Mother charged with killing infant daughter kept pregnancy a secret, police say
She gave birth alone, then left baby to die
She is an adult. She has family members who love her and friends who care. Her house is next door to a church, and there’s a fire hall nearby, too.
But for some sad, terrible and perhaps unknowable reason, police say, Alicia Zebrun, a 19-year-old Erie Community College student from Lackawanna, kept her pregnancy a secret. And late last week after she gave birth to a baby girl alone in her home, she placed the newborn in a shoe box and left her to die, authorities said.
A man looking for empty cans found the dead baby Friday in a garbage tote near the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens in South Buffalo.
Tuesday afternoon, Zebrun’s parents, relatives and friends appeared shellshocked and grief-stricken as they waited in a small Buffalo courtroom for her to be arraigned on second-degree murder charges.
She had been arrested Monday evening and spent the night in Erie County Medical Center, apparently the first medical attention she has received since giving birth.
Zebrun’s little sister, sitting in the first row, burst into tears, and the rest of her family and friends worked hard to stifle their sobs, too, as they watched her being escorted into the courtroom. Diminutive at 5-foot-1, with long, wavy red hair, Zebrun had her hands cuffed behind her.
Zebrun’s mother and father were allowed to stand with her as City Judge Craig D. Hannah ordered her held without bail. Hannah also assigned her an attorney, Robert N. Convissar, and scheduled her to appear again in court Friday.
The hearing lasted just a couple of minutes. Zebrun was then led away to the Erie County Holding Center, where she was to be under “constant observation” because of the circumstances of the case. Her family quickly left the courthouse, waving off media attention.
Buffalo homicide detectives had spent all weekend trying to find the mother of the dead baby girl, found in the garbage tote on Hopkins Street at about midday Friday.
The newborn was placed in a purple and gray box that originally contained a pair of size 7, black Crews shoes — a brand believed to be popular with fast-food workers, a source told The Buffalo News.
Detectives tracked the shoes to an Internet site and then to Zebrun’s home on Linden Place in Lackawanna.
She was arrested at Police Headquarters on Monday night.
The spot where the baby’s body was discovered is less than two miles from Zebrun’s aqua-colored house.
Convissar said late Tuesday that he had not yet met with Zebrun and was scheduled to meet with her early this morning.
A family member at the house would not speak with a reporter Tuesday morning.
Neighbors said Zebrun and her two sisters had a strong upbringing.
“I don’t understand how it happened with them because they’re excellent parents,” said Tammy Gatzke, who lives a few houses away and said she grew up with Zebrun’s older sister.
The family, which included a mother and stepfather, was strict; they even included a rule against swearing and were steering the children toward college, Gatzke said.
Gatzke said she remembered going to the Zebruns’ house as a child, making cookies and attending Halloween parties.
She said she believes Zebrun’s parents would have been eager to help their daughter because they were “all about kids.”
“They would have taken that baby in a heartbeat,” Gatzke said.
Debbie Gatzke, Tammy’s mother-in-law, said it is hard to understand what would make a mother leave her child to die.
She said there are options available nearby for mothers who can’t or don’t want to take care of a child, including a nearby fire hall and Queen of Angels Catholic Church, where Zebrun could have sought help.
“There’s people that can’t have babies and really want babies,” Debbie Gatzke added.
Another neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said her child went to school with Zebrun at Truman Elementary, as well as Lackawanna Middle and High schools.
The Zebrun family frequently had children playing in a backyard pool, she said.
“She was always a good kid,” the neighbor said. “I would never have expected this with her.”
Diane E. Elze, an associate professor and director of the University at Buffalo’s master’s in social work program, cautioned against vilifying Zebrun and others accused of the same crime.
“There are circumstances here that we don’t know about,” Elze said. “Clearly, this is a tragedy for this family, for this young woman and for the dead child.”
Speaking in general about similar cases, she continued: “For whatever reason, they were extremely frightened. They may have felt fearful about disclosing the pregnancy for whatever reason. We don’t know. For example, if there was some kind of traumatic event associated with the pregnancy. We don’t know that.”
Experts in newborn killings said what Zebrun is accused of is all too common.
“There’s one a day,” said Neil
S. Kaye, a forensic psychiatrist based in Delaware who has testified in more than 100 neonaticide cases. “This sounds like a real typical case.”
The girls and young women who kill or abandon their newborns generally are deeply ashamed and often refuse to acknowledge their pregnancies “until the very end when it’s undeniable,” he said.
Faced with a baby they don’t want, they do the unthinkable.
“They’re not thinking,” Kaye said. “They’re acting.”
Kaye argues that prison isn’t the answer for girls and women who kill their newborns.
“What purpose does it serve?” he said. “It doesn’t teach other girls. It doesn’t send a message. It doesn’t result in rehabilitation.”
He said in the 100-plus cases with which he has been involved nationwide, most resulted in no charges or the charges were dropped.
He also questioned safe-haven laws, like the one in New York State, which allow mothers or guardians to leave a newborn up to 5 days old in a safe place anonymously without being convicted of a crime.
“They don’t work,” Kaye said. They often are poorly publicized, and, in some cases, the laws can work against the girls and women, he added.
Prosecutors will often tell a jury that the mother had the opportunity to abandon the baby safely, he said.
Kaye believes the only way to stop it is for parents and communities to be more involved with their daughters.
He pointed out one case in which a girl said she hid her pregnancy from her family and ended up killing her baby because her father had told her he’d kill her if she ever came home pregnant.
“The father broke down in tears,” Kaye said. “ ‘This is my fault . . . I didn’t mean it. But I actually said it,’ ” he recounted.
“The community needs to say this is an example of us failing our kids,” Kaye said. “We need to do a better as a community rather than skapegoating this girl.”
News columnist Donn Esmonde contributed to this report.
mbecker@buffnews.com and abesecker@buffnews.com
