UNNAMED NEWBORN BOY / Convicted: Mother, Amanda Catherine Hein - Easton,PA

Amanda Catherine Hein, Pa. woman, accused of suffocating newborn in bar bathroom, authorities say


CBS/AP) EASTON, Pa. - Authorities say a Pennsylvania woman gave birth to a son in the bathroom of a sports bar, then abandoned him to die in the restaurant's toilet.

Amanda Catherine Hein was arraigned Monday and held without bail on one count of criminal homicide in the death of her baby last week.

A cleaning crew found the baby's body Aug. 19 at Starters Pub in Bethlehem, about 30 miles north of Philadelphia. Authorities said the baby was at 33 to 36 weeks gestation and viable.

An autopsy found the baby was born alive, the Northampton County coroner said.

In an interview with police, the 26-year-old Allentown woman admitted giving birth to the baby boy in the restroom a night earlier, wrapping him in a plastic bag from a garbage container and placing him in the toilet tank, court documents said.

District Attorney John Morganelli said Hein was watching a pay-per-view wrestling event with several other people when she complained of back pain and excused herself.

One of the men told police she was gone for a long time before returning to the table, getting her purse and going outside to smoke. The man said he saw that she was bleeding and asked if she needed to go to the hospital, but she told him she didn't have insurance and he dropped her off at her house.

Hein told police that no one else knew she was pregnant or that she had given birth in the bathroom, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

Parents who do not wish to raise a newborn child can anonymously turn the baby over to any hospital in Pennsylvania.

Court records do not list an attorney for Hein.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57600218-504083/amanda-catherine-hein-pa-woman-accused-of-suffocating-newborn-in-bar-bathroom-authorities-say/

Here's another link.  Shows her picture.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2402387/Amanda-Hein-Mother-dumped-baby-Pennsylvania-sports-bar-toilet-arrested.html

I read about this last week.  With abortion, adoption she resorts to murder.  Just no respect for life.  She should get the death penalty.  William

Prosecutors seek death penalty against woman accused of murdering newborn


8:42 p.m. EST, November 27, 2013

Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against an Allentown woman charged with killing her newborn after secretly giving birth in a pub bathroom.

Amanda C. Hein deserves to be executed because she murdered a child, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli argued in a legal filing as Hein was arraigned Wednesday at the courthouse in Easton.

Hein, 27, is accused of keeping her pregnancy secret from those around her, delivering in the stall of Starters Pub in Lower Saucon Township, then returning to her friends and watching the hourlong conclusion of the pay-per-view wrestling tournament for which they came.

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•  Investigator: Hein could give no reason why she put newborn in toilet
  
  
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• PICTURES: Baby Found in Bathroom at Starters Pub
  
  

On Aug. 19, cleaners found the infant's body after the toilet wouldn't flush. Opening the tank, employees uncovered a boy of 33 to 36 weeks' gestation wrapped in a plastic bag that had lined a small garbage can in the stall, authorities say.

Pennsylvania allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty in cases of premeditated murder with at least one of 18 aggravating circumstances. The notice in Hein's case was expected, since the death of a child under the age of 12 is one of those aggravators under the law.

"We acknowledge that. We were prepared for that," Chief Public Defender Michael Corriere, Hein's attorney, told Judge Paula Roscioli.

Hein, in a red prison jumpsuit, her dark-blond hair in a bun, showed little reaction to the notice, nodding slightly to Corriere as he showed it to her.

Though expected, Morganelli's decision also comes amid statistics that show that the killing of a newborn is often treated in the justice system with less severity than other forms of homicide.

That's according to interviews this fall with two scholars who study neonaticide. One of them, Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, expressed doubts that Hein would ever be put to death, pointing to a study that found the median sentence for the killing of a newborn was nine years in prison.

Cheryl Meyer, a psychologist at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, who has written about mothers who kill, said neonaticide cases often elicit more sympathy than those involving the deaths of older children, or those killed through neglect or abuse.
"We're seeing that these women are not getting the sentences of other women who killed their children," Meyer said.

Hein is somewhat older than most of those accused of neonaticide — usually they are in their teens — but other details of her case appear to be typical, Meyer said.

Such mothers usually live with their families but feel isolated and fear that they will be exiled by their loved ones if their pregnancies are discovered, Meyer said. That can cause them to be in denial of their pregnancies, even as they grow bigger and bigger as they come to term, she said.

"They are just scared kids," who irrationally fear the consequences if their loved ones find out they are pregnant, Meyer said.
The world is "so much smaller" for them than it is for people with more maturity and experience, she said. They worry that their pregnancy "is going to define everything about me."

County Coroner Zachary Lysek has said the baby died of suffocation, and no water was found in his lungs. The newborn was a viable, fully developed child, close to full term, he has said.

According to court records, the 5-foot-2-inch, 160-pound Hein said she had known she was pregnant since May or June but did not disclose it to anyone. She was identified by police through the Route 378 pub's reservation records, which led them to a friend of hers who was with her that night.

Interrogated by police a day after her child's body was found, a distraught Hein admitted the boy was born alive and couldn't explain what she had done, township police officer James Connell testified at Hein's preliminary hearing in October.

In a September interview with The Morning Call, Hein's mother, Karen H. Giesen of Coopersburg, said she wonders why her daughter didn't confide in her. Giesen called Hein "fragile, very fragile," and said she suffered from "very severe depression" that became noticeable with the onset of puberty.

Her daughter had been hospitalized in the past for mental-health problems and also struggled with substance abuse, Giesen told the newspaper.

At the time, Giesen was aware that prosecutors were likely to seek her daughter's execution, a prospect she said she feared.
"Then she'll just die completely lost," Giesen said. "That is not what God wants for her."

On Wednesday, Roscioli scheduled the trial for April, though Corriere had asked for a September date, given the voluminous investigation that defense attorneys are required to do in death-penalty cases.

Is that what God wanted for her poor tiny, precious little newborn baby?

Woman pleads guilty to killing newborn found in plastic bag in toilet tank in Pa. sports bar

Published March 28, 2014

EASTON, Pa. –  A woman accused of giving birth in a bathroom at an eastern Pennsylvania sports bar, wrapping the newborn in a plastic bag and hiding him in a toilet tank pleaded guilty Friday to a general murder charge.

Amanda Hein, 27, of Allentown, entered the plea during a pretrial hearing in Northampton County Court. A jury must still decide in a trial scheduled for next month whether she should be convicted of first-degree murder, which would carry a life prison term, or third-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 to 40 years.

Hein spoke Friday only to acknowledge the facts of the case as outlined by the prosecutor and to answer questions from him and the judge. She acknowledged that she is taking medication for severe depression but said she understood what she was doing.

A cleaning crew found the baby's body in the toilet in August at Starters Pub in Bethlehem. A coroner concluded the boy was born alive.

Defense attorney Michael Corriere said he had planned on arguing at trial that the baby was suffering from an illness that led his client to believe the infant had died. He said Hein never formed the specific intent to kill that is required for a first-degree murder conviction.

"We are going to argue on your behalf that you acted in extreme recklessness of life," Corriere told Hein during the hearing, The (Easton) Express-Times reported.

Prosecutors originally said they planned to seek the death penalty, but they agreed not to in exchange for her plea. District Attorney John Morganelli said after the hearing that the plea provided a guaranteed conviction without a lengthy appeal process.

Morganelli also said Hein's mental health issues would have made it difficult for her to be sentenced to death, and noted that no Pennsylvania death row inmate has been executed in 15 years.

"Realistically, death penalties are not conferred in Pennsylvania," he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/28/woman-pleads-guilty-to-killing-newborn-found-in-plastic-bag-in-toilet-tank-in/

Things like this defy the imagination and wound the soul.

The only solace about this case is that she plead guilty and will do substantial time. In so many cases, the murdering parent gets off easy but it sounds like she may do life. At 26 years old, she should know better. Who knows, maybe she's done this before.

Pennsylvania woman who admitted to smothering, hiding newborn in bar bathroom sentenced to life in prison



Amanda Hein, 27, pleaded guilty last month to to killing the baby boy after giving birth in a Bethlehem bar bathroom in August 2013. A jury convicted the Allentown woman of first-degree murder and sentenced her to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, April 11, 2014, 7:59 AM

Amanda Catherine Hein via Facebook The 27-year-old Hein was convicted of first-degree murder and will spend the rest of her life in prison for killing her newborn son. 

A Pennsylvania woman who admitted to smothering her baby boy in the bathroom of a sports bar before dumping its body in a toilet tank will spend the rest of her life in prison, a jury ruled Thursday.

Amanda Hein, 27, pleaded guilty last month to killing the baby after he was born alive and healthy in a bathroom stall at Starters Pub in Bethlehem on Aug. 18, 2013.

The Allentown woman was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole — an automatic sentence given with the Northampton County jury’s verdict, The Morning Call reported.

“This was a very difficult case,” Judge Paula Roscioli told the panel of seven men and five women after imposing the sentence.

“This was a very emotional case.”

Hein — who kept her pregnancy a secret from everyone around her — was watching a wrestling match with friends when she suddenly went into labor.
 
Amanda Catherine Hein via Facebook Amanda Hein was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after she was convicted of first-degree murder for killing her son after giving birth in the bathroom of a sports bar.

She excused herself from the table and went to the bathroom — where prosecutors say she gave birth to a boy and smothered him before wrapping him in a plastic bag and hiding the tiny corpse in a toilet tank.

Her friends began texting her while she was away during the 40-minute ordeal, but she never responded. When she emerged from the bathroom stained in blood, she asked everyone to ignore it.

She then grabbed her purse and went out to smoke, the friends later told police.
It wasn’t until after Hein and her friends left the bar that an employee made the grisly find.

“One of my guys was trying to flush toilets to clean inside. They were having problems, so he lifted the tank up and inside the tank was a fetus,” the bar’s owner, Dave Rank, told The Morning Call at the time of the incident.

 WPVI A worker found the fetus wrapped in plastic and stuffed in a toilet tank at a Pennsylvania sports bar in August 2013.  Sue Bayer/ The Express-Times Police surround the scene at Starters Pub in Bethlehem, Pa., after a baby fetus was found dead in a toilet tank in August 2013.  Sue Bayer/ The Express-Times Lower Saucon Township police investigate the scene in a sports bar bathroom, where a fetus was found dead in a toilet tank in August 2013.

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“I’ve been on the phone with the police, and I’ve been on the phone with my church,” he said. “I mean, this is a devastating thing.”

Hein — who has admitted to taking medication for severe depression — pleaded guilty to the killing to avoid the death penalty.

Her defense team argued that Hein panicked when she mistakenly thought her baby died during birth, but prosecutors said the woman wanted her baby dead, the newspaper reported.

The county’s district attorney, John Morganelli, told jurors that Hein learned she was pregnant a couple of months before the incident, but never sought any prenatal care.

The woman also continued to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and marijuana after she found out she was having a baby.

 Northampton County Prison Amanda Hein, 27, pleaded guilty to killing her newborn son after giving birth in a sports bar bathroom in August 2013.

But Hein’s lead attorney, Michael Corriere, maintained she didn’t plot the newborn’s death.

“Nobody goes to Starters’ bathroom to give birth if you’re pregnant,” Corriere told jurors. “This is a surprise and a panicked reaction.”

The defense argued that the baby likely suffocated from the plastic bag Hein wrapped him in after she thought he was dead.

The jury deliberated for about three hours before finding Hein guilty of first-degree murder.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/pennsylvania-woman-sentenced-life-prison-smothering-hiding-newborn-bar-bathroom-article-1.1753179#ixzz2ya3LpOKz