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New Jersey Charges Woman, 18, With Killing Baby Born at Prom
by Robert Hanley
June 25, 1997
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
FREEHOLD, N.J., June 24— The New Jersey teen-ager who gave birth in a bathroom stall at her senior prom was charged with murder today after the authorities concluded that she had delivered a healthy boy, cut the umbilical cord, choked him and put him in a plastic bag that she knotted and threw away.
The woman, Melissa Drexler, 18, of Forked River, was charged after an autopsy determined she had choked the baby and smothered him either with her hands or with the plastic bag, said John Kaye, the Monmouth County Prosecutor.
In the midst of it, Mr. Kaye said today, a girlfriend who had heard sounds from the bathroom stall asked Miss Drexler if she felt ill. The Prosecutor said she replied: ''I'll be done pretty soon. Go tell the boys we'll be right out.''
A few minutes later, leaving blood on the floor of the bathroom stall, Miss Drexler went to the dance floor with her boyfriend and prom date, John Lewis, ate a salad and danced one dance.
The case -- which recalled that of another New Jersey teen-ager, Amy Grossberg, and her boyfriend, Brian Peterson, who were charged with killing their newborn son in a motel and discarding his body -- stunned Miss Drexler's friends and relatives and attracted headlines across the country. Those who knew her said they had no idea the high school senior was pregnant.
In her hometown in southern New Jersey, there was little sympathy for Miss Drexler. Most people agreed with the sentiments of Michelle Donally, a 20-year-old neighbor, who said, ''My heart goes out to her parents, but not to her.''
On June 6, the night of the prom, Miss Drexler initially denied giving birth when teachers came up to her and others who had been in the women's bathroom to ask about the blood in the bathroom stall.
Miss Drexler replied that she was having a heavy menstrual flow, Mr. Kaye said.
A few minutes later, after the baby's body had been found in an outside trash bin at the prom site, the Garden Manor in Aberdeen, Miss Drexler told teachers she had given birth.
Mr. Kaye said Dr. Jay Peacock, an assistant county medical examiner, had established the cause of death as ''asphyxia due to manual strangulation and obstruction of the external airway orifices.''
Dr. Peacock was unable to determine if the baby was dead or alive when he was placed inside the bag and a knot was tied at the top of the bag, Mr. Kaye said.
''We are certain the baby was alive after it was born,'' Mr. Kaye said. ''When it ceased to be alive, we cannot say.''
Besides the murder charge, which carries a sentence of 30 years to life, Miss Drexler was accused of endangering the welfare of a child, a second-degree crime in New Jersey with a penalty of 5 to 10 years.
Mr. Kaye dismissed suggestions that the endangering charge was a fall-back position for his office, and said it would be merged with the murder charge when the case was presented to a Monmouth County grand jury in about a month.
Mr. Kaye said it was unlikely that his office would seek the death penalty, because of Miss Drexler's age, her lack of a criminal record and what he called ''the stress and extreme emotional disturbance'' of the birth.
In early afternoon today, Miss Drexler, a senior at Lacey Township High School, made a five-minute appearance in State Superior Court and was released on a $50,000 property bond by Judge John Ricciardi. She said little as the judge explained her legal rights.
After Miss Drexler left the courthouse with her father, her lawyer, Steven Secare, said his client was not guilty.
He declined further comment because, he said, his own investigation was not yet complete. He said Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist in New York, had conducted a separate autopsy on the baby's body at the request of the Drexler family. In addition, he said, a Pennsylvania psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Sadoff, had examined Miss Drexler. Mr. Secare said he is awaiting both reports.
Dr. Baden said in an interview later today that ''the autopsy findings are ambiguous as to whether the baby was alive, because of all the resuscitation that was performed.''
The resuscitation efforts caused changes in the baby's body, he said, and the birth process might have caused additional changes. ''It's a very difficult type of death to determine, whether a baby was born alive or not,'' Dr. Baden said.
Miss Drexler, an only child, arrived home with her parents shortly before 4 P.M. A crowd of reporters, some with television cameras, on the otherwise quiet street of neat ranch houses called out to her. But Miss Drexler, wearing a sun dress and dark glasses, merely threw her hands in the air, then went inside, bending down to pet her dog on the way.
At a news conference this morning, Mr. Kaye said Dr. Peacock was satisfied that the baby was alive and breathing after the birth because Dr. Peacock had found air in the baby's lungs and intestines.
''The doctor says this is a very significant finding, amongst others,'' Mr. Kaye said of the air in the intestines. The Prosecutor said the medical findings were critical to the state's case, because investigators had not found any witnesses who saw the birth, heard any screams from Miss Drexler or cries from the baby, or saw who placed the bag containing the baby in the bathroom's trash receptacle nine feet from the stall where the birth occurred.
Mr. Kaye said he was convinced that only Miss Drexler knew of her pregnancy. He said the baby was born at full term, without any congenital defects or deformities.
While driving to the Garden Manor with her boyfriend and another couple, Ms. Drexler complained of stomach cramps, the Prosecutor said. He said she went to the bathroom at the catering hall as soon as they reached it about 7 or 7:30 P.M. and gave birth almost immediately, 20 minutes after she had complained of the cramps in the car.
''She got no assistance,'' Mr. Kaye said of the birth. ''She did this herself.''
A girlfriend was in the bathroom during some of the time Miss Drexler was in the stall, heard sounds of scraping metal and saw Miss Drexler trying to wipe her foot across blood on the tile floor, Mr. Kaye said.
Exactly how the child's umbilical cord was cut is uncertain, the Prosecutor said. But he said the authorities suspect that Miss Drexler dislodged a metal container for sanitary napkins from a wall in the stall and severed the cord with the container's serrated edge. He said the cut in the umbilical cord was jagged.
The authorities suspect that the scraping noises the friend overheard were caused by Miss Drexler's removing the napkin container.
After Miss Drexler and her friend left the bathroom, a matron cleaned the bloody stall, placed soiled towels in a plastic bag in the bathroom's trash receptacle and took the bag to an outside trash bin. As she carried it, she noticed that it was heavy and called a maintenance worker. He looked inside the bag and found the knotted bag containing the baby's body.
If the matron had not been curious about the bag's weight, Mr. Kaye said, the body might never have been found.
''No one knew this woman was having a baby,'' he said.
[x]
Photo: Melissa Drexler and her lawyer, Steven Secare, entering a courtroom at Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold yesterday. She was charged with murder in the death of her newborn boy at her senior prom June 6. (Associated Press)(pg. B4)
by Robert Hanley
June 25, 1997
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
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FREEHOLD, N.J., June 24— The New Jersey teen-ager who gave birth in a bathroom stall at her senior prom was charged with murder today after the authorities concluded that she had delivered a healthy boy, cut the umbilical cord, choked him and put him in a plastic bag that she knotted and threw away.
The woman, Melissa Drexler, 18, of Forked River, was charged after an autopsy determined she had choked the baby and smothered him either with her hands or with the plastic bag, said John Kaye, the Monmouth County Prosecutor.
In the midst of it, Mr. Kaye said today, a girlfriend who had heard sounds from the bathroom stall asked Miss Drexler if she felt ill. The Prosecutor said she replied: ''I'll be done pretty soon. Go tell the boys we'll be right out.''
A few minutes later, leaving blood on the floor of the bathroom stall, Miss Drexler went to the dance floor with her boyfriend and prom date, John Lewis, ate a salad and danced one dance.
The case -- which recalled that of another New Jersey teen-ager, Amy Grossberg, and her boyfriend, Brian Peterson, who were charged with killing their newborn son in a motel and discarding his body -- stunned Miss Drexler's friends and relatives and attracted headlines across the country. Those who knew her said they had no idea the high school senior was pregnant.
In her hometown in southern New Jersey, there was little sympathy for Miss Drexler. Most people agreed with the sentiments of Michelle Donally, a 20-year-old neighbor, who said, ''My heart goes out to her parents, but not to her.''
On June 6, the night of the prom, Miss Drexler initially denied giving birth when teachers came up to her and others who had been in the women's bathroom to ask about the blood in the bathroom stall.
Miss Drexler replied that she was having a heavy menstrual flow, Mr. Kaye said.
A few minutes later, after the baby's body had been found in an outside trash bin at the prom site, the Garden Manor in Aberdeen, Miss Drexler told teachers she had given birth.
Mr. Kaye said Dr. Jay Peacock, an assistant county medical examiner, had established the cause of death as ''asphyxia due to manual strangulation and obstruction of the external airway orifices.''
Dr. Peacock was unable to determine if the baby was dead or alive when he was placed inside the bag and a knot was tied at the top of the bag, Mr. Kaye said.
''We are certain the baby was alive after it was born,'' Mr. Kaye said. ''When it ceased to be alive, we cannot say.''
Besides the murder charge, which carries a sentence of 30 years to life, Miss Drexler was accused of endangering the welfare of a child, a second-degree crime in New Jersey with a penalty of 5 to 10 years.
Mr. Kaye dismissed suggestions that the endangering charge was a fall-back position for his office, and said it would be merged with the murder charge when the case was presented to a Monmouth County grand jury in about a month.
Mr. Kaye said it was unlikely that his office would seek the death penalty, because of Miss Drexler's age, her lack of a criminal record and what he called ''the stress and extreme emotional disturbance'' of the birth.
In early afternoon today, Miss Drexler, a senior at Lacey Township High School, made a five-minute appearance in State Superior Court and was released on a $50,000 property bond by Judge John Ricciardi. She said little as the judge explained her legal rights.
After Miss Drexler left the courthouse with her father, her lawyer, Steven Secare, said his client was not guilty.
He declined further comment because, he said, his own investigation was not yet complete. He said Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist in New York, had conducted a separate autopsy on the baby's body at the request of the Drexler family. In addition, he said, a Pennsylvania psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Sadoff, had examined Miss Drexler. Mr. Secare said he is awaiting both reports.
Dr. Baden said in an interview later today that ''the autopsy findings are ambiguous as to whether the baby was alive, because of all the resuscitation that was performed.''
The resuscitation efforts caused changes in the baby's body, he said, and the birth process might have caused additional changes. ''It's a very difficult type of death to determine, whether a baby was born alive or not,'' Dr. Baden said.
Miss Drexler, an only child, arrived home with her parents shortly before 4 P.M. A crowd of reporters, some with television cameras, on the otherwise quiet street of neat ranch houses called out to her. But Miss Drexler, wearing a sun dress and dark glasses, merely threw her hands in the air, then went inside, bending down to pet her dog on the way.
At a news conference this morning, Mr. Kaye said Dr. Peacock was satisfied that the baby was alive and breathing after the birth because Dr. Peacock had found air in the baby's lungs and intestines.
''The doctor says this is a very significant finding, amongst others,'' Mr. Kaye said of the air in the intestines. The Prosecutor said the medical findings were critical to the state's case, because investigators had not found any witnesses who saw the birth, heard any screams from Miss Drexler or cries from the baby, or saw who placed the bag containing the baby in the bathroom's trash receptacle nine feet from the stall where the birth occurred.
Mr. Kaye said he was convinced that only Miss Drexler knew of her pregnancy. He said the baby was born at full term, without any congenital defects or deformities.
While driving to the Garden Manor with her boyfriend and another couple, Ms. Drexler complained of stomach cramps, the Prosecutor said. He said she went to the bathroom at the catering hall as soon as they reached it about 7 or 7:30 P.M. and gave birth almost immediately, 20 minutes after she had complained of the cramps in the car.
''She got no assistance,'' Mr. Kaye said of the birth. ''She did this herself.''
A girlfriend was in the bathroom during some of the time Miss Drexler was in the stall, heard sounds of scraping metal and saw Miss Drexler trying to wipe her foot across blood on the tile floor, Mr. Kaye said.
Exactly how the child's umbilical cord was cut is uncertain, the Prosecutor said. But he said the authorities suspect that Miss Drexler dislodged a metal container for sanitary napkins from a wall in the stall and severed the cord with the container's serrated edge. He said the cut in the umbilical cord was jagged.
The authorities suspect that the scraping noises the friend overheard were caused by Miss Drexler's removing the napkin container.
After Miss Drexler and her friend left the bathroom, a matron cleaned the bloody stall, placed soiled towels in a plastic bag in the bathroom's trash receptacle and took the bag to an outside trash bin. As she carried it, she noticed that it was heavy and called a maintenance worker. He looked inside the bag and found the knotted bag containing the baby's body.
If the matron had not been curious about the bag's weight, Mr. Kaye said, the body might never have been found.
''No one knew this woman was having a baby,'' he said.
[x]
Photo: Melissa Drexler and her lawyer, Steven Secare, entering a courtroom at Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold yesterday. She was charged with murder in the death of her newborn boy at her senior prom June 6. (Associated Press)(pg. B4)