Utah woman arrested for murder after bodies of 7 babies found

Authorities on Monday said a Utah woman accused of killing six babies that she gave birth to over a period of 10 years admitted to investigators that she either strangled or suffocated the children before placing them in boxes hidden in her garage.

According to a probable cause statement released by police, Megan Huntsman said that between 1996 and 2006, she gave birth to at least seven babies at her Pleasant Grove home and that all but one of them were born alive. 

Huntsman was arrested Sunday on six counts of murder after police found the infants' tiny bodies. A seventh baby found appears to have been stillborn, Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Buhman said.

Huntsman, 39, said she killed them immediately after they were born, and put their bodies inside boxes. The statement said each baby was wrapped in either a towel or a shirt, and placed in a plastic bag. She is being held on $6 million bail — $1 million for each baby she's accused of killing. It wasn't immediately clear if she had an attorney. 

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Huntsman has no criminal record besides a 2011 traffic citation.

The gruesome case has raised a series of questions about how the killings occurred despite Huntsman carrying out what neighbors said seemed like a normal life. 

Huntsman's estranged husband — identified by family and neighbors as Darren West — made the discovery while cleaning out the garage after recently being released from prison. Authorities do not believe he was aware of the killings and he isn't a person of interest at this time.

Pleasant Grove Police Capt. Michael Roberts said officers responded to a call from him Saturday about a dead infant, and then they found the six other bodies.

Roberts said police believe West, who has been in prison on drug-related charges, and Huntsman were together when the babies were born.

"We don't believe he had any knowledge of the situation," Roberts told The Associated Press.

Asked how the man could not have known about the situation, Roberts replied, "That's the million-dollar question. Amazing." 

Huntsman also has three daughters — one teenager and two young adults — who lived at the house.

Neighbors in the middle-class neighborhood of mostly older homes 35 miles south of Salt Lake City say they were shocked by the accusations and perplexed that the woman's older children still living in the home didn't know their mother was pregnant or notice anything suspicious. 

The babies' bodies were sent to the Utah medical examiner's office for tests, including a test to determine the cause of death. DNA samples taken from the suspect and her husband will determine definitively whether the two are the parents, as investigators believe.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press