Fetal Snatchers
Triple Homicide
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In Addison, Illinois, in 1995, a couple named Fedell Caffey and Jacqueline Williams desperately wanted a baby, and they knew of a woman, Deborah Evans, who was ready to give birth. They believed the child's father was Lavern Ward, Williams' cousin and Deborah's former boyfriend. Deborah did have a son with him, who was then nineteen months old. She also had a restraining order against Ward for domestic abuse, and he was angry enough over it to have threatened to kill her. However, Deborah had often been kind to Williams, which makes the incident even grimmer.
The three of them entered Deborah's home on the evening of November 16, and either Williams or Caffey shot Deborah in the head, but the bullet hit bone and only incapacitated her. Ward and Caffey then stabbed her ten-year-old daughter to death to eliminate the child as a witness. While Deborah was still alive, the three offenders performed a crude cesarean section on her with a pair of kitchen shears to extract her unborn child. They then stabbed her in the neck, cleaned the baby up in the sink and left, taking Deborah's eight-year-old son, Joshua, with them. Williams and Caffey took both children to a friend's place for a while and then to their own home, where they cut Joshua's throat. They then took the body about ten miles away to dump it, returning home to attend to their new baby.
In the meantime, Deborah's current boyfriend came home and found her dead, with two children missing. One boy was still there, unharmed, and since he was Ward's child, suspicion fell on Ward. In addition, the friends who had seen the two children before Joshua was killed told the police about it.
Detectives caught up to all three offenders and arrested them. Willams told police that Caffey wanted a male child and had been pressuring her over it, so she had faked her pregnancy to coincide with Deborah's. She had gained weight to pass as pregnant so no one would question how she'd suddenly delivered a baby.
All were convicted at trial and Williams received two life sentences, because she'd been abused (some accounts claim she received a death sentence). Levern Ward also received a life sentence, while Caffey went to death row, although the death penalty was commuted in 2000. Even with that, he was one of two inmates scheduled for execution, but then Governor Ryan commuted all death sentences permanently when he left office in 2003.
The baby, Elijah, was unharmed in this incident and is being raised by relatives. Both of these incidents involved a home invasion, but in the next case, the victim was lured to the lair.
