A mom whose frozen baby was found along a rural highway in 2004 has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for killing the newborn.
Katie Stockton , 32, pleaded guilty to a single count of first degree murder in a deal that spared her 11 other counts of murder. She was accused of leaving the newborn, who became known as Baby Crystal, on a desolate country road to freeze to death.
Stockton admitted to keeping her pregnancy a secret, giving birth to the baby girl on December 17, 2004. She then stuffed the baby along with some soiled clothing into an orange shopping bag and left it at the end of a dead-end road near her parents’ house.
When police found the dead newborn, Katie Stockton denied that it was her’s and then refused to submit a DNA sample. It took investigators years to nab Stockton.
Detectives working on the case eventually found a cigarette butt that she threw away, testing the saliva to match it to Baby Crystal. The frozen baby mom was arrested in 2009 after a further DNA test proved with 99.96 percent accuracy that she was the newborn’s mother.
When police searched Stockton’s car, which had been impounded for a year, they found two other dead infants wrapped in clothing. Before sentencing the frozen baby mom, Winnebago County Judge John Truitt listened to testimony about the skeletal remains of the two other infants found in the trunk of her car, but Stockton remained uncharged.
“I was in a very dark place for many years,” Stockton told Truitt. “I apologize to those I hurt and ask forgiveness. I’m truly sorry for the pain and hurt they have endured.”
Stockton’s lawyer, Public Defender David Doll, said the frozen baby mom is a good person deep down but struggled with drug addiction and an inability to face the truth of her pregnancy.