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Baby kidnapping suspect was desperate for a child after 2 miscarriages

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 19, 2007

CLOVIS, N.M. - For years, one thing had controlled Rayshaun Parson's dreams, behavior and sometimes even her body, those who know her say - a baby of her own.

It was an obsession that some say included a so-called phantom pregnancy - a rare medical phenomenon in which women who aren't pregnant experience physical and emotional changes similar to those of expectant mothers. It continued through two miscarriages and a difficult breakup with a boyfriend.

Finally, police say, Parson - posing as a hospital worker - snatched a newborn girl from a maternity ward in Lubbock, Texas, placed the tiny infant in a handbag and fled on March 10.

She and the baby, who was unharmed, were found the next day in Clovis, about 100 miles from Lubbock.

Parson, 21, is being held without bail on federal kidnapping charges. She has not entered a plea.

Court documents reviewed by the Associated Press and interviews with people who knew her suggest a troubled young woman whose love of children and motherly ambitions had grown into a compulsion.

Conchita Davis, the mother of Parson's former boyfriend, Malachi Johnson, recalled the changes Parson underwent in 2002 when she was mistakenly believed to be pregnant with what would have been Davis' grandchild. Parson's breasts swelled, her abdomen distended and she experienced cravings common to pregnancy.

"She was the perfect vision of a pregnant woman," Davis said.

Several months after that episode, Parson did become pregnant in 2003, according to Davis. But she suffered an early miscarriage.

"I don't think she ever recovered," Davis said.

Ann Parson remembers her granddaughter watching longingly as friends gave birth and raised their babies, wishing she, too, could be a mother.

By last summer, she was pregnant again, with a new boyfriend. But in December or January - six or seven months into her pregnancy - Parson miscarried again, according to court records.

She was devastated, her grandmother, Ann Parson, said. "That really set her over the edge."

LeBeth Crisp told the Associated Press that she struck up an acquaintance with Parson in January at Covenant Lakeside Hospital in Lubbock, where days-old Mychael Darthard-Dawodu was abducted.

Crisp said Parson spent time looking at infants in the nursery and asked about security measures at the maternity ward.

Last week at the small house Parson recently leased in Clovis, the front door window was covered by a makeshift curtain adorned with multicolored pairs of infant footprints.

Said property manager Carolyn Spence: "We were told there was supposed to be a child there."

[Last modified March 19, 2007, 01:23:54]