40-Year-Old Cold Case of South Dakota Baby Ends With Conviction

U.S.|40-Year-Old Cold Case of South Dakota Baby Ends With Conviction

A South Dakota pistillate was convicted connected Friday successful the decease of her newborn son, according to tribunal documents, ending a acold lawsuit that began erstwhile the boy’s assemblage was recovered adjacent a cornfield 4 decades ago.

The woman, Theresa Bentaas, 60, of Sioux Falls, entered an Alford plea, which allows defendants to support their innocence portion besides entering a blameworthy plea, to first-degree manslaughter successful an statement with prosecutors successful which they dismissed 2 execution charges, according to the Second Judicial Court successful South Dakota.

Ms. Bentaas had antecedently pleaded not blameworthy to the 3 charges.

Lawyers for Ms. Bentaas and the Minnehaha County State’s Attorney bureau did not instantly respond to a petition for remark connected Monday.

The charges against Ms. Bentaas drew from the find of an infant’s assemblage connected Feb. 28, 1981, erstwhile a operator adjacent Sioux Falls spotted a heap of “wine-colored” blankets by the road, helium said decades aboriginal successful an interview with a section newspaper, The Argus Leader. The operator pulled implicit to look astatine the blankets due to the fact that they looked new, helium said.

An autopsy recovered that the babe had been calved alive, astir apt the time before, and had astir apt died of exposure, according to the affidavit.

Investigators were incapable to find the baby’s parent and relatives. After astir 50 residents attended the baby’s burial astatine St. Michael Catholic Cemetery, the lawsuit went cold. The babe became known arsenic Andrew John Doe.

In 2009, arsenic DNA investigation grew wide accessible and dispersed into transgression investigation, detectives picked up the Sioux Falls lawsuit and obtained a tribunal bid to exhume the assemblage for testing. The remains were taken to the University of North Texas Health Science Center, wherever a DNA illustration was obtained, according to the affidavit, which noted that the baby’s remains were reburied successful 2010.

Through precocious DNA testing, a household histrion was produced, starring investigators to a residence successful Sioux Falls wherever Ms. Bentaas had been living, the affidavit said.

Detectives recovered DNA successful the trash astatine her residence, and analysts determined that it “could not beryllium excluded” from a illustration of the baby’s biologic mother, according to the affidavit.

In March 2019, the Sioux Falls Police Department announced that investigators had, done DNA investigating and genealogy databases, yet tracked down the baby’s mother, naming Ms. Bentaas. She was arrested connected execution charges.

On Feb. 27, 2019, Ms. Bentaas told investigators that successful 1981 she was “young and stupid,” according to the affidavit. She said she had hidden her gestation from household and friends, and fixed commencement unsocial successful her apartment. She past drove the babe to the spot by the roadworthy wherever helium was aboriginal found, the affidavit said.

The affidavit said that Ms. Bentaas recalled feeling “sad” and “scared,” and that she continued to deliberation of that nighttime erstwhile she drove by the spot.

She is scheduled to beryllium sentenced connected Dec. 2, according to tribunal records.

Susan Beachy contributed research.