'The attack that shocked the world': Mother speaks after woman who cut baby from her womb is found guilty
A woman who was horrifically attacked and had her unborn ‘carved’ from her womb, has revealed how she spent time with her newborn daughter’s lifeless body following the attack that shocked the world.
Michelle Wilkins, painfully shared that she wasn’t made aware that her daughter had tragically passed away, until the morning after the attack at the hand of Dynel Lane.
“I did all the things that a mom would want to do,” Ms Wilkins said after Lane was found guilty of attempted murder.
“But knowing that she was only present in spirit and not physically was a really painful thing to grasp,” she said.
“This trial has allowed me to be more in touch with some of my grittier emotions, like anger,” Wilkins told The Denver Post.
“Knowing today, going into that courtroom and seeing her, I finally felt like I'd reached a comfortable place in myself where I felt like my anger was valid.”
Prosecutors said Lane was obsessed with having a baby and concocted elaborate lies to convince those close to her that she was pregnant.
The case against Lane, 36, who lured Wilkins to her home with a Craigslist ad for maternity clothes, attracted international attention and reignited a national debate over the legal rights of unborn babies.
Jurors convicted Lane of attempted first-degree murder, assault and unlawful termination of a pregnancy in the March 2015 attack on Wilkins.
Prosecutors say they were not able to charge her with murder in the death of the unborn girl because a coroner found no evidence the fetus lived outside the womb.
Wilkins, 27, said she thought of the child, she had planned to name Aurora, as she sat in the courtroom, clasping the hand of her father.
The verdict "felt like a triumph for justice, for Aurora, for myself and the community," Wilkins said.
"I do not hate Dynel," Wilkins said. "But I am angry for all the pain she has caused, the deceit and for her selfishness."
Lane sat straight and quiet next to her public defenders as the judge read the verdict from the jury of seven women and five men who deliberated for about seven hours over two days.
Judge Maria Berkenkotter ordered her held until sentencing, set for April 29.
She could face a prison sentence between 16 and 120 years, District Attorney Stan Garnett said after the verdict.
He said he had not yet decided what sentence to seek.
Garnett said he could not charge Lane with murder for the death of a fetus, which led Colorado Republicans to introduce legislation that would have allowed him to do so. But Democrats rejected the measure.
Lane had posted online photos of herself with a distended belly and sent the man she said was the father of her child ultrasound images downloaded from the Internet.
David Ridley, who lived with Lane and her two daughters, testified at trial that Lane claimed for more than a year that she was expecting a boy, whom they planned to name James. Friends even threw a baby shower.
Ridley had grown suspicious by the time Lane lured Wilkins to her Longmont home. Wilkins testified that they chatted for about an hour before Lane hit, pushed and tried to choke her, then used two kitchen knives to cut the baby from her womb.
In 2002, Lane's 19-month-old son drowned in what investigators ruled was an accident.
News break – February 25
