Woman Hid Dead Babies So Her Boyfriend Would Not Find Out About Them, Prosecutor Says

Grisly details emerged in the Blackstone murder case that sees a Massachusetts mother accused of killing two of her children and neglecting others.

Erika Murray pleaded not guilty to a number of charges, including murder, at her arraignment on Monday, the Boston Globe reports.

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Prosecutors in the case painted a horrifying picture of Murray’s home, where police found the bodies of three dead infants in September.

Four living children were removed from the home after the discovery.

Assistant District Attorney John E. Bradley Jr. told the court that Murray’s 3-year-old child “could not walk or talk” and seemed essentially deaf.

“The pediatricians had to literally clean the maggots out of her ears so that she was able to hear correctly,” he said.

Police found the 3-year-old “covered in feces” in a room “completely filled with trash that was piled about two feet high,” Bradley said.

A 6-month-old was also discovered in a room next door that had “stacks of soiled diapers that were piled about a foot or so high,” the prosecutor said.

The body of one infant was found in a closet “wrapped in a pair of sweat pants,” Bradley described. “The baby still had the umbilical cord and the placenta attached to it, and had what appeared to be a full head of hair.”

Two other dead babies were discovered in closets. Murray reportedly told police one baby lived between one to three weeks before dying.

A 13-year-old and a 10-year-old taken from the home appeared unharmed.

Bradley said Murray, 31, hid the babies from her live-in boyfriend Raymond Rivera, 38, because, for financial reasons, he did not want any more children after the first two.

But the couple continued to have unprotected sex, and Murray became pregnant five times in seven years.

Bradley said she delivered the infants alone in the bathroom, then took them upstairs “in an effort to hide the babies from her boyfriend,” the Boston Globe reports.

Rivera claimed he had no idea about the state of the upstairs bedrooms, but that was quickly disputed when it was discovered that he’d been sleeping “just eight feet” from the babies’ remains, according to Mass Live.

He was arraigned Dec. 16 on seven charges, including two counts of assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury.

Murray has not been charged with murder for the baby found with the umbilical cord still attached. Her lawyer Keith S. Halpern called the other murder charges premature, the Boston Globe reports.

“There is not a single case in Massachusetts that supports a conviction of murder on evidence so speculative and so weak,” he said. “The appropriate thing would have been to wait for the medical examiner’s report to be completed.”

He added that Murray’s statements to police were inconsistent, saying she “simply agreed with whatever they asked because it was her belief that if she went along with them she’d go home.”