Mother charged with murdering newborn twins
A traffic stop in suburban Oak Lawn led to the arrest of awoman whowas charged with murdering her newborn twin sons more than 17 years ago, Cook County sheriff’s police announced Saturday.
Antoinette Briley, 41, of Holland, Michigan, was charged Friday night with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of her sons, a Cook County sheriff’s office statement said.
Judge Susana Ortiz ordered Briley held on $150,000 bond during a hearing Saturday afternoon from the Leighton Criminal CourtBuilding, audio of which was broadcast live on YouTube.
“There was evidence of live birth,” Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Dominique Marshall told the court.
On June 6, 2003, the victims were discovered by a Waste Management employee who was emptying trash bins in an alley in the 4800 block of South Latrobe Avenue in unincorporated Stickney Township.
As the remains were found in the trash, one of the babies’ placentas was attached to the baby and anotherwas found near the other infant “inside a black shoebox,” Marshall said.
After Ortiz told Briley a public defender had been appointed to defend her, Briley said, “Yes, ma’am,” with an audible sniffle, her voice cracking.
According to Marshall, Briley began to bleed and feel pain and cramping while alone at her grandparents’ home, so she got into the shower to “ease the pain.”
Moments later, while in the waterless bathtub, she began giving birth to the babies, Marshall said.
The babies began whimpering.
“They were both crying when they were born, she said, but not crying so loud that neighbors could hear,” Marshall said, quoting Briley.
“Panicking,” Briley grabbed a duffle bag and, without wiping the babies off, she placed them in the bag, got in her car and decided to drive them to a hospital, but her mind raced, she had a change of heart.
Briley told herself: “If nobody knew ... no one would ever know” about their births, Marshall said.
She pulled into an alley, took the babies out of the bag, placed them into a garbage bin, drove back to her grandparents’ home and threw away the duffle bag.
After trashing the duffle bag, she took a shower, got into bed and watched television.
“She wishes she could take the whole day back,” Marshall said, quoting Briley, adding Briley wished she had “kept going to the hospital.”
According to Chicago Tribune reporting at the time, the garbage truck’s automated mechanismwas dumping the contents of the 75-gallon can into the front trash receptaclewhen the two tiny male bodies tumbled out, said Marjorie O’Dea, of the sheriff’s office, at the time. The worker, who was not named, called police from her cellphone.
“We’re talking to neighbors to see if anyone saw anything, and we’ve talked to several pregnant women in the area,” O’Dea said at the time.
An autopsy the next day by the Cook County medical examiner’s office determined the victims were born alive and died of asphyxiation. Their deaths were ruled homicides.
The case remained unsolved until Thursday, when sheriff’s police received a lead that Briley was in Cook County and took her into custody after a traffic stop in Oak Lawn.
In 2018, police reopened the case and used DNA from evidence taken from the scene in an effort to identify the birth mother using new developments in genetic genealogy, police said. A breakthrough from that research and later probes allowed detectives to eventually identify Briley as the victims’ potential birth mother.
On July 2, 2020, police detectives who traveled to Holland, Michigan, watched Briley drop a cigarette to the ground. Its butt was placed into evidence, and ended up being a match to the DNA found on the babies and was consistent with coming fromBriley, Marshall said.
Briley’s public defender, Courtney Smallwood, said Briley lives with her 12-year-old daughter and has a fulltime job, working 60 to 70 hours a week as an assembly worker. She had no criminal background, and there were no witnesses to the alleged incident, Smallwood added.
Briley has been “an active member of society,” Smallwood said. “She’s not a danger to society or flight risk.”
Briley will be in court nextweek in Bridgeview.
Chief Leo Schmitz of the Cook County sheriff’s department held a news conference after the hearing, applauding the work of detectives on the case who used “genetic genealogy.”
“Two twins died 17 years ago ... we handled the case back then, we felt a void because we couldn’t find out who who did it,” Schmitz said. “We never gave up.”
“I am happy there is closure for the twins,” said Cook County sheriff’s detective Ginny Georgantas, one of the detectives on the case.