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Mother hazy on birth of dead baby

She was drunk and high, she says, but remembers the infant's cries as she walked out of a trash-strewn alley.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO and ABBIE VANSICKLE
Published May 11, 2006

TAMPA - Mary Louise Doe, drunk and high on crack cocaine, didn't remember giving birth to a baby girl amid broken glass and garbage in an alley, police said.

She only remembered hearing the baby cry for five minutes before she walked away.

"It's on the ground," she told family members two days later, when they asked about the baby.

By then, the baby was dead.

All the while, a Georgia woman waited to pick up Doe's baby for adoption.

Police found the baby's decomposed body late Tuesday in a West Tampa alley off N Albany Avenue near W Main Street. The umbilical cord and placenta were still attached.

It is unknown whether the baby was alive at birth. Authorities hoped to determine that through an autopsy that was being conducted Wednesday.

The news came hours after Polk County deputies discovered another dead baby girl in a trash bin. That baby was alive at birth, and the Polk County Sheriff's Office is investigating the case as a homicide, said Sheriff Grady Judd.

Polk authorities are looking for information on a woman described as white or Hispanic, with stringy brown hair, who appears to be in her 30s, driving a full-size white pickup truck, Judd said.

Doe, 41, faces a charge of child neglect in connection with her baby's death, according to an arrest report. She was being held on $7,500 bail at the Hillsborough County jail.

Kawandria "Peaches" Doe, 24, said she first started getting suspicious about her pregnant mother on Saturday. A friend phoned and told her he had heard her mom had been in a fight, Peaches Doe said. The man said her mother was seen bleeding from her lower body. Peaches went searching for her mother - who does not have a home of her own - and found her at N Rome Avenue and W Main Street around 9:15 p.m.

To Peaches, Mary Doe looked like she was coming down off drugs, but still appeared pregnant. She told her mother to come stay with her that night.

Mary Doe showed up the next night, and went to sleep on the couch. Peaches said she never saw her mother's body, so she couldn't tell if she was still pregnant. Peaches was in and out of the house all day, doing errands and laundry with her two kids and the 3-year-old sister she takes care of by her side. Her mother never rose from the couch in her presence, Peaches said in an interview on Wednesday.

Then Mary Doe disappeared, and someone told Peaches she looked as if she was no longer pregnant.

Worried, Peaches cruised Main Street and looked for her in all her regular hangouts, but didn't find her.

Tuesday morning, she assembled a group of family members and friends to search again.

It was around 8 p.m., police say, when a call came alerting them to a fight on Main Street.

Peaches had finally found her mother standing at Main Street and Rome Avenue again. She jumped out of the car.

"Mama!" she said. "Where's your baby?"

"Peaches," the daughter recalled her mother saying, "I don't know where the baby is. I don't have a baby."

Peaches was so upset, she tried to pull back a little. She called 911. The paramedics came. Mary walked away just as police arrived.

Investigators caught up with her, and questioned her about the baby. She complained of pain and was taken to a hospital, where investigators began to interview her, said police spokeswoman Laura McElroy.

One woman who called police had come from Brunswick, Ga., to adopt the baby, said McElroy. But when she talked with the family, the woman learned Doe no longer had the child.

Police searched the area, a neighborhood of small homes, grocery stores and barbecue restaurants just north of Interstate 275, and discovered the body.

Veteran homicide detectives called the scene one of the most upsetting of their careers, McElroy said.

The interviews with Mary Doe continued throughout the night and into the morning. She was booked into the jail just after noon. "She was very cooperative, very open with us," McElroy said.

The awful discovery was the talk of the neighborhood on Wednesday as people tried to understand what had happened.

"It's a crazy world, you know," said Tony Kawaja, owner of Main Street Grocery.

Doe was a regular customer, he said. She typically bought a 65-cent can of Schlitz Malt Liquor, the cheapest in the store, he said. She would sit outside, sometimes long after midnight, asking passers-by for change.

"She was always sitting alone, always alone," he said.

Kawaja noticed her pregnancy about three months ago. She told him she didn't know the father.

Meka Jenkins, 21, saw Doe a couple of days ago in the Station Lounge & Package, a bar across the street from the alley.

"The last time I saw her, she was pregnant," Jenkins said.

Jenkins described her as a "good person to be around," and a regular at the bar.

The infant was Doe's sixth child, police say. Peaches said the others besides her are ages 25, 13, 8 and 3 - all of the young ones taken care of by other family members. Doe told police she used drugs throughout her pregnancies, referring to the children as crack babies.

Her other young children are under state supervision, McElroy said. Doe's family had arranged a private adoption during Doe's pregnancy.

Doe is unemployed. She has been arrested several times, including on charges of possession of cocaine, prostitution and theft, according to jail records.

She goes by several names, including Nog, Red and Tarzan, records show.

Police think another woman may be a witness. They are looking for Loretta Weaver, 41. Anyone with information can contact police at (813) 310-7460 or (813) 299-3574.

A particularly tragic side of the situation is that Doe could have dropped off the infant at a hospital or fire station, no questions asked.

"It's a really wonderful approach," said Nick Silverio, founder of a Safe Haven for Newborns, a Miami group. A state law passed in 2000 allows babies three days and younger to be left anonymously with medical authorities.

He said 42 babies have been left with authorities since 2000. The law is working, but it is difficult to reach people isolated from society, he said.

Peaches said her feelings about what has happened are swirling. The last time her mother had a baby, Peaches said she begged her to have her tubes tied. But the lure of the street was so strong, she said, that her mother couldn't wait the extra day in the hospital, and left the baby behind for her daughter to raise.

Peaches said she still loves her mother, despite everything. But if she can pick out one emotion now, it's disappointment.

"I can't figure out why," Peaches said. "What state of mind was she in at the time that she left that baby? ... If she had strength enough to get up and walk away, then she had strength enough to go get help."

Information from the Ledger in Lakeland was used in this report. Abbie VanSickle can be reached at 813 226-3373 or vansickle@sptimes.com

[Last modified May 11, 2006, 22:01:51]