Emile Weaver has been given lifeterm in prison without parole.
On the morning of April 22, 2015, one sorority sister after another opened the bathroom door and recoiled in disgust.
The toilet at Muskingum University's Delta Gamma Theta house was splattered with blood.
Suspecting that it was a feminine hygiene issue, the sorority's house manager texted everyone living in the building that whoever was responsible needed to come clean up her mess.
"It looks like a murder scene," the manager wrote.
She had no idea how right she was.
That night, four Deltas went out for ice cream in the small college town of New Concord, Ohio. Instead of school, however, all they could talk about was Emile Weaver. The 20-year-old had put on weight recently and begun to act strangely, giving rise to rumors among her sorority sisters that Weaver was secretly pregnant.
Now there was the blood in the bathroom.
One of the Deltas had a horrible hunch.
She and a sorority sister went outside to the house's garbage bin. On the ground, they found a trash bag.
They tore a hole.
"We kept shaking the bag," Madison Bates testified in court, according to the Zanesville Times Recorder. "And I saw a baby's foot."
That shocking discovery would uncover an even more startling crime.
Weaver was arrested a few days later. According to prosecutors, she had hidden her pregnancy for nine months, all the while desperately trying to kill the baby she didn't want. She drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and took scores of labor-inducing supplements.
She even played volleyball.
"She wanted Addison dead," Muskingum County Assistant Prosecutor Ron Welch said in court, according to the Columbus Dispatch. "Whether it was during her pregnancy or after birth, it didn't matter. She didn't want the baby."
When the baby somehow survived, Weaver took a more direct approach, cutting the umbilical cord herself before putting the newborn in a plastic bag, where the child suffocated to death, prosecutors said.
"No more baby," she texted the man she thought was the father. "Taken care of."
In May, an Ohio jury found Weaver guilty of aggravated murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence, according to the Associated Press.
On Monday, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The stiff sentence was also surprising, however, as it stood in sharp contrast to another, remarkably similar case from the same school.
In 2002, Muskingum student Jennifer "Nikki" Bryant wrapped her newborn in a blanket and put the child in a trash can, where the child died. Bryant pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, child endangering and abuse of a corpse. She was sentenced to three years in prison but only served seven months.
"There has been a lot of discussion within our community as to why this situation happened twice at the same institute of higher learning," Dave Boyer, director of Muskingum County Children Services, told the Daily Mail. "It's extremely hurtful."
It's unclear if Weaver was aware of Bryant's ordeal on the same campus more than a decade earlier.
But Weaver's attempts to echo Bryant's defense -- that she was unaware she was pregnant until she suddenly gave birth, and that she was sorry for what she had done -- convinced neither judge nor jury.
Muskingum was founded in 1837 by Presbyterian Scotch-Irish settlers and is still affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, according to its website. The liberal arts and sciences college boasts nearly 2,000 students, roughly 30 percent of whom are in either fraternities or sororities, according to the site.
Weaver arrived on the picturesque campus in the fall of 2013 from the even smaller town of Clarington, population 384.
Her freshman year she rushed Delta Gamma Theta, one of five sororities on campus. A Twitter under the name Emile Weaver! posted messages about tanning, taking exams, napping, football and drinking.
"The fact that I drank out of a blender bottle last night," reads a Feb. 9, 2014 post that included laughing emojis.
For her sophomore year, she moved into her sorority's impressive stone house, dubbed "the castle."
By then, however, she was already carrying a secret.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The toilet at Muskingum University's Delta Gamma Theta house was splattered with blood.
Suspecting that it was a feminine hygiene issue, the sorority's house manager texted everyone living in the building that whoever was responsible needed to come clean up her mess.
"It looks like a murder scene," the manager wrote.
She had no idea how right she was.
That night, four Deltas went out for ice cream in the small college town of New Concord, Ohio. Instead of school, however, all they could talk about was Emile Weaver. The 20-year-old had put on weight recently and begun to act strangely, giving rise to rumors among her sorority sisters that Weaver was secretly pregnant.
Now there was the blood in the bathroom.
One of the Deltas had a horrible hunch.
She and a sorority sister went outside to the house's garbage bin. On the ground, they found a trash bag.
They tore a hole.
"We kept shaking the bag," Madison Bates testified in court, according to the Zanesville Times Recorder. "And I saw a baby's foot."
That shocking discovery would uncover an even more startling crime.
Weaver was arrested a few days later. According to prosecutors, she had hidden her pregnancy for nine months, all the while desperately trying to kill the baby she didn't want. She drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and took scores of labor-inducing supplements.
She even played volleyball.
"She wanted Addison dead," Muskingum County Assistant Prosecutor Ron Welch said in court, according to the Columbus Dispatch. "Whether it was during her pregnancy or after birth, it didn't matter. She didn't want the baby."
When the baby somehow survived, Weaver took a more direct approach, cutting the umbilical cord herself before putting the newborn in a plastic bag, where the child suffocated to death, prosecutors said.
"No more baby," she texted the man she thought was the father. "Taken care of."
In May, an Ohio jury found Weaver guilty of aggravated murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence, according to the Associated Press.
On Monday, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The stiff sentence was also surprising, however, as it stood in sharp contrast to another, remarkably similar case from the same school.
In 2002, Muskingum student Jennifer "Nikki" Bryant wrapped her newborn in a blanket and put the child in a trash can, where the child died. Bryant pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, child endangering and abuse of a corpse. She was sentenced to three years in prison but only served seven months.
"There has been a lot of discussion within our community as to why this situation happened twice at the same institute of higher learning," Dave Boyer, director of Muskingum County Children Services, told the Daily Mail. "It's extremely hurtful."
It's unclear if Weaver was aware of Bryant's ordeal on the same campus more than a decade earlier.
But Weaver's attempts to echo Bryant's defense -- that she was unaware she was pregnant until she suddenly gave birth, and that she was sorry for what she had done -- convinced neither judge nor jury.
Muskingum was founded in 1837 by Presbyterian Scotch-Irish settlers and is still affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, according to its website. The liberal arts and sciences college boasts nearly 2,000 students, roughly 30 percent of whom are in either fraternities or sororities, according to the site.
Weaver arrived on the picturesque campus in the fall of 2013 from the even smaller town of Clarington, population 384.
Her freshman year she rushed Delta Gamma Theta, one of five sororities on campus. A Twitter under the name Emile Weaver! posted messages about tanning, taking exams, napping, football and drinking.
"The fact that I drank out of a blender bottle last night," reads a Feb. 9, 2014 post that included laughing emojis.
For her sophomore year, she moved into her sorority's impressive stone house, dubbed "the castle."
By then, however, she was already carrying a secret.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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