Unidentified Infants - newborns (2008-09)/ Suspect: Mother; Rachel New - Fort Worth TX

Police Find Remains of Two Infants Stuffed in Tubs Beneath Texas Home

Published August 24, 2009
Associated Press

FORT WORTH, Texas –  Authorities cleared weeds and brush around an abandoned mobile home in rural northern Texas on Monday after the skeletal remains of two infants were found under the porch.

A land owner who rents mobile homes to several people on his 5-acre lot was cleaning Sunday when he found some bones in a box in a plastic bag and others in a plastic storage bin, said Tarrant County Sheriff's Office spokesman Terry Grisham.

Authorities plan to compare the infants' DNA samples to that of another baby whose remains were found last year in a suitcase in a field on the same lot, Grisham said. In that case, the medical examiner was unable to determine a cause of death, and authorities had no leads because they could not identify the baby or say whether a crime had occurred, Grisham said.

The brother and sister who lived in the mobile home for about three years before recently moving out denied knowing anything about the remains found Sunday and said they were surprised to hear about the discovery, Grisham said. They have been cooperating with authorities and have not been charged with any crime, officials said.

Authorities were still investigating how and when the infants died, said Dr. Roger Metcalf of the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office. He said a report could take several days, but a cause of death may never be determined depending on the state of decomposition.

Detectives also were trying to find out if anyone else stayed at the mobile home or lived there before the brother and sister, Grisham said.

Crime scene tape surrounded the gray mobile home on Monday as county workers cut down 3- and 4-foot (1-meter)-high weeds and brush. Some chairs remained on the front porch of the trailer near the community of Rendon, about 20 miles south of Fort Worth.

Bo Pavelka, 29, who lives across the street from the trailer, said he had seen a man play with a dog in the yard but had never talked to him.

"I'm curious and worried about who it is," said Pavelka, who has two young children and a third child on the way. "Is it some girl having a baby and then throwing it out, or someone taking babies? We need to find out what the hell is going on."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/08/24/police-find-remains-two-infants-stuffed-in-tubs-beneath-texas-home/

Tarrant County
Sheriff's Department investigators are trying to learn more about what
appears to be the disturbing discovery of human remains at a rural
mobile home south of Kennedale. Neighbors said a man and
his sister who lived in the trailer in the 6000 block of Tranquility
Circle recently moved out. When the property owner's son came to check
out the house, he noticed a box under the wooden porch. In it was a bag and a bucket and a towel in which were what appeared to
be the remains of a baby or a child. The witness described skull
fragments that still had hair on the scalp. "There were two skull caps, clearly identifiable," said sheriff's department spokesman Terry Grisham. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's office has tentatively ruled that the bones are human. Several other boxes were subsequently removed from under the trailer;
all evidence is now at the medical examiner's office. No
additional information was available. It was unclear whether the
remains could represent more than one individual. No arrests have been
reported, but the Sheriff's Department has not yet issued a formal
statement. In March of last year, just 30 yards away from
this site, a man found a suitcase in which a bag of human fetal remains
was identified. That case remains unsolved. Grisham said it was unclear how long the bones discovered Sunday had remained underneath the home. "They could have been there when we found the suitcase," he said. Even though authorities have received no indication that there may be
additional remains on the property, they planned to use cadaver dogs
later today to comb the area. "We don't want to take the chance,"
Grisham said.

It was a gruesome discovery -- the skeletal remains of two infants shoved under a mobile home in a rugged, rural area near Fort Worth, Texas.

Authorities in Tarrant County, Texas are investigating the discovery of two sets of
infant remains on the same property where a third set was found a year
ago.

Authorities are now trying to find out not only how they got there, but
when. Given the size of the bones, they are also unsure of the
children's ages, saying they could be anything from miscarried or
aborted fetuses to young babies born alive.
The findings were eerily similar to infant remains that were found nearby last year, but remain unidentified.
There have been no children of that size reported missing in the area, Tarrant County Sheriff's Office spokesman TerryGrisham said.
Grisham told ABCNews.com today that investigators have interviewed the
mobile home's last known residents, a brother and sister who lived in
the rental property for the last three or more years, but had since
moved out.
It was the owner's son, Justin Southern, that found the remains on Sunday.
He told the Associated Press that he noticed the containers
while cleaning on the property, owned by his father, Rex Southern. He
said he immediately thought of the remains his father found on the
property last year.
"That thought just flashed in my head, and I thought, 'Surely Lord, no —
please' and I jerked that trash bag open," Southern said. "It's
overwhelming. It's sad someone could even think about doing that to a baby."
So far, he said, the two have been cooperative, but "it's hard to say" whether they were involved with the infants' bodies.
"They said they knew nothing of it," Grisham said.
If the medical examiner is able to determine how long the bodies had
been under the home, he said that may be true. DNA samples will be
taken from the remains, Grisham said, and both the brother and the
sister have agreed to submit samples.
Investigators are hitting a road block with past tenants, Grisham said,
because the Southerns did not keep formal records of who was living on
their property. None of the tenants signed leases, he said, and just
paid the Southerns a month at a time.
Grisham described the property as about five acres in a
low-income area of Tarrant County -- home to Dallas, Fort Worth and
several affluent suburbs. The county's motto is "The perfect mix of
cowboys and culture."
Not a formal neighborhood, the Southerns put a handful of manufactured homes on the property and rented them out.
The home where the remains were found are about three inches off
the ground, Grisham said. One set of remains was found in a plastic bag
that had been placed into a box, the other in a sealed plastic,
Tupperware-type container, he said.
Rex Southern found infant remains in a suitcase that was
overgrown with brush while dumping leaves in a spot away from the homes
last year.
Rex Southern had to use a knife to cut open the suitcase, Grisham said, and called police once he found the bones.
"He found bones that were consistent with what was found on Sunday," Grisham said.
DNA samples were taken from that infant, but "at the time, there was nobody to try and match it to," he said.
The medical examiner's office was never able to determine how the baby died or whether it had been born alive.
"Bones of an infant two days before it's born pretty much look
like the bones of an infant two days after it was born," Grisham said.
Chemical tests on the remains found Sunday are underway to
determine whether the remains decomposed naturally or were fueld by
some sort of accelerant, Grisham said.
If the remains were determined to have been from miscarried,
aborted or stillborn fetuses a crime may not have been committed,
though Grisham noted that "you could do it a lot more honorably or
respectfully." It is only illegal to dispose of a corpse in such a
manner and a corpse by definition is someone who had once been alive.
But with three sets of remains found on the same property,
"we're real suspicious," Grisham said. "It's a very strange coincidence
at this point."

Nov 12, 2009 4:16 pm US/Central
Mom Charged In Case Of Infants' Skeletal Remains
Melissa Newton
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
Authorities say Rachel New is the mother of three children whose skeletal remains were found at a trailer park in Tarrant County.
A 36-year-old Tarrant County woman has been arrested for tampering with evidence in the case of skeletal remains found in a trailer park.

In August, the remains of two infants were found in a plastic box and a garbage bag at a trailer park in southern Tarrant County.

Today, Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson says DNA evidence confirmed Rachel New was the mother of the children. Anderson also says she's also the mother of a baby whose remains were found in the same location in March, 2008.

New and her brother moved out of a trailer home they shared in the Rendon community for 3 1/2 years the day the second and third bodies were discovered, Anderson said. At the time, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's office was unable to determine the cause of death in the 2008 case, and criminal charges were never filed.

Sheriff's deputies found the bodies inside various containers around the property and underneath the mobile home.

New was arrested Thursday and charged with a felony count of tampering with evidence. She is being held on a $50,000 bond.

http://cbs11tv.com/local/mother.charged.remains.2.1308987.html

Mom linked to babies' remains gets out of jail on bond
Posted Friday, Nov. 13, 2009 Comments (15) Recommend (15) Print Share Share Buzz up! Reprints

Tags: DNA, sheriff, arrest warrants, district attorney, jails

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Mom linked to babies' remains gets out of jail on bond

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2009/11/13/1759828/mom-linked-to-babies-remains-gets.html#ixzz112GGlnto
By BILL MILLER and MITCH MITCHELL

wmiller@star-telegram.com, mmitchell@star-telegram.com

Rachel Lynnette New, the woman identified through DNA as the mother of three babies whose decomposed remains were found at her home near Rendon, was released from jail Friday on bonds totaling $70,000, a sheriff's office spokesman said.

New, 36, was arrested Thursday and charged with three counts of of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. She was released on bonds from the jail around 9:30 a.m. Friday, said Terry Grisham, the sheriff's spokesman.

He explained that the county's Community Supervision and Corrections Department will monitor her activities as investigators prepare to present the charges to the district attorney's office.

New was taken into custody Thursday after investigators called her in for an interview and told her that DNA tests showed that she was the mother of the three babies.

She then asked for a lawyer, and questioning ended, Sheriff Dee Anderson said Thursday.

The owners of property in the 6000 block of Tranquility Circle near Rendon found one set of infant remains beneath the porch of a mobile home after New and her brother, Paul New, 30, moved out in August. Investigators found another set of remains nearby.

The bones had been doused in chlorine bleach.

In March 2008, the property owners found a suitcase containing bones in a field about 40 yards from the mobile home, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

The siblings have consistently denied knowing anything about the remains, investigators said.

But 23 people linked to the News or to the property owners were asked to give DNA samples for testing, Anderson said. Rachel New’s sample showed that she was the mother of all three infants, Anderson said.

The bodies — two boys and a girl — were so "badly decomposed and compromised," Anderson said, that forensic investigators cannot tell whether the babies were born alive and killed, or were stillborn. They have also been unable to determine who the father was.

Paul New has not been ruled out as a suspect, the sheriff said.

"We’re certain that some wrongdoing occurred here," Anderson said Thursday. "If someone passes away, you cannot put them in a Tupperware container and pour bleach on them and hide them away."

Rachel and Paul New rented the mobile home from Rex and Auneta Southern. Rex Southern found the first set of remains, later identified as a boy with blond hair, in a suitcase hidden by thick vegetation, his wife said Thursday.

"I’m spellbound and speechless," Auneta Southern said. ". . .  I’ve known [New] for more than three years and never had anything but nice conversations with her."

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Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2009/11/13/1759828/mom-linked-to-babies-remains-gets.html#ixzz112G6iuiw

by JIM DOUGLAS / WFAA-TV
Witness comes forward in Tarrant County infant remains case
Posted on December 2, 2009 at 8:16 PM

Updated Wednesday, Dec 2 at 11:22 PM
TARRANT COUNTY - There are new developments in the mystery surrounding the decomposed remains of three infants found in rural North Texas.

Authorities said that as a result of a recent News 8 report, a witness came forward with information on the suspect, Rachel New. Investigators believe New is keeping a disturbing secret about what happened to the three dead babies.

The remains of two of the infants were found stored beneath a trailer August in Rendon, which is in Tarrant County. The discovery was just a few yards from where a baby's bones were found in a suitcase in the brush in 2008.

New, who authorities said was identified as the mother of all three infants through DNA, is free on bond after investigators arrested her in November for tampering evidence.

But, the district attorney returned the case to the sheriff last month for further investigation before accepting the case.

Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said he was frustrated by the lack of witnesses willing to cooperate.

"Three babies can't be born and disposed of without someone knowing something about the pregnancies or the births of those children," he said in a November interview.

As a result, authorities said a witness finally came forward with solid information that New was pregnant within the last two years. That might be a critical break since some of the charges New could face have a two year statute of limitations.

Both the sheriff and prosecutors caution there are still a lot of questions to answer, including whether the babies were ever alive outside the womb.

While they said they are very pleased to have an important witness cooperating, they said they could use more.

If the DA takes the case to a grand jury, they do have the authority to compel potential witnesses to appear.
http://www.wfaa.com/news/Witness-comes-forward-in-Tarrant-County-infant-remains-case-78374607.html

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