“Womb Raider truly believed she was pregnant”
USA - A Bronx woman who feigned pregnancy in the months before she carved a baby from a friend’s womb had truly deluded herself into believing she too was with child, an expert at her murder trial said Tuesday. Dr. Eric Goldsmith told jurors that Ashleigh Wade suffered from a rare condition called pseudocyesis — the false belief that one is pregnant — which caused her to register at Babies ‘R’ Us and start amassing items for the phantom infant. Goldsmith testified that Wade’s body could even have responded by emulating physical indications of pregnancy, such as enlarging her stomach and breasts. Wade’s ex-boyfriend, Angel Pralow, previously told jurors he’d even “felt the baby” inside her engorged belly.
Yet Goldsmith, who took the stand for the prosecution, dismissed any possibility that Wade was suffering from any psychotic episode or extreme emotional disturbance — as the defense says — when she gutted victim Angelikque Sutton with a paring knife, and chopped out her uterus with the live baby still inside.
If convicted on first-degree murder charges, Wade faces life in prison.
Earlier Tuesday, Wade told jurors that before she was confronted by police, she truly believed she’d given birth to baby Jenasis — who miraculously survived the November 2015 attack.
“It’s my baby!” she insisted as responding officers stumbled into her blood-soaked apartment shortly after Sutton’s murder.
Wade maintains she attacked Sutton after Sutton burst into her apartment and started insulting her. The two had recently reconnected on social media, where Wade had been broadcasting her phony pregnancy for months, posting photos of sonograms and buying baby clothes. The 24-year-old says she has no recollection of cutting Jenasis from Sutton’s womb. The 22-month-old now lives with her father. (nypost)