A Mother by Invention

In Ohio, a housewife's pregnancy becomes part of a murderous plot to steal another woman's child

Michelle Bica, 39, prepared methodically for her baby. She decorated a room in her home in Ravenna, Ohio, readied lots of baby bottles and set up the monitor in the kitchen. She had miscarried last year but soon announced happily that she was pregnant again. As her due date approached, however, she kept bumping it later and later. Then, on Sept. 27, she presented her husband Thomas with a healthy boy. The birth, she explained, happened quickly and dramatically. Her water broke, an ambulance came to take her to a hospital in Akron, and she left the facility almost immediately because...

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