Dead Newborn Found In Cardboard Box In Wisconsin Field. Now, The Mother Has Been Charged With Murder: Police

A woman in Wisconsin has been charged with murder after abandoning her dead newborn baby and leaving them in a cardboard box in an empty field, according to authorities.

Around 11:00 a.m. on March 4, officers responded to a report of a dead baby at a trailer park about 55 miles west of Milwaukee, according to the Whitewater Police Department.

Police said they found a cardboard box about five yards from the road and inside was a black garbage bag, a piece of red cloth and the newborn’s remains.

According to investigators, the baby’s umbilical cord was still attached and the baby had “ruminants of blood from birth on his body.”

The box was sent to a crime lab for analysis and investigators were able to create an image of the shipping label with a visible address, WTMJ-TV reported. They traced the address back to an individual, identified as “Witness 1” in court documents.

On March 24, detectives interviewed Witness 1, who said his father told him he believed Witness 1’s mother, later identified as Santos Asucena Caseres Cruz, had an affair and became pregnant by the man. Witness 1 added that the father believed Cruz had had an abortion.

Detectives then talked with Cruz, who said “she was not pregnant and did not conceal a newborn infant in a field,” court records state. She added that the accusations by her ex-husband were “abusive” and “untrue.”

Another one of Cruz’s children, “Witness 2,” talked with police and said her mother was in the bathroom on Jan. 27 for a very long time due to stomach pain, WTMJ reported. There was so much blood, Witness 2 said she believed her mother had been hemorrhaging.

Cruz admitted to being pregnant in another interview with police and she hid it from her family because the child’s father was not her husband. Cruz thought her family would cut off contact if they knew the truth.

According to court documents, “After the baby was born, he started getting purple. His face started getting purple first, then as the night went on, his body, then his arms and hands. She never helped the baby. She did not call 911 because she was scared of her children finding out she was pregnant.”

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Cruz then allegedly hid the baby in a box under the sink cabinet. Around 4:30 a.m., she got the box and dropped it off at a trailer park about half an hour later, according to WTMJ.

She told police she “checked on the box every day and cried.”

Cruz was arrested and charged with one count each of neglecting a child resulting in death and moving, hiding or burying the corpse of a child, officials said.

Her bond was set at $10,000 and she is scheduled to appear in court for her preliminary hearing on April 4.