Mom Killed Her Babies, Kept Corpses in Closet

AOL News wrote:

A Pennsylvania woman secretly gave birth to at least four babies, killed the newborns to hide an extramarital affair and hid their remains in a closet, authorities say.

Michele Kalina, 44, was charged with criminal homicide Monday after DNA tests showed that she was the mother of the four infants whose bodies were found in her Reading home over two months ago, Berks County District Attorney John Adams told reporters. At least three of the children, who were born alive, were fathered by Kalina's boyfriend. His name was not made public.

"Nobody knew she was pregnant," Adams said, according to the Reading Eagle. "I've been involved in the criminal justice system for 25 years, and this is the most bizarre thing I've heard."

Kalina, a nurse's aide, was arrested in August after the 19-year-old daughter she had with her husband alerted police to the dead babies. Adams said the daughter had ignored her mother's orders not to look in the closet and found the skeletal remains of some of the babies. One of the bodies was entombed in cement. In court papers, authorities said Kalina told them she "had been meaning to clean that closet."

Adams said the remains of a fifth newborn ended up in a dump and could not be directly linked to Kalina through forensic tests because it was badly decomposed. He said the babies were likely killed from asphyxiation, poisoning or neglect.

"I'm very confident we have all the babies," he told reporters. A sixth child, a daughter born to Kalina in 2003, was given up for adoption.

No one knew that Kalina was pregnant, authorities say. Adams said the medical worker "always sort of wore those scrubs and hid [her pregnancies] well," CNN reported.

Kalina's husband, Jeffrey Kalina, told police he suspected his wife was pregnant at least once but said he knew nothing about the dead babies, The Associated Press reported. The boyfriend told investigators that Kalina explained away her growing abdomen by telling him she had cysts in her fallopian tubes. Adams said the boyfriend was entirely unaware of the births.

Another child, the 13-year-old son of Kalina and her husband, died in 2000 of cerebral palsy.

Kalina has been in custody since the newborns' remains were found and is being held without bail. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for Thursday.

Source.

Quote :

Kalina told them she "had been meaning to clean that closet."

Of course! This is just a wacky, sitcommy misunderstanding! Can't you just hear the laugh track?

What reason could she have not to use birth control? I realize the easy answer is "she was mentally ill", but there had to have been some sort of thought process behind "I'll just keep letting myself get pregnant. I can always kill the babies later". Did she not have access to condoms/contraceptives? Was she against abortion (but not, apparently, against infanticide)? Was she in denial? Did she just like smothering infants? Was she plain old lazy? What?

Apart from the fact that I just can't believe no one knew she was pregnant SIX FREAKIN TIMES, I also can't understand why she didn't use birth control. Not just because it must be somewhat annoying to be pregnant.

I happen to have a lot of friends who've just born babies, but not one of them said 'Ah, you know, it's like taking a dump.' Delivering a child is PAINFUL!

What the fuck is wrong with this woman? How can she be this fertile? She could have made a fortune out of adoptions!

I'm still reeling over the lack of foresight.

Affair + Hiding-it-from-husband = Birth control. This is common sense. She's a medical worker.

Also, why the closet? Why not just bury them or toss them?

I vote in with the Mentally Unstable group. Which worries me greatly, because she's a medical worker and has been working with people throughout this period of crazy.

kleine_kat wrote:

I happen to have a lot of friends who've just born babies, but not one of them said 'Ah, you know, it's like taking a dump.' Delivering a child is PAINFUL!

Not to mention that she most likely had them at home and would be in the bathroom for while a long time screaming her head off and would be bleeding for 6 weeks afterwards. The husband is lying, there would be no one he would not ntoice that his wife have had 6 week long periods.

XLT-100852.0 wrote:

kleine_kat wrote:

I happen to have a lot of friends who've just born babies, but not one of them said 'Ah, you know, it's like taking a dump.' Delivering a child is PAINFUL!

Not to mention that she most likely had them at home and would be in the bathroom for while a long time screaming her head off and would be bleeding for 6 weeks afterwards. The husband is lying, there would be no one he would not ntoice that his wife have had 6 week long periods.

Eh, she could've spun some lie about hormonal imbalance or the like. I had a period once on and off for three weeks, doc said it was most likely due to my hormones being out of whack for a while. And if she's a medical worker, toss in some big words and husband might have just shrugged and gone "okay".

XLT-100852.0 wrote:

kleine_kat wrote:

I happen to have a lot of friends who've just born babies, but not one of them said 'Ah, you know, it's like taking a dump.' Delivering a child is PAINFUL!

Not to mention that she most likely had them at home and would be in the bathroom for while a long time screaming her head off and would be bleeding for 6 weeks afterwards. The husband is lying, there would be no one he would not ntoice that his wife have had 6 week long periods.

She could have passed it off as part of her "cysts" lie, but then that brings up a whole other problem of why the husband/boyfriend insist on getting better examination. Unless he was just happy to just ignore the whole thing. Personally, if my spouse was ballooning out and blaming it on cysts, I'd be freaking out thinking it was much worse than that.

Quote :

Reading home

Just skimming the article, I nearly had a heart attack there - I'm from Reading.

...in England.


But more OT, perhaps she has that thing where you're addicted to being pregnant? Although it's an odd case and she covered it up (the disorder is usually an attention thing, IIRC) it explains why she never bothered with contraception and kept getting pregnant one time after the other.

Holy shit! I grew up no more than 45 minutes away from Reading, PA!

I went to the Reading hospital when I broke my collarbone! I wonder if this woman worked there? And if she did, I wonder if she was employed there at the time.

Nihilist wrote:

Mr.Doobie wrote:

I wonder if this woman worked there? And if she did, I wonder if she was employed there at the time.

She could have ripped out your collarbone and stuffed it in her closet.

They told me the lump in my collarbone was supposed to go away within a year after it healed.

I still have it.

If she ripped it out and replaced it with a tree branch or a dildo or something that would explain so much.

Hey! Hey lady! You owe me my collarbone you creeper!

What I don't understand is how this is any difference than a late term abortion.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

What I don't understand is how this is any difference than a late term abortion.

Silence, reactionary, stop trying to poison our minds with your loaded language.

The term is "post-natal abortion." When society is finally dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, it will properly recognize pioneering crusaders for this fundamental portion of womyn's rights, like this person and Andrea Yates.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

What I don't understand is how this is any difference than a late term abortion.

Apart from the legal aspects, infanticide can never directly save the mother's life in the way that a late-term abortion can.

Sutremaine wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

What I don't understand is how this is any difference than a late term abortion.

Apart from the legal aspects, infanticide can never directly save the mother's life in the way that a late-term abortion can.

Also, out and out killing someone (especially babies and small children) is generally frowned upon in polite society

Sutremaine wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

What I don't understand is how this is any difference than a late term abortion.

Apart from the legal aspects, infanticide can never directly save the mother's life in the way that a late-term abortion can.

But what if the baby had a knife and was coming right for her?

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Sutremaine wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

What I don't understand is how this is any difference than a late term abortion.

Apart from the legal aspects, infanticide can never directly save the mother's life in the way that a late-term abortion can.

But what if the baby had a knife and was coming right for her?

Then it's probably not a baby, just a very angry gnome.

Azzandra wrote:

Then it's probably not a baby, just a very angry gnome.

What type of gnome are we talking about here? Garden or D&D?

Jesus, that's AWFUL.

Some of the lines are pretty bad too.

Quote :

Michele Kalina, 44, was charged with criminal homicide Monday after DNA tests showed that she was the mother of the four infants whose bodies were found in her Reading home over two months ago,

Hmmm... I wonder what she would have been charged with if the babies HADN'T been hers...

Quote :

"I've been involved in the criminal justice system for 25 years, and this is the most bizarre thing I've heard."

BIZARRE?! You call this bizarre?! It's fucking SICK!

Seethe problem in America is that somehow, birth control and abortions are not well promoted - and then you end up with something like this where a mother thinks it's more acceptable to kill a baby after it's born than to have her boyfriend on the side wear a condom.

How could the husband not know? Did he never see her naked or something? Or just refuse to have something done about cysts in her fallopian tubes? He didn't notice her giving birth? What about the boyfriend? Did he notice nothing about the pregnancies?

Personally I get the feeling that he knew about it too.

And you know what? These were just the babies they FOUND.

XLT-100852.0 wrote:

Azzandra wrote:

Then it's probably not a baby, just a very angry gnome.

What type of gnome are we talking about here? Garden or D&D?

Or some combination of the two?

You know, this kinda makes me wonder, are there sick parents out there who kill their kids like this and don't get caught?

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

You know, this kinda makes me wonder, are there sick parents out there who kill their kids like this and don't get caught?

Of course.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Seethe problem in America is that somehow, birth control and abortions are not well promoted - and then you end up with something like this where a mother thinks it's more acceptable to kill a baby after it's born than to have her boyfriend on the side wear a condom.

Did you skip over the part where it's mentioned that she's a nurse, or did you intentionally ignore it to turn this into some pro-choice issue?

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

What I don't understand is how this is any difference than a late term abortion.

Easy. Aborted fetuses go in the trash, not in the closet.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

the problem in America is that somehow, birth control and abortions are not well promoted

Sure, abortion is not very well known in America. Most people don't even know there is such a thing. If they did they'd probably be a happier country!

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Quote :

"I've been involved in the criminal justice system for 25 years, and this is the most bizarre thing I've heard."

BIZARRE?! You call this bizarre?! It's fucking SICK!

Dead babies in the closet, husband in the dark
Take a drive down the freeway to relax my mind
Pulling into the driveway, red blue lights flash us from behind
Loud voice all "please step out onto the line."

Husband breathes words of comfort, neighbors hide their eyes
Policeman taps his shades, "Is that a Chevy 69?"

How bizarre, how bizarre, how bizarre.

grmblfjx wrote:

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

the problem in America is that somehow, birth control and abortions are not well promoted

Sure, abortion is not very well known in America. Most people don't even know there is such a thing. If they did they'd probably be a happier country!

Lack of promotion, of course! I knew there was a reason the "come here often?" pick-up line fell flat at the abortion clinic.

Maybe they could start a marketing campaign, you know, hand out those cards like they do in coffee shops? "Get ten punches, the eleventh is free." The spaces they punch can be designed to look like little embryos. It'll be so cute. Or maybe a bulk discount?