Sliced open…
What drove Dynel Lane to cut the baby from a pregnant woman’s belly?
THE STORY
Being eight months pregnant is an exciting time for most women. And it can be lovely sharing the experience with another expectant mother.
This must’ve been how pregnant Michelle Wilkins felt when she answered Dynel Lane’s online ad offering free maternity clothes.
Arriving at Dynel’s home in Boulder, Colorado, Michelle was greeted warmly. The pair chatted babies and pregnancy for nearly an hour.
Pleased with her haul of muchneeded pregnancy goodies, Michelle went to leave.
But then things took a sinister turn.
Suddenly, Dynel urged Michelle to look at some more clothes.
In the basement.
Knowing Michelle was having a baby girl, Dynel claimed she’d some girls’ clothes she’d got before finding out she was having a boy.
Reluctantly, Michelle followed Dynel deeper into the house.
But then Dynel pounced, launching a violent attack on defenceless Michelle.
She smashed her over the head with a lava lamp, choked and hit her. Then she stabbed her in the neck with shards of glass from the lamp.
Terrified, Michelle fought back for her life – and that of her unborn baby.
During the ferocious attack, Michelle repeatedly asked Lane why she was hurting her.
She even told her attacker ‘I love you’ in a desperate bid to subdue her. But the attempt was in vain. ‘If you love me, you’ll let me do this,’ came the chilling reply.
Eventually, Michelle lost consciousness.
When she came to, the nightmare she faced was beyond comprehension.
Blood gushed from an extensive abdominal wound. Attempting to stand, she nearly fainted from blood loss. Reaching down to touch her tummy, to her horror, she realised she’d been sliced open from hip to hip.
She was holding her own intestines in her hands.
Incredibly, Michelle managed to lock the door in case Lane returned. She called emergency services, repeatedly telling the call handler she was bleeding and pregnant.
Only, she wasn’t pregnant – not any more.
Lane, a former nurse’s aide, had hacked open Michelle’s belly using two kitchen knives, and ripped her unborn baby girl from her womb before leaving her for dead…
It emerged that Dynel Lane hadn’t been pregnant at all.
Over the past few months, she’d set up an elaborate ruse to convince her boyfriend that she’d conceived his child.
She’d posted fake ultrasound scans and pictures of herself with a swollen belly on social media. She’d even made her boyfriend accompany her to her antenatal appointments...
‘She would say that she had doctor’s appointments, and we would take off work and sit in waiting rooms for hours, and something would always go wrong, and she’d get agitated and we’d wind up leaving,’ he said.
Clueless friends had even thrown brazen Lane a baby shower. Yet her boyfriend had become increasingly suspicious about his lover’s ‘pregnancy’.
So he told her to prove it or he’d leave her – which may be what prompted Lane to take drastic, gruesome action...
After luring Michelle to her home, Lane had overpowered her, performed a crude Caesarean and wrenched out her baby.
Then she’d waited for her boyfriend to arrive and take her to a doctor’s appointment.
He’d come home to find Lane and the unresponsive baby in the bathtub.
He’d rushed them to hospital,
To her horror, she realised she’d been sliced open
where Lane pleaded with medics to save ‘her’ baby.
She’d told her boyfriend she’d suffered a miscarriage. But, despite being covered in blood, she’d refused to be examined.
Doctors grew suspicious, but were unaware of Michelle, who was bleeding profusely back at the house.
Sadly, the baby didn’t survive. But, miraculously, Michelle did.
Emergency crews rushed her to hospital, where doctors found she’d lost nearly half the blood in her body.
She had multiple stab wounds and a deep incision across her lower abdomen.
After being brought back from the brink of death, Michelle and her husband Dan were given the harrowing news that their much-wanted baby had died.
They named her Aurora and cradled her lifeless body.
Deranged Lane was arrested, charged with attempted first-degree murder, assault, and unlawful termination of a pregnancy.
Coroners ruled that Aurora hadn’t lived outside the womb at all. This meant prosecutors couldn’t charge Lane with murder.
During her trial in February this year, Lane admitted attacking Michelle and removing her baby from her. But she claimed she’d done it in self-defence.
She said Michelle had initiated the attack – and that, after being forced to fight her off with a knife, causing serious injuries, Lane impulsively decided to cut the unborn baby out to save its life. Jurors didn’t buy it. Dynel Lane was found guilty of all charges.
She hadn’t spoken in her own defence during her trial, and had shown little or no remorse. However, she wept as she was sentenced to a total of 100 years in prison.
Jurors weren’t told that Dynel Lane had lost her own 19-month-old son in 2002 in an accidental drowning.
Family claimed this terrible bereavement may have pushed her over the edge.
Following the verdict, Michelle, who has said that she’s forgiven Lane, quoted Martin Luther King Jr, saying, ‘He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.’
She added, ‘I hope she finds the opportunity to reflect on what she did.’
Her attacker has got years to do just that.
michelle and her husband were given harrowing news...