A brand new report from The Daily Wire has revealed that a woman from Ohio has been convicted of murdering her infant almost 30 years ago after genealogical research helped law enforcement authorities finally solve the case.
The woman, Gail Eastwood-Ritchey, 51, stuffed her newborn in a trash bag and then dumped the child in the woods back in 1993. It took almost three whole decades for Ritchey to get busted for her heinous crime and to stand before a jury in Geauga County, Ohio, but it has finally happened.
Ritchey was found guilty of murder on Monday, according to a report put out by the New York Times.
Here are more details about this awful crime from the Daily Wire report:
The baby’s body was found by mail carriers near a rural road after he had been torn apart by animals and dragged onto the road. While no one claimed relation to the infant, the people of Geauga County held a funeral for the unwanted baby and buried him under a headstone that read “Geauga’s Child.”
The mystery would go unsolved for years until, in 2019, a detective with the Geauga County Sheriff’s Office sent DNA from the murdered baby to a website that revealed the child’s family tree. Authorities then narrowed down the suspects before arresting the mother in June of 2019, according to the Associated Press.
Eastwood-Ritchey admitted to abandoning her child on that fateful day in 1993 and also admitted to abandoning another baby she had two years earlier, but Defense Attorney Steven Bradley argued that the baby was not born alive as the coroner concluded. Rather, he claimed Eastwood-Ritchey put the baby in a trash bag and abandoned the body in the woods after he had been stillborn.
“According to Bradley, Eastwood-Ritchey was an active member of a Baptist church where she was dating her future husband in the summer of 1992. Later that fall, she realized she was pregnant but did not tell anyone, according to Bradley. In February of 1993, while nannying, Eastwood-Ritchey gave birth to her baby in a bathroom, and her defense attorney claimed he was stillborn,” the report went on to reveal.
“Ms. Eastwood-Ritchey walked to the kitchen, grabbed a plastic trash bag and put the baby inside, his umbilical cord still attached,” Bradley went on to say, according to the Times report. “She placed him in the trunk of her car.”
“Days later, she drove a group of girls from her church to a weekend retreat in a rural area and discarded the bag about a couple hundred yards into the snowy woods under a tree,” he continued.
This piece of human garbage had the body of her infant child in the trunk of her car while driving girls from her church to a weekend retreat? Yeah, that really screams Christ-like love, doesn’t it? How can a person like Eastwood-Ritchey possibly attend church knowing she murdered her own child? That’s insanity.
And pure evil.
“She was isolated and alone,” Bradley added. “There was no one to confide with. She was alone with a group of people in her world that never saw her as pregnant. Neither did Gail.”
According to the report from the Times, “prosecutors contended that Ms. Eastwood-Ritchey had known she was pregnant three months before the birth, and that she had done nothing to prepare, which they argued was evidence of intent. Her actions, prosecutors said, caused the death of the child.”
“She literally treated him like a piece of garbage,” the prosecution accused, according to reports from the AP. “Tossed him in the woods … didn’t even bury him.”
The jury was in full agreement with the prosecution and convicted Eastwood-Ritchey of killing her newborn child, they did end up acquitting her of aggravated murder since there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest that the incident was premeditated.
Eastwood-Ritchey will now face a maximum sentence of life in prison. She is due to be sentenced at a later date that is yet to be determined.
This story syndicated with permission from Chad Prather
This story syndicated with permission from Gen Z Conservative