the abductors. Sometimes people get suspicious because the new baby is actually a three-month old, which anyone who’s ever been close to an infant can see looks and acts very different from a newborn. An abductor will happily show friends “her” baby, but can provide only sketchy details of the birth. No one knew when she went into labor and she contacted no one—not even the supposed father—in time to let them visit her in the hospital. There is also no birth certificate for the child. These facts, coupled with a good description of the baby and the abductor, circulated quickly over a wide area, often result in a relatively quick return of the infant to the parents.

Although perpetrators of infant abductions are nearly always female, every so often there is an exception. In the summer of 1991, Charles Neil Ikerd and his mother-in-law, Maize D. Hester, called the Aurora, Colorado, Police Department to report Charles’s eighteen-year-old wife, Terra Ann, and three-month-old daughter, Heather Louise, missing. Terra had been suffering from postpartum depression, and at first her husband agreed with her therapist that she was probably just trying to get some time away. Still, after discussing things, he and Maize—who allowed the couple to live in her home—were concerned enough about Terra and the baby to file a routine missing person’s report.

Things grew less routine about three weeks later, when Terra’s body was found in a field thirty miles outside of town by a road maintenance worker. She’d been shot twice in the chest and once in the head. There was no evidence of sexual assault and no sign of Heather. The position of Terra’s body and the fact that there were no shell casings located nearby indicated she’d been killed someplace else and transported to the dump site. University of Colorado experts examined the state of decomposition and vegetative growth around the body and determined she was killed shortly after she disappeared, probably within two days.