Woman Pleads Guilty to Leaving her Exposed Baby to Die

Katie Stockton

Katie Stockton of Rockton, Illinois, won’t be going to trial for the murder of Baby Crystal. Instead she pleaded guilty on February 21, 2013, to first-degree murder in the December 2004 death of the infant, who is believed to have been her daughter. The child’s remains were found near Stockton’s parents’ home. She had frozen to death where she was dumped in a plastic bag at the end of a dead-end street. Stockton was immediately a suspect in the death of the infant, but refused to provide a DNA sample. Detectives got one from a cigarette she discarded and matched it to blood found on some bloody clothes left with the baby. In addition further testing against the baby’s DNA showed with a 99.6% probability that Stockton was the mother. Thursday Stockton admitted to having left the infant to die in the road. The trial was set for February 25, but in exchange for the guilty plea, prosecutor’s dropped other charges against Stockton.

Sadly this is probably not the last we will hear of Katie Stockton. While investigating Baby Crystal’s death, detectives noticed that Stockton’s car had been in impounded for a year. They took custody of it intending to check the car for forensic evidence of Baby Crystal. When they searched the car they found two more sets of infant remains in the trunk. They too were wrapped in bloody clothes and bagged separately in plastic. It is not known exactly what their connection to Stockton is, nor have any charges been made in this other case.

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