A 69-year-old woman will not face charges after the frozen bodies of four infants were discovered in a Boston apartment freezer in 2022, the Suffolk County district attorney announced this week.
District Attorney Kevin Hayden said the investigation into the circumstances of the tragic discovery on November 17, 2022, is “one of the most complex, unusual and perplexing authorities have ever encountered.”
Hayden said in a statement Tuesday that investigators do not know whether the four infants were born alive, which played a role in the decision not to file criminal charges.
The baby was found in the freezer of a South Boston apartment after a man called police and said his wife had found the baby while cleaning out his sister's apartment, the District Attorney's Office said.
Prosecutors said the infants, two boys and two girls, were frozen solid inside a shoe box wrapped in foil. DNA tests revealed that they were all brothers.
The medical examiner could not determine the cause of death or whether the baby was born alive, and there were no obvious signs of trauma, the district attorney's office said. The babies' father was confirmed through DNA testing and died in 2011.
Hayden said the mother was in a medical facility and when questioned by investigators, she “appeared confused and did not seem to understand where she was or who she was talking to.” said in a statement.
“We'll never know whether the four babies were born alive, and we'll never know exactly what happened to them,” he said, also explaining why the woman hid her pregnancy.
Investigators determined the woman had five children with the baby's father, one of whom was adopted, Hayden said. The only birth record found was the birth of one child.