Mom Who Birthed Baby in Bar Bathroom, Stuffed Body in a Toilet to Face Trial

State   |   Steven Ertelt, Lauren Enriquez   |   Oct 29, 2013   |   3:29PM   |   Harrisburg, PA

The mother involved in the brutal murder of a newborn baby boy will face trial.

A 26-year-old Pennsylvania woman is headed to court after she gave birth to a baby boy in the restroom of a sports bar in Allentown, suffocated him, then stuffed his body in a toilet tank before returning to the bar to finish watching a wrestling match in her bloodied clothes.

The woman, Amanda Catherine Hein, is now facing a single count of murder that could attract the death penalty due to the age of the child. She is yet to be arraigned as is reportedly recuperating in the hospital from the incident.

Hein was watching a wrestling match on August 18 with friends at a sports bar in Allentown. She apparently went into labor during the match and went to the restroom, not returning to her friends’ table until about forty minutes later.

In the interim, Hein had experienced labor, given birth to a healthy baby boy, and suffocated him. After he was dead, she wrapped his body in a plastic bag and left him in a toilet tank. Perhaps most bizarre about the incident is that Hein returned to her booth – wearing her bloody clothes – to continue watching the game, go outside for a cigarette break, and hang out with her friends at the bar.

Now, Hein has been ordered to stand trial on a criminal homicide count after a preliminary hearing Monday. From a report with more details:

The 27-year-old was before a district judge this morning in the Aug. 18 death in Lower Saucon Township. Unless there is a plea or some other disposition of the case, Hein will go to trial in Northampton County Court.

As to why she killed the newborn, police officer James Connell said, “She couldn’t give a reason why she did it. She said she was scared.”

Connell described arriving at Starters Pub on Route 378 and finding the baby on a sink in the restroom, where it had been placed after a cleaning crew found it in the toilet tank.

When Lysek asked her why she didn’t place the baby somewhere it would be found, “She would not answer that question,” he said.

Lysek is still trying to determine the time “Baby Boy Hein” was born, because this is a rare case where he must issue a birth and death certificate.

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Hein separated the umbilical cord from the child before putting him in a small bag she found in a trash receptacle in the toilet stall, Connell said.

“She explained that the child was still, then she cried out, ‘He was alive,'” Lysek testified before District Judge Judge David W. Tidd.

Hein sat silently in court, wearing a red prison jumpsuit. She kept her head down through the entire proceeding, ducking it lower during particularly upsetting testimony. At one point in the hearing she glanced back at an older couple seated in the courtroom. The woman tried to hold Hein’s gaze, but the 27-year-old defendant looked away with an expression of defeat.