A woman in Pennsylvania has been charged with murder after she allegedly drugged a pregnant woman, cut her baby from her womb and tried to pass the child off as her own.
Andrea Curry-Demus (38) is alleged to have used a ”very sharp instrument” to rip out the baby while the mother may still have been alive. The body of 18-year-old Kia Johnson was found on Friday in Curry-Demus’s bedroom. Her wrists and ankles had been bound with duct tape and the body wrapped in bin liners.
Johnson, who was 36 weeks pregnant, was last seen when she went to visit an inmate at the Allegheny County prison. Footage from the jail’s video cameras shows the victim allegedly in conversation with Curry-Demus, who was visiting a separate prisoner.
Two days later Curry-Demus appeared at a local hospital with a newborn boy in her arms with the umbilical cord attached. Tests showed she was not the natural mother and when detectives began asking questions she initially said she had paid a pregnant woman called Tina $1 000 for the baby, who is said to be fine and under observation.
The alarm was sounded on Friday after a foul smell was reported coming from Curry-Demus’s flat. Investigators said they had found evidence of drugs at the scene of the murder.
Tereka Nesbit, the victim’s cousin, said her death was ”unfathomable”. Johnson had told a family member two weeks before her death that she had met a couple of women while visiting the jail and had later gone back to their homes. ”She’s trusting,” Nesbit told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. ”She would have been thrilled to talk to anybody about her baby.”
Curry-Demus has a history of offences relating to baby snatching. In 1990 she was jailed for up to 10 years for stabbing a woman in an attempt to steal her child. A day later she grabbed a baby from hospital, who was recovered unharmed. —