New Evidence Against FL Teen Who Admitted Killing Baby, Hiding Him in Shoebox
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Comstock/Thinkstock(TAMPA, Fla.) — Cassidy Goodson, the teen who admitted killing her newborn baby and hiding him in a shoebox this fall, used a Santa Claus doll to show investigators exactly how she strangled him in her bathroom shortly after giving birth, according to new evidence released in Florida.
The video evidence shows Goodson, 14, re-enacting how she killed the baby boy using the doll in the very bathroom she gave birth in on Sept. 19, three days before her mother discovered the dead newborn in a shoebox and called police.
“Its eyes weren’t open, but I felt to see if it was breathing or not — and it did — so I put my hands around its throat to make it stop breathing,” she said, according to WFTS, the ABC News affiliate in Tampa, Fla.
It only took a minute before the baby was dead, she said. A detective off-camera asked Goodson how hard she had to squeeze, to which she replied, “Enough for it to stop breathing.”
An autopsy revealed that the infant died of asphyxia from strangulation and blunt force trauma, according to a police news release dated Sept. 28.
Goodson explained in the video that she didn’t want to disappoint her parents, so she hid her pregnancy with baggy clothes and gave birth in secret. According to police, she began to feel ill on Sept. 17 and realized on Sept. 19 that she was delivering. She placed a towel in her mouth and ran the water to muffle any noise she made.
She described to police that she used a pair of scissors to “pry the baby out,” before the 9.5 pound boy dropped into the toilet, according to the September news release.
“I was scared of what was going to happen and if I was going to get in trouble,” she said in the new video evidence.
Although Goodson’s mother, Teresa, told her to take two home pregnancy tests, Goodson faked them both because no one was in the bathroom with her.
“I thought she was just getting fat and gaining weight, honestly,” Teresa Goodson said. “If I would have known, this would never have happened.”
Goodson was arrested on Sept. 27 and charged with premeditated first degree murder and aggravated child abuse. She will be tried as an adult and could face life in prison without parole.
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