Maya Caston St Louis mother gives birth to two newborn infants only to smother them to death. Missouri authorities deemed deaths suspicious after mom said they were stillborn.
A St. Louis, Missouri woman is facing murder charges for allegedly smothering her newborn twins — only to then pass of their deaths as stillborns.
Maya Caston, 25, claimed having ‘unexpectedly’ gone into labor and that the babies were stillborn. Responding officers with St. Louis County police upon arrival found a baby boy and girl dead at the scene, KSDK reported.
A subsequent investigation, however, revealed that the babies had been carried to full term and that neither was stillborn, court documents show.
‘She covered their mouths and noses with a towel and blanket, concealed them, and failed to see medical attention,’ a probable cause statement reads. ‘Both babies died as a result.’
Of note, the mother called police two days after the children dying.
What motivated 25 year old women to carry infants to full term and then smother them to death?
Caston gave birth to the infants sometime between January 6 and January 8 in the 2100 block of Roundtree Drive, a cul-de-sac neighborhood north of Christian Hospital in far north county, authorities say.
While acknowledging that the infants could have died from a medical event, police said Thursday that their deaths had been reclassified as suspicious, the Riverfront Times reported.
Caston was arrested Saturday on two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of abuse or neglect of a child. She was jailed on $500,000 bond. A 10% payment of the bond will not be allowed.
Unclear is why the mother chose to allegedly end her children’s lives along with the identity of the newborn’s father.
Others wondered why Caston hadn’t simply sought to take advantage of safe haven law that allows mothers to drop off their un-injured newborns at designated centers – where such children often become wards of the state.
