A baby girl ripped from the womb of her murdered mother is alive, and a woman found with the infant has been arrested, US police said yesterday.
The miraculous news came after police found the mutilated body of a woman in an apartment in Worcester, Massachusetts - and realised a fetus was missing from her womb.
"The most important part of this investigation has been accomplished: we do have the girl. Thankfully, she's fine," Sergeant Kerry Hazelhurst, of the Worcester police department, said on local NECN television.
Police said a woman had been arrested on Wednesday in possession of the baby in neighbouring New Hampshire state, and charged with kidnapping, although no one has been charged yet in the murder of the mother.
"This was a very gruesome homicide, a very unique one, one that I haven't come across in my years here," Sergeant Hazelhurst said. "There's still a lot of work to be done on this case. We have many more people to interview. We have a lot of following up to do."
The murder was discovered on Monday when the landlord at the small apartment building in Worcester went to investigate a foul smell on the second floor.
"He opened the door and discovered what was found to be a body," a police officer told NECN on Wednesday.
The victim was identified as Darlene Haynes, 23, but it was only on Tuesday that the authorities realised she had been approximately eight months pregnant at the time of her death and that the fetus had been cut out.
Suspicions emerged about the woman now in police custody, Julie Corey, 35, after she claimed to have given birth.
"She contacted her friends Friday and said she'd just had a baby girl late Thursday night or early Friday morning. Then she showed up at her house later on the day on Friday which made many of her acquaintances suspicious," Ser-geant Hazelhurst said.
The New Hampshire Union Leader reported that Ms Corey was arrested at a homeless shelter, where workers became suspicious about her behaviour. An employee at the shelter noticed that Ms Corey had a lack of information about what she said was her child, the Union Leader reported. Then she heard the news about Ms Haynes' horrific murder and "something went up in the back of my neck," the shelter worker was quoted as saying.
The Boston Globe newspaper reported that Ms Corey was a former neighbour of Ms Haynes.
The daily quoted Ms Haynes' family expressing relief at the news of the baby's discovery.
"I think this is the best news we could have gotten tonight," Sandra Grandmaison, Ms Haynes' aunt, told the Globe. "I'm praying to God it's Darlene's baby."
Doctors initially worried the fetus had little chance of surviving such a traumatic birth.
Although an eight-month old fetus is viable when delivered in hospital conditions, "if the baby was extracted by a barbaric caesarian birth, there are going to be extreme issues," Carolyn Zelop, head of maternal fetal medicine at Saint Francis hospital in Connecticut, told The Globe.