UNNAMED NEWBORN - at birth/ Accused: Mother; Angela Marie Janecka - Henrico (Richmond) VA

Baby found in plastic bag in dryer 'alive and well'; mother charged with attempted murder

Bill McKelway | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: September 06, 2012

HENRICO, Va. -- Eleven days after a call from a doctor's answering service alerted police and rescue workers about a possibly distressed newborn, Henrico County authorities arrested the child's mother Tuesday on charges of neglect and attempted murder.

Angela Marie Janecka, 39, was ordered Wednesday by a Henrico judge to undergo a mental health examination and was being held without bail pending a preliminary hearing in November on charges that could bring her decades in prison.

Henrico police and a prosecutor related Wednesday how the supposedly dead infant was recovered, wrapped in a plastic bag and pillowcase inside a dryer and still alive hours after she was born Aug. 25.

"The baby is alive and well, which is the saving grace of all of this," said Henrico Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Nancy Oglesby.

Janecka and her husband grew up in the Norfolk area, attended high school together there and have been married 10 years.

As her husband watched solemnly from a courtroom, his barely audible wife acknowledged the allegations against her. The stay-at-home mom of an 8-year-old son listened via a video monitor from jail as Oglesby spelled out a months-long odyssey during which Janecka claimed the child died in utero but that she had been advised by what Oglesby called "a mystery doctor" to carry it to delivery.

"Everything about her story was inconsistent," Oglesby told Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court Judge Denis F. Soden.

Oglesby said that the notion of carrying a dead, 20-week-old fetus to term was ridiculous and invited clearly dangerous health implications for the mother.

But Janecka's husband apparently accepted his wife's explanation as well as her subsequent telephone call to him at work Aug. 25 informing him that the infant had been delivered that morning, a Saturday, but was stillborn.

"She told him the doctor had come to help deliver the baby and had taken it away," Oglesby said in court, relating how James Janecka rushed home to the couple's townhouse apartment in the 5800 block of Aloe Court, a few blocks from Parham Doctors' Hospital.

Oglesby said the home was empty of baby items that one would expect to find among expectant parents. James Janecka began the cleanup, working his way to the laundry room, where he thought he heard the family cat, said Henrico police Capt. Jan Stem.

"The sound was the baby," Stem said. Janecka unwrapped the girl, whom the couple has named and who weighs a healthy 8-plus pounds.

Instead of calling 911 for medical help, the couple called their son's pediatrician's office, leaving a message with the answering service about the newborn.

A person at the service called 911 about 3 p.m., and emergency units and police rushed the baby to St. Mary's Hospital.

Angela Janecka was questioned by police multiple times after the incident, and Oglesby said she was arrested Tuesday after a final visit to police headquarters. The prosecutor said the case remains under investigation.

James Janecka declined to comment Wednesday, and his wife's lawyer did not return messages left with her office. A second hearing before Soden on Wednesday afternoon was closed to the public and apparently involved custody issues. The infant is being cared for by Child Protective Services.

It could not be determined whether the 8-year-old remains with his father.

http://www2.wsls.com/news/2012/sep/06/tdmain01-henrico-mother-tried-to-feign-babys-death-ar-2181884/