Baby cut from womb; woman's body ID'd
By David M. Brown and Allison M. Heinrichs
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, July 20, 2008

Buzz up!


She was just 18 and due to give birth July 30.
She may have been drugged, authorities said, when she was cut open last week and her unborn child taken from her womb.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office said today it had positively identified a woman found dead in a Wilkinsburg apartment -- hands duct-taped behind her back -- as Kia Johnson, 18, of McKeesport, missing since Tuesday. Preliminary reports had given her residence as Wilkinsburg.

Authorities found her body on Friday inside the foul-smelling, fly-infested apartment of a Wilkinsburg woman, Andrea Curry-Demus, who showed up at a Pittsburgh hospital on Wednesday, claiming to have given birth prematurely. Tests showed the newborn baby boy, whose umbilical cord was still attached, wasn't hers. Curry-Demus, 38, is being held in the county jail on a charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

Other charges will be filed as the homicide investigation continues, Assistant Allegheny County Police Superintendent James Morton said during a news conference yesterday.

The Medical Examiner's Office said last night that based on circumstantial evidence, authorities believed the dead woman to be Johnson. The woman's family has been notified, the office said. Dental records are expected to confirm their identification today.

"Her abdomen had been opened with a sharp weapon, the uterus had been opened. We discovered a placenta at the scene," Dr. Karl E. Williams, Allegheny County medical examiner, said yesterday. "The body was in a state of moderate decomposition."

The cause of death will be determined after other test results, including toxicology, are complete.

"We will be looking for any drug that might have helped incapacitate her," Williams said. "There is not a lot of evidence of a struggle having occurred. There is some evidence that there were drugs at the scene."

The medical examiner said he couldn't be sure whether the woman was alive when she was cut open, although the baby would not have survived long inside the mother after she died.

"There is a certain window of opportunity," Williams said. "The baby is depending on the mother being alive."

The baby "was in some degree of distress when it arrived at West Penn Hospital," but now "is apparently doing well," he said. "The baby had some problems briefly to begin with -- low heart rate, low temperature, probably from blood loss, and recovered very quickly with treatment."

Wilkinsburg police found the young woman's body face-down with blood around her in a bedroom of Curry-Demus' Ella Street apartment. Her hands and feet were bound with duct tape, and a plastic material, blocking her airways, was duct-taped over her face, Williams said.


Even though Curry-Demus showed up at the hospital with the baby on Wednesday night, police did not search her apartment until Friday -- after reporters alerted them to a foul odor and flies at the apartment window. Wilkinsburg police claimed they had searched her apartment on Thursday night. They said Friday they were misled by Curry-Demus' sister, who showed them the wrong apartment, which they searched.

Families of two missing, pregnant woman showed up at the scene Friday concerned for the safety of their loved ones. Three missing women fit the general description of the dead woman, Morton said.

An autopsy determined the dead woman was younger than investigators originally thought, probably no more than 20. Morton described her as "very small, petite, 5 feet to 5 feet, 1 inch, between 110 and 120 pounds."

Fingerprints were used to rule out at least one person, a pregnant woman named Tina Carter whose family was concerned because they had not seen her in several days.

"I was just so happy that it's not her," said friend Rebecca Stevenson of Braddock. "Tina called at 11 last night. Until then, I thought it was her."

Johnson's family, concerned for her welfare, spoke to investigators on Friday. The family said her baby was due July 30.

According to court documents, Curry-Demus told police she paid a woman named Tina $1,000 for the baby.

Blood and hormone tests determined Curry-Demus is not the baby's mother, police said.

Curry-Demus had pleaded guilty in 1990 to aggravated assault after stabbing a Wilkinsburg woman in what authorities said was a plot to steal her infant.

The day after the stabbing, Curry-Demus abducted an infant from Children's Hospital. The baby was uninjured when police found the baby at Curry-Demus' home the next day.

There are a couple of more stories relating to this here along with what I posted above

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburgh...n/s_578527.html

They should throw that trash in the worst jail on the planet for life. She doesn't deserve to breathe the same air we do. If she's mentally ill, tough! Still throw her sorry butt in jail to stay. I'm so sick of violence. I have zero tolerance and I'm all out of sympathy for people who commit horrendous crimes and then plead temporary insanity or are found to be in need of a shrink. Then it's off to a mental institution and after a while, lo and behold - guess what - a miraculous cure. I'm just sick of the whole thing.