WHEN heavily-pregnant Angelikque Sutton went to an old friend’s house to pick up a breast pump, she expected nothing more than a quick catch-up.
But moments after stepping inside, she was brutally stabbed to death by childhood pal Ashleigh Wade on what should have been her wedding day in a meticulously planned attack to steal her baby. Angelikque, 22, is just one of 38 known victims of “foetal abductions” – an evil crime that experts warn is shockingly on the rise.
Desperate for her own child, Wade plotted to steal Angelikque’s unborn baby and pretend it was her own.
She had faked a pregnancy for months before the murder at her New York home – telling her boyfriend to expect a baby girl.
Callous Wade even posted a stolen sonogram photo online, and booked maternity leave to start the Monday after the murder in November 2015.
Wade, 24, knifed Angelikque in the throat repeatedly so that she could not scream for help. She then slashed her friend’s stomach and cut the uterus out of the expectant mother, taking the baby.
Detective Robert Klein, working for the Bronx Homicide Task Force, was one of the first to arrive at the scene.
He told The Sun: “I remember looking down and seeing an organ that I’d never seen before.
“I’ve been to hundreds of autopsies, hundreds of crime scenes, I’ve pretty much seen every human organ you can imagine. But this one struck me – it was the amniotic sac and the placenta.”
Sickeningly, the phenomenon of “foetal abductions” has never been more prevalent, with the circumstances around the death of Michigan mother-to-be Rebecca Park last week sending shockwaves across America.
From 1985 to 2005, there were just eight recorded foetal abductions, yet in the two decades since then, there have been at least 30 cases.
Speaking to The Sun, experts say that in the age of the internet, faking pregnancies has never been easier, while warning that would-be murderers are using chilling new tactics to lure vulnerable expectant mothers over social media.
In the tragic case of Angelikque, warped Wade performed an ad-hoc caesarian in her bathroom, leaving the placenta “just sitting right there like discarded garbage”, according to Detective Klein.
He added: “The scene was terribly, terribly bloody, but one thing you were struck with immediately was you had an immaculately set up nursery. There was a perfectly set up crib with lined up shoes, everything a mother would need.”
The killer had faked pregnancies in the past, but had fertility issues and was struggling to conceive a child of her own.
She wanted a baby so badly that she was willing to kill a childhood friend to get one – with a murder so barbaric that one juror passed out at the sight of the crime scene photos.
Astonishingly, after being brutally ripped from her mother’s womb, the baby survived.
Baby Jenasis, now 10 years old, came out of the ordeal with just one tiny scratch.
Detective Klein called Jenasis “the definition of a miracle child”.
He added: “But this poor girl is going to grow up knowing that her coming into this world marked the terrible destruction of her mother’s life.”
This is, frankly, evil personified. The brutality and disregard for human life displayed here are deeply troubling
Johanna Carey,
Crimes like Wade’s have been on the rise since the late Eighties.
The first recorded case of foetal abduction was in 1987 when pregnant Cindy Ray was abducted at gunpoint in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and taken to a forest by Darci Pierce.
Pierce strangled her 23-year-old victim, cut open her womb with a car key, and took the baby.
Ray was left alone in the forest to die, and Pierce took the surviving baby to hospital, claiming it as her own.
Since Cindy Ray, there have been around 38 known cases worldwide of what is also known as “caesarian kidnapping”.
The incidents are usually fatal for both mother and baby, and killers are often motivated by their desperation for a child of their own.
Just this week, the mother and stepdad of 22-year-old Rebecca Park were accused of stabbing their daughter to steal her unborn child.
The young woman was 38 weeks pregnant and days away from her due date when she went missing from her home in Manton, Michigan, in early November.
When she was found dead in Manistee National Forest on November 25, her baby was “not present at the scene”.
Park’s biological mother and stepfather, Cortney Bartholomew, 40, and Brad Bartholomew, 47, have been accused of torturing and killing Park in an attempt to steal her baby. Public defender Robert Champion declined to comment about the case.
The pair allegedly lured Park to their home, “forced her” into a vehicle and drove out to the woods.
It was there that they forced their daughter to the ground and allegedly cut her baby out of her, prosecutor Johanna Carey alleges.
The baby’s remains have not yet been found.
Carey described it as “a truly horrific homicide”, added: “This is, frankly, evil personified. The brutality and disregard for human life displayed here are deeply troubling.
“While these remain allegations until proven in court, the evidence reflects an extraordinary level of callousness and violence.”
Professor Ann Burgess, a psychiatric nurse who pioneered modern psychological profiling with the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI, is concerned by the dramatic spike in cases in the last couple of decades.
She studies foetal abduction with the USA’s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NAMC).
Professor Burgess told The Sun the crime is “under-reported”, especially outside the US.
One factor behind the increase, she says, is that it’s now easier than ever to research methods for c-sections and simpler to fake pregnancies – with other people’s sonogram images now readily available on the internet.
She said: “You can use clothing and so forth to fake a pregnancy and I think that’s got easier over the decades since the first cases.”
Professor Burgess wanted to warn pregnant women that “they have to be very careful about being promised free things”.
In a lot of these other cases we see that these women are lured to their deaths with Facebook Marketplace stuff
Detective Klein
Detective Klein told The Sun that killers “have often lured the prospective victim with the promise of free baby goods”.
Angelikque Sutton had been offered a free breast-pump. Other victims have been offered free baby clothes or toys for their soon-to-be-born children.
Klein said: “In a lot of these other cases we see that these women are lured to their deaths with Facebook Marketplace stuff.
“Free or discounted stuff is great but there has to be an element of suspicious awareness too, especially when you’re in a vulnerable state – is there anyone more vulnerable than a pregnant woman?
“In the video which I have of her walking into the residence, she is so pregnant. You know that she is not in a position to defend herself.
“She’s going there thinking she’s going to a safe space to obtain items for her coming baby and the next thing you know she’s being stabbed repeatedly in the throat.
“You almost wish you could go back in time and stop her, tell her to get back to her car. She is literally waddling from her car to her death.”
In Colorado, Ellie Wilkins’ horror began when she answered a Craigslist ad offering free maternity clothes in March 2015.
Seven months pregnant, she drove to Dynel Lane’s home in Longmont.
After Lane had handed over the maternity clothes, 26-year-old Wilkins tried to leave.
Lane then offered her some baby clothes – Ellie accepted out of politeness, but when Lane seemed frantic, she tried to leave a second time.
It was then that Lane struck the mother-to-be and wrestled her into a bedroom, Ellie told People in a recent interview.
She pushed Ellie on to a bed and began to punch and scratch at her, eventually breaking a lava lamp on the pregnant woman’s head.
“How is this how I die,” Ellie remembers thinking as Lane stabbed the lava lamp into her neck.
She said that when she came to she “just saw a gash from hip to hip”.
My hand was trapped under my belly and I could actually feel my intestines coming out over my arm. I knew I am either gonna lay and I’m gonna die or I’m gonna get up and survive
Ellie Wilkins
The 26-year-old had lost a lot of blood and tried to stand but fell forwards, landing on her front.
She said: “My hand was trapped under my belly and I could actually feel my intestines coming out over my arm. I knew I am either gonna lay and I’m gonna die or I’m gonna get up and survive.”
An extraordinary surge of willpower pulled Ellie to her feet, and she was able to call 911.
When help arrived, they thought Ellie couldn’t have made the call.
The person who made the call had been pregnant, and there was no trace of her baby.
Lane had cut Ellie’s daughter – a baby girl named Aurora – from her womb with a kitchen knife, put her in the bathtub and began to clean up.
The plan had been for Lane to pretend that she had miscarried, after faking pregnancy to her partner for several months.
Lane ran into a nearby hospital with Aurora, screaming “save my baby, save my baby”.
An ambulance brought Ellie to the same hospital and the horrifying connection between the women was made.
Tragically, baby Aurora did not survive the attack, and Ellie only met her daughter after an autopsy.
She said: “I sang ‘You are my sunshine’ to her, which my mum used to sing to me all the time. It was like a hello and a goodbye.”
It is not uncommon for mothers and babies who survive fetal abductions to be traumatised for life – but Ellie describes herself as “very deeply healed” from the ordeal.
Ellie’s daughter Aurora was stolen from her, but she was able to find a new future, by retraining as a therapist, helping others who have experienced trauma.
She said: “The most painful experience that I’ve ever been through has also been the source of so many beautiful things.”
‘Narcissism and delusions’
The question of what motivates these types of killers has been a focus of detectives and psychologists.
Klein said that Wade, Angelikque’s killer, had a difficult relationship with her own mother.
He said: “She had had a troubled childhood and she was trying to create the perfect childhood for a child that she couldn’t create.”
Forensic psychologist Theresa Porter believes “narcissism” and “delusions” are more likely to be behind the crimes.
Porter said: “This is not the maternal urge run amok… there’s no evidence they bond with the babies they snatch.”
Professor Ann Burgess told The Sun that caesarian kidnappings often have “multiple motives”.
She said: “Why abduct a baby, let alone through a caesarian section? It’s so odd to think about, it’s almost unimaginable.
“The abductors are not psychotic, that’s the important thing, this is well planned – they get instruments, they go on the internet and they research it thoroughly.
“It’s not ‘she’s got to be crazy’, I don’t think there’s a psychiatric thesis. It’s more of a personality issue, an antisocial issue – this is about as antisocial as it gets.”
Abductors usually fake pregnancies, often hoping that stealing a baby will get their partners to stay with them.
Professor Burgess said: “It isn’t just that they want the baby. They often want the baby to save a failing relationship.”
Angelikque’s killer, Wade, was also motivated by a desperate urge to keep her boyfriend, Detective Klein said.
The abductors are not psychotic, that’s the important thing, this is well planned – they get instruments, they go on the internet and they research it thoroughly
Professor Ann Burgess
He said: “There was also a desperate effort to keep her partner. She had manipulated him with a previous fake pregnancy that had ended with a fake miscarriage.
“She was using that to keep her boyfriend, and it was effective the first time. So this time she took it to the next level and desperately tried to create the family that she thought might cement her relationship.”
It is still not clear what is driving the rise in cases of babies being snatched from their mothers wombs.
Professor Burgess told The Sun that a spike in cases in Brazil, where 14 cases have been reported since 2011, could be driven by abductors with financial motives.
She said: “In Brazil, it could be for money, to sell the baby. We’ve even heard recently of an even worse issue where the woman’s organs are also taken out and sold so that it isn’t just the foetus that’s been snatched.”
Working with researchers in Brazil, Professor Burgess hopes to interview women who have committed foetal abductions “to see what it is driving them”.
She hopes that more collaboration can halt the increase in women being butchered for their unborn babies. “We’ve got to stop this”, she said.
