Police Say Woman Killed Pregnant Mom, Cut Baby From Abdomen

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 20, 2011   |   11:15AM   |   Bowling Green, KY

Police say Kathy Michelle Coy told a 21-year-old pregnant friend in Kentucky that they were shopping for baby supplies. Instead, Coy took Jamie Stice to a wooded area, subdued her with a stun gun, and cut out her baby from her abdomen.

Detective Chad Winn shared the details of the grim story with a local court during a preliminary hearing where Coy faces charges of murder and kidnapping a minor. Winn told the court that, after attacking Stice with the gun, Coy slit Stice’s throat and wrists and cut open her stomach to be able to gain access to her baby.

“She advised that she stunned her, her throat was slit, her wrists were slit, she was disemboweled,” Winn said, according to an AP report. “The baby was obviously cut out of her.”

Stice’s family was unable to remain in the courtroom and they left in tears as the details of the grisly murder were presented. Winn, according to AP, said Coy eventually showed officials the wooded area where she left Stice’s body. Coy was eventually arrested after showing up at a Bowling Green hospital with the newborn but presenting no signs sowing she had given birth recently.

Warren County District Judge Sam Potter has sent the case to a grand jury but Coy’s public defender, Jim Gibson, said he opposed allowing the hearing because he claims Coy’s mental state is not sufficient to allow her to stand trial.

“The defense is concerned that there are significant mental health issues,” Gibson said, according to AP. Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris Cohron says he may seek the death penalty for Coy, but he is waiting to make that determination until the mental health issues are resolved.

James Reynolds, the baby’s father, told AP the infant is in good condition but would not give additional details.

Coy reportedly asked her 13-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son to take part in the murder and stealing the unborn child but both refused. When Coy arrived at the hospital with Stice’s newborn, she claimed she had had a miscarriage.

This kind of case is not unique and, in December 2009, a woman near the nation’s capital was arrested in a chilling case that saw her capture a pregnant woman and hold her captive for days in her apartment. Eventually, Veronica D. Deramous used a box cutter to cut open the pregnant woman’s stomach and attempt to take her unborn child.

Deramous kept the pregnant woman in her Suitland, Maryland home and provided her with food and water until she should get what she really wanted, the mother’s child. Deramous turned up the volume of her television and duct-tapped a rag inside the mother’s mouth.

“You’re strong,” Deramous told her victim, police said in a report on the brutal crime. “You can handle what I’m going to do to you.”

With box cutters and a razor blade, Deramous cut into the 29-year-old homeless woman’s stomach and attempted to take the child. Unsuccessful, she went to sleep and then fled her home later when the woman escaped and alerted neighbors. The woman was able to eventually flee the apartment and her insides were still exposed when she presented herself to medical personnel. The baby, a girl whom the mother plans to name Miracle, survived the attack.

In 2006, an Illinois woman stood accused of killing a pregnant mother and cutting her unborn baby from her womb. Prosecutors said then-24 year-old Tiffany Hall killed Jimella Tunstall, who was seven months pregnant at the time, and her three children. Hall was charged with both first degree murder, in Tunstall’s death and intentional homicide of an unborn child.