Cold Case Files - Death of the Innocents

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

When a woman and her son find the mummified remains of two infants while cleaning out their new trailer, investigators are tasked first with finding the identity of the mother. After Susan Connell admits to leaving both infants the even more difficult question is… were they alive? Progressive - Progressive.com  Rosetta Stone - Cold Case Files listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off when you go to RosettaStone.com/coldcase Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at Shopify.com/coldcase and take your retail business to the next level today! SimpliSafe - Right now, get 20% off any new SimpliSafe system with Fast Protect Monitoring at SimpliSafe.com/COLDCASE There’s No Safe Like SimpliSafe. 

Hi, Cold Case listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson, and if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files, as well as the A&E Classic Podcast, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now, on to the show. This episode contains stories involving violence against children. Listener discretion is advised. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. In Chilton County, Alabama, Rebecca Mims works a minimum wage job and lives in a travel trailer sized 8 feet by 14.

In the summer of 1996, Mims decides to upgrade to a bigger trailer home. I was living in an 8 by 14 travel trailer with no restroom or anything. And this was 10 by 40, 10 by 50. And it had a real bedroom in it and a real bathroom. Rebecca buys the trailer for $500. Inside it, she finds a few years worth of trash. Undeterred, Rebecca and her son begin to clean. A few hours into the job, Rebecca's son finds a blanket inside a bag of garbage. He went to pulling the blanket out of the bag and something fell at his feet, which I thought was a baby doll. He told me it wasn't, that I better come look.

Rebecca looks at the baby doll and discovers it is actually the mummified remains of what appears to be an infant. Rebecca calls the Chilton County Sheriff's Department, who processed the crime scene and removed the infant's remains. After police leave, Rebecca and her son continue to clean, trying to forget what just happened, until Rebecca's son picks up another blanket

from the floor of the trailer home. Well, he stepped in the door and took the blanket, and took it outside. And he went to holler, mama, there's something dead in it. And I said, no, there's not. He said, yes, it is. Inside the second blanket,

Rebecca finds the skeletal remains of a second baby. A team of county police returns to the trailer. State medical examiner Jim Lordson is also called in to work the scene. I had never seen two infants in that close of proximity and obviously they had not died at the same time. This was unusual. This was a place where someone was leaving babies and had done it twice. Detectives begin their investigation by tracing the trailer's history. Who owned it and when?

Chief Investigator Butch Nash traces ownership papers to a local named Otis Baker. Baker tells police he owned the trailer for 15 to 20 years. Most of the time, he had left it derelict on the back end of a piece of farmland. Nash asks Baker who might have had access to the trailer. He told me that his granddaughter Susan had used the trailer as a playhouse after it was abandoned. Susan Connell is actually Otis Baker's niece. In 1996, she is 18 years old, old enough to have given birth to two children and left them to die in a trailer. When asked about the infants, however, Connell claims to know nothing. old enough to have given birth to two children and left them to die in a trailer.

When asked about the infants, however, Connell claims to know nothing. She acted like she was shocked about the whole incident. You know, she couldn't believe it, that, you know, the babies were found there or anything. She had no knowledge of it. Nash is not satisfied with the flat denial. He begins to pay attention to the Chilton County rumor mill, the rumbling center on Susan's past. Once people found out about it, you know, my phone started ringing off the hook. Everybody calling saying, well, I saw her and she was pregnant back in 93. And I, you know, I saw her at the restaurant in 94 and she was pregnant again.

Complete medical records documenting Susan Connell's pregnancies do not exist. The only chance to link her to the two infants is through science. We drew the blood on two days after the babies were found. The next day it was turned over to the FBI. And that was in August of 96. We received the results back in August of 98. So it took, you know, two years. Lab results indicate that Susan Connell is indeed the natural mother of the two infants.

That, however, is not enough. In order to support a criminal charge for murder, investigators must also establish that the infants were born alive in the first place. Our usual methods, such as looking for aeration in the lungs, has the child taken a breath, has the child swallowed, has it been fed? Those sorts of changes that are important clues for the medical examiner were all absent in this case. So it wasn't possible for me to establish whether they were stillborn infants or whether they were born alive. Without a life, there can be no death. It's a simple fact that stops this investigation cold until cold case detectives reopen the case and approach Susan Connell about two births she would rather forget. All I remember is I was upstairs in my bedroom and I started cramping

really bad. And I didn't know what it was. I mean, had no clue. And I ended up having the baby. And I wrapped it up in a blanket and brought it to a trailer. When you think about businesses with criminally good sales, like Death Wish Coffee or everyone's favorite murder mystery star Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty, sure, you think about an in-demand product, a premeditated brand, and scary good marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the business behind the business, making selling and buying simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. It's the home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not-so-secret

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Redeem your 50% off at www.rosettastone.com slash survived today. Summer has come and gone twice over since the remains of two infants were found wrapped in blankets and left among the garbage inside an old mobile home. Suspicion still swirls around a teenage girl as the one who on two separate occasions left the infants to die. While Susan Connell denies she was ever pregnant, science puts the lie to her claim. DNA tests prove Connell gave birth to both children, but no tests could determine if the infants actually were born alive. Without a life, there can be no criminal case for murder, and the case goes cold.

In January of 1999, there's a new sheriff in Chilton County, Alabama, one who wants to put this investigation back on track. The case bothered me from day one, and I said if I ever got an opportunity to be the sheriff of this county, I would reopen the case and see if we could solve it. Fulmer puts his two best men on the case,

a couple of young guns named Jay Edwards and Scotty Wells. We got together and we had a case conference where we all discussed and sort of brainstormed over what we needed to do. Something as traumatic as childbirth and then placing the child into a trailer and allowing it to die has to affect people, no matter how cold-hearted you may think they are. And we think it was just a matter of approaching her the right way so that she could relieve some of this guilt. By 1999, Susan Connell is 21, married, with one child and another on the way. FBI profilers

suggest that a middle-aged man and a younger female detective might have the best chance of connecting with Connell. The former will act as a father figure. The latter should be a mother herself. Lynn Rhodes from the Alabama Bureau of Investigations and Greg Shaner from the FBI's Violent Crime Task Force are chosen for the job. Their assignment? Get Susan talking. You can call me a man, and I'll call you Shana. Is Susan okay with you?

Just call me Susan. On April 21st, 1999, Shana and Rhodes pick Susan Connell up for questioning. Somebody has set me up. I don't know what the deal is, but somebody has set me up. For over two hours, Connell vehemently denies the two infants were hers, even after being confronted with the DNA proof. The babies are not mine. I mean, no, they're not. Do you need to realize that? No, they're not. Yes, they are. No, they're not. DNA. I don't see how y'all can sleep at night when you come and tell somebody when they know that they're not around. Because DNA has a lot of sweethearts. Early on, it is Rhodes who connects with Connell, coaxing her into the first and critical step acknowledging the infants were hers.

I've known from day one what you did. I'm sitting here holding her hand. I don't hate you. I think you made a mistake. I think you were young and didn't have choices. This is so embarrassing. Until she was embarrassed, responded to some of the questions that Rose was asking her. I would purposely get up during the interview sometime and walk out of the room hoping.

And I think the second time that I actually left the room is when she told Rose they were her babies. I was sitting in front of her holding her hands and she began to cry and I said, Susan, I'm not here to judge you. I just want to help. I want us to get some closure regarding these infants, your babies, and she said, yes, they're mine. But Susan, when it's over, it's over. You won't ever have to be embarrassed about it again. You made a half hours into the interview, Susan admits she gave birth at home

alone and unassisted to both babies. Connell does not, however, indicate that the babies were born alive. Nine days later, the three sit down again. Shainer and Rhodes press Susan for details. Susan begins by describing the birth of her first child. She was 15 and gave birth in her parents' bathroom using her father's mustache scissors to cut the umbilical cord. According to Connell, she went back to the trailer the next day to see if she could hear the baby crying. I didn't know if it was or not. I can understand you. That's why I kept walking by to see if I could hear something.

Connell's second baby came at least two years later when she was living in an apartment complex on the other side of town. I think I basically did the same thing I did before. Connell cites an abusive home life as her reason for dumping both babies. I couldn't take care of it. I was scared of my mom and daddy. And I felt like... I didn't understand why God put me through that. I didn't understand why God let that happen to me.

Agent Lynn Rhodes says she can perhaps accept that reasoning as mitigation for the first infant, but not the second. I think one thing was I got away with it before. Number two, her family would not have been supportive of her having an abortion or her adopting their grandchild out to someone they didn't know. So I think she thought this is the easy way out. After her confession is committed to paper, Susan Connell is eventually taken to the Chilton County Jail and booked on two counts of murder.

She pleads guilty to both counts and is sentenced to 20 years in prison. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Hey, Cold Case Files listeners, whether you love true crime or comedies, celebrity interviews, news, or even motivational speakers, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue, right? And guess what? Now you can call the shots on your auto insurance too. Enter the Name Your Price tool from Progressive. The Name Your Price tool puts you in charge of your auto insurance by working just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance. Then they'll show you a variety of coverages that fit within your budget, giving you options.

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murder mystery star Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty, sure you think about an in-demand product, a premeditated brand, and scary good marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the business behind the business, making selling and buying simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. It's the home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not-so-secret secret? With shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, way less carts are being abandoned and way more sales are going... So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell

wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. On the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Selena Gomez uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash coldcase, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash coldcase to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash coldcase. It's April 11, 2002. Susan Connell spends her days at the Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama.

Only six months into her sentence, Susan has still had plenty of time to reflect on how she got here. If I had it all over to do again, I would give my own life before I would do that. There might have been other options at that time when that happened, but I did not see it. I didn't see it at all. All I saw was death for me. I mean, that's all I saw. Connell harkens back to the fall of her 15th year

and the night she told her father she was pregnant. When I told him I was pregnant, he said he would fix that problem. He went out to his truck or somewhere and got a gun, came back in, held it to my stomach, and then he brought it to my head. And when he went to pull the trigger, I hit his hand, and he shot a hole in the ceiling at my mother's house. Although some in Chilton County doubted Connell's story at the time of her arrest, Cold Case Files has unearthed a police report that substantiates her claim. Michael Connell was arrested that night, but the case was subsequently dropped. As to the critical issue, whether the infants found inside the trailer were born alive,

Connell claims she actually never admitted that during questioning, and to this day simply cannot remember. I do not know. I never, I mean, when it happened, all I remember doing is covering them up. That's all I remember. But in a statement signed by Connell, she admits she returned to the trailer after the first baby was born to see if she could hear it crying. More than two years later, she drove around town with the second baby in the back of her van, and the radio turned up loud. She gets in the van, and she's driving back to the abandoned trailer when she hears the baby crying.

So she turns the radio up really, really loud in the van so that she couldn't hear the baby crying. Whatever Susan Connell does or does not remember, her focus now is on the future doing her time at Tutwiler and getting on with her life. Connell says her case doesn't compare to others where mothers have killed their children. In my opinion, when I see other cases similar to mine on TV,

it makes me sick. I think they should get death, you know, death row. I mean, it makes me really, it really aggravates me. And I mean, I can't stand it. And it's hard for me to look at myself and see myself in them same shoes. When she went to prison, Susan Connell was stripped of custody of both of her children. Today, she fights to regain that custody and once again take up the role of mother. Connell served the minimum sentence of five years for the double homicide

and was released in 2006.