Janita Phillips Wiki
Janita Phillips Biography
Who is Janita Phillips ?
The mother of a newborn found dead in a Connecticut dumpster in 1986 was charged with murder on Friday after detectives searched her trash last year and used advances in DNA testing to link her to the baby.
Phillips was 26 when she was deemed a person of concern in the baby’s death. The boy’s body was discovered by sanitation workers who emptied a garbage container outside her apartment at 27 Havemeyer Place in Greenwich on May 16.
Detectives noted that the towels in Phillips’ apartment that she shared with her husband and her two-year-old son matched those that were wrapped around the discarded baby.
However, more substantial evidence was needed to charge the woman with a crime, and the case cooled down when she and her husband, Jerry, moved to Lake Mary, Florida, shortly after being interviewed.
How old is Janita Phillips ?
She is 62 year old.
Arrested and Charges
Janita M. Phillips turned herself in to police in Florida on Friday, where she had lived for more than 30 years since the girl was found dead. Because all other applicable charges expired with the statute of limitations, she was charged with murder.
Advances in genetic testing allowed police to analyze the bloody towel and other forensic evidence found with Baby John, Deputy Director Robert Berry said at a news conference Friday.
Then Greenwich Detective Christy Girardi and a Florida sheriff’s deputy were dispatched to guard the couple’s garbage containers in June of last year.
Using a discarded swab, detectives determined that Phillips was the mother of the long-deceased boy. An empty water bottle established Jerry’s paternity.
Jerry seemed “shocked” when detectives told him about the boy’s existence, and his subsequent murder, according to Greenwich Time.
Phillips told police that Jerry had told him that she did not want any more children after her first birth, and she managed to hide her entire pregnancy from him and her families until she gave birth to light in her apartment.
Investigation
She “never grew” during pregnancy, she told the researchers. Until the night she gave birth, she told investigators, she repeatedly thought to herself: ‘this can’t be happening.’
“ I just remember that I didn’t plan this, ” Phillips told police, more than 35 years after she gave birth to the boy, according to the affidavit.
She hardly handled or looked at the baby in the brief moments after her birth, she said, because that would make the situation “real.”
A medical examiner determined shortly after the boy’s body was found that he had been strangled to death.
‘I didn’t want to ruin [my husband’s] dreams and fall into the den of having a bunch of kids and keeping the bills and not being able to take care of them or achieve their dreams,’ ‘Phillips admitted. the murder, she told detectives.
Greenwich Time reported that Janita Phillips was working at Saks Fifth Avenue on Greenwich Avenue at the time, while her husband was working as a fashion designer, suit maker and custom tailor.
Since 1986, Phillips had maintained a clean criminal record and a “stellar life” with 30 years in the insurance industry, said her defense attorney Lindy Urso.
However, since her arrest, she has been in a ‘psychologically fragile situation’.
“However this cake is cut, it is a very, very tragic situation,” she said. “She has had to live with this pain for 35 years, and now, obviously, she has brought it out again.”
Phillips was initially held on $ 50,000 bail, but was released on the promise that she would contact the Bail Bonds Commissioner’s Office weekly after her impeachment hearing Friday in Stamford State Superior Court.
Murder
State Attorney Paul Ferencek supports the decision to release Phillips, saying the state does not see it as a flight risk. He said Friday that she, since her alleged murder, has lived a “blameless life” with no criminal record.
“Today we began to close the investigation into the death of a baby, many years ago,” Greenwich Police Chief James Heavey said during Friday’s news conference.
“While today’s arrest will not bring that child back, it does give him an acknowledgment that her precious life had meaning and that he will not be forgotten.”
“The investigation into his tragic death has taken many years, but he has always been remembered and we hope this conclusion brings him peace and recognition.”
Janita Phillips Quick and Facts
- Janita Phillips, 62, was charged with murder on Friday for killing her newborn son in 1986, when she was 26, before moving from Connecticut to Florida
- The infant was found by sanitation workers who had emptied the dumpster outside her apartment – a coroner later said he had been strangled
- Detectives noted that towels in Phillips’ apartment matched a towel found with the body of the infant, but didn’t have enough evidence to charge her
- Advances in DNA technology allowed police to get samples from evidence found at the cold scene and compare them to trash outside Phillips’ home
- Police determined that Phillips’ was the mother of the deceased child with a Q-Tip, and that Jerry was his father with a discarded water bottle
- Her husband, Jerry, appeared ‘shocked’ that she was pregnant, that she gave birth in their Greenwich apartment and that she had killed the infant
- ‘I didn’t want to crash his dreams [by] having… kids… and not being able to care for them or get to achieve his dreams,’ Phillips told investigators
Source: WikiSoon
