Guilty: Corey faces a mandatory life sentence when she returns to court next week
The baby’s name is Sheila Marie.
That’s what her mum Darlene
Hayes always said she would call her in conversations with relatives and
her friend and neighbour Julie Corey.
Darlene, 23, and Julie,
much older at 39, were expecting to give birth just four weeks apart and
they would spend hours over cups of coffee discussing the names they
liked.
Julie said she was having a girl too and she planned to call her Alida.
But Darlene didn’t live to give birth.
At eight months pregnant her body was found bundled into a wardrobe at her apartment.
Beaten and strangled with astonishing brutality, she was then cut open and her baby was stolen as her life ebbed away.
Two days later officials got a tip-off and the premature tot was found in a homeless shelter 130 miles away.
The killer tried to flee with the baby but ran straight into the arms of the police.
To the astonishment of everyone, it was Julie Corey.
She
had miscarried her own child three months earlier but told no one and
pretended she was still pregnant while she plotted the gruesome murder.
After
butchering her young friend and snatching her unborn baby she pretended
it was hers, then went on the run when her own relatives became
suspicious.
This week justice caught up with her as she was found guilty of Darlene’s first-degree murder.
Corey,
who during her trial had tried to pin the blame on baby Sheila Marie’s
father Roberto Rodriguez, sobbed uncontrollably as the jury read out
their verdict after 10 hours of deliberation.
When she comes back before the court for sentencing on Tuesday she faces a mandatory life sentence without parole.
The
crime sent shockwaves around the US town of Worcester, Massachusetts,
in July 2009. “No one can believe the brutality of it all,” said
neighbour Agnes Brady.
“Both Darlene and Julie lived in the same block and were expecting children almost at the same time. They were friends. It totally shocked our community.
“Julie seemed so nice.
She was very friendly. One time she cooked a huge lasagne for all her
neighbours. How could we have been so wrong?”
Corey refused to testify in the two-week trial but the details that came out in court were horrifying.
She had gone to Darlene’s flat, beaten her around the head and strangled her with an electrical cord.
As Darlene lay dying, she crudely cut open her stomach, severed the
umbilical cord and ripped out the baby before wrapping her friend’s
body in a duvet and stuffing her into the wardrobe.
Just hours
later Corey, who has an 11-year-old son from a previous relationship,
told friends and family she had gone in to labour and given birth to a
baby girl she would call Alida. Her boyfriend Alex Dion, 31, who she had
dated on and off for two years, said she had told him in October 2008
that she was having his baby.
On the day of the killing she said
she was giving her friend Darlene a lift to a local supermarket, then
later she rang to say her waters had broken and a friend was taking her
to hospital.
A couple of hours afterwards she called him again, excitedly screaming down the phone: “We had a baby.”
They jury heard how Corey arrived the next morning with a baby girl and they introduced the tot to family and friends.
Bereaved: Darlene's older daughters Jasmine and Lillian
But several relatives were suspicious when Corey said she had been in
labour for only 20 minutes. And then they noticed how she tried to fool
them that she was breast-feeding the baby under a blanket with a bottle
of formula milk nearby. Alex said: “I was so confused. I didn’t know
what to think. But I thought I had a brand-new daughter.”
He and
Corey, with no means of support, left with the baby and moved into a
homeless shelter in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Then her lies began to
unravel.
Victim Darlene’s landlord William Thompson discovered her body after one neighbour reported a “horrifying smell”.
As
a nationwide manhunt was launched, staff at the shelter became
increasingly suspicious of Corey. They noticed how the baby’s umbilical
cord cut had been “botched” and disguised with a pink ribbon.
“I
knew something was funny,” said a nurse. “I heard about Darlene’s death
on the news the night before and something went up in the back of my
neck. When I got to the work the next day I told my supervisor.”
She
said Corey grew agitated when a member of staff took photos of the baby
on her phone. “She had a lot of post-traumatic stress and was obviously
not a well woman,” said the nurse.
“She said a child had been taken from her before and she would not let it happen again.”
Arrested: Corey shown here on American TV being arrested for the murder of pregnant mum Darlene Haynes
Staff called the police at this point. Corey sensed the game was up
but her attempt to escape came too late. Officers found that despite the
baby’s gruesome entry into the world, she was in good health. She was
taken to a nearby hospital while Corey continued to insist that she had
given birth. But medics said she showed no signs of it.
During the
trial Corey’s lawyers argued that police had failed to follow up on
leads that could have implicated other potential suspects, particularly
Darlene’s boyfriend Roberto, who the court was told had been violent
towards her.
They suggested he had given the baby to Corey, who had no knowledge of involvement in Darlene’s murder.
The
court also heard how social worker Jessica Bader, who had made several
previous visits to Darlene’s home, got a call from her to say she’d
reported Rodriguez to the police after an assault.
Darlene told Ms Bader he had thrown her into a glass table then ripped the phone from the wall to stop her calling for help.
Tragedy: Pregnant mum Darlene Haynes was found in her apartment in Massachusetts
Another witness, who claimed to have seen Rodriguez emerging from a
nearby cemetery looking dirty and dishevelled the day after the killing,
was never called to testify in the case.
Now as Corey awaits her sentence next week, there may finally be justice for Darlene.
She was a divorcee with three other daughters who were being cared for by her mother at the time of her death.
And
little Sheila Marie, now four years old and living with Roberto
Rodriguez, is facing life without a mother... but bearing the name she
left her.
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