Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Pregnant Mom Tried To Sell Baby To 'Highest Bidder' On Facebook: Police

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Juniper Bryson, 21, is accused of trying to sell the baby she was about to give birth to on a Facebook group. Houston Police say they have text and other messages between Bryson and parents who wanted to adopt the baby. The messages show Bryson asked for compensation. One woman has told a local tv stations that she still wants to adopt the baby. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at the bizarre case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lccrimefix and access information about almost anyone!Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Sam BassettCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A young mother is accused of trying to auction off her newborn baby to the highest bidder on Facebook. I have the details about how the expectant mother took advantage of several prospective parents. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. This sounds unbelievable. A woman trying to sell a baby on Facebook, but police in Houston say it happened and that it was brazen. 21-year-old Juniper Bryson faces a felony charge for the sale or purchase of a child and is currently being held on a $30,000 bond.

Three days before the birth of her son, Bryson reached out to a distant relative for help finding a permanent home for her unborn child. An affidavit says Bryson messaged a woman she called Aunt Jenna, who responded, Juniper. Juniper is quoted as typing, I was looking to see if you know any family who are looking to adopt.

Aunt Jenna responded, let me see what I can. Are you sure? You want to try to keep him in the family first before trying an open adoption place? Bryson responded, he will be positive. I can't keep him at no point. Aunt Jenna responded, what do you mean positive? Positive for drugs? Juniper Bryson was indeed talking about drugs. She was struggling with addiction. Eager to help, the relative took to her own Facebook page to gauge interest from her friends, posting, she needs someone there during labor and to take the baby home. She doesn't want him going into foster care.

Now, if you give birth to a baby and the baby tests positive for drugs, social services will be called and they will place the baby with a relative or somebody else who's close to the birth parent. And that person has to care for the baby or sometimes the baby is placed with a foster family. As potential adopters reached out, Bryson saw an opportunity to demand compensation. This is all according to police. There was another exchange between Bryson and the woman she called Aunt Jenna. And you might see and hear some grammatical errors because this is verbatim from the messages. Bryson said, yeah, it's legitimate, but they're at some point going to have to compensate. I'm not asking anything at all up front. Aunt Jenna responded, what do you mean compensate? Like pay you money for the baby? You want money for your baby?

Juniper responded, Yes, that they're thinking it's a scam because there is an agreement half up front and half after, but I'm not asking for anything until I have the baby. It's a different kind of adoption. Aunt Jenna responded, That's illegal. Juniper responded, What? It's called surrogate. You sound crazy. It's too late for surrogacy. Surrog called surrogate. You sound crazy. It's too late for surrogacy.

Surrogates aren't drugs. You sound crazy. Again, check yourself. This is what Aunt Jenna responded. Juniper Bryson is quoted as saying, it's not like that. And she just needed to get enough money to move into an apartment and get her older daughter back and get a car so she could work for DoorDash. The next day, Juniper Bryson posted in a Facebook group entitled Birth Mothers Looking for Adoptive Parents that she was seeking an adoptive family for newborn son. Bryson even mentioned how she would be willing to travel. Investigators found that in the following days, Bryson actually corresponded with seven different couples. One, a same-sex couple from Louisiana that was on their way to Houston when they received a text asking for a $150 wire transfer. The man told Bryson he was serious about adopting the baby and wondered why Bryson was becoming so angry in their conversation. Bryson, in the exchange, said she had given a price

and didn't want to go through a child services or adoption lawyer for this adoption. Now, get this, a couple from Houston was actually with Juniper Bryson during the birth of the baby. They even paid for her Uber to the hospital. Those prospective parents remained at Bryson's side during the eight-hour labor and chose the newborn's name. They didn't know she was trying to sell the baby. They had been contacted through a family member of Juniper Bryson's. According to court records, Bryson did not want to sign any documentation until the hospital confirmed the baby tested positive for drugs. Bryson also experienced withdrawal symptoms after labor. The same day,

Bryson asked the nurse to remove Wendy Williams' wristband, that's the woman who was with her at the time the baby was born, and escort her out of the room because she did not have access to the baby anymore. Wendy Williams was confused until she saw Bryson's phone and learned she was waiting for the highest bidder in exchange for her son. Williams and a nurse contacted Child Protective Services and police arrested Bryson. Now, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services released a statement. It reads, in part, in every case where a child comes into the state's care, family members or friends are considered first for placement. Ultimately, the decision of where a child is placed is up to the court.

Currently, the baby is with a friend of Bryson's, but Wendy Williams told a TV station in Houston that she intends to get custody of the baby back soon. Juniper Bryson is accused of doing something that most people can't imagine, trying to sell her baby on Facebook. And it got me thinking, has she ever been accused of other crimes? I logged onto truthfinder.com to find out. I put Jennifer Bryson's name into Truthfinder and found past arrests, one for assaulting a family member and another for unauthorized use of a vehicle. Those cases were ultimately dismissed in Texas. I found out that she also lived in California, not just Texas. Truthfinder

is really great because it will give you a person's past and current addresses, relatives, social media accounts, and phone numbers. What's also great, it will show you the sex offenders who live in your neighborhood. So if you have kids, that's a great thing to know. Right now, I have a great deal for you. You can get 50% off of confidential background reports just log on to truthfinder.com lc crime fix that's www.truthfinder.com lc crime fix and start accessing information about almost anyone i want to bring in sam bassett he is a criminal defense attorney based in austin texas sam this case is pretty confounding to me maybe not all that surprising since juniper bryson struggles with with addiction but some really bad facts here we have a lot of messages back and forth where she is accused of talking with prospective parents trying to sell her baby

yes it's a very unusual case and it seems like a fairly airtight case for the prosecution, given the amount of evidence that's documented on social media. So if you get this case and you're Juniper Bryson's defense attorney, I mean, what do you do with this? We have so many Facebook messages, text messages back and forth. She is clearly saying she wants $150. She is clearly stringing these people along. She wants payment beforehand. She wants DoorDash orders. She wants all kinds of things. Obviously, she's desperate. But what do you do with this case?

Obviously, first, you have to ensure that the messages are authenticated properly and they were actually from her to other people step one but the biggest defense in the case in my opinion is to go through her background her addiction her any kind of ptsd or trauma she suffered in her lifetime that would cause her to become addicted and try to portray her as someone who was desperate, as you said, but also someone who had some bad cards dealt to her in life. And it led to her being in this situation of desperation and try to mitigate the punishment of the case.

I mean, there are some really, you know, terrible things in her life that have gone on. I mean, she has a criminal record. She has been accused of assaulting a family member. You know, she had a fugitive of justice warrant out of another state. A lot of these cases, though, that she's been charged with have been dismissed. So I don't know what that says about those prior cases. Maybe she had a good attorney maybe they were able to just get her out of these jams but she has a bunch of prior arrests so that probably plays against her yes it's definitely a problem when you have a bunch of prior arrests but usually those arrests arise in the context of

a lot a troubled life and how did the life come about to be troubled? Usually it's a childhood trauma or some sort of very difficult upbringing. Maybe she's a victim of abuse herself. Obviously, she's living in a twisted reality, thinking she can sell her baby and use drugs while having a pregnancy. Those are two horrible decisions that a normal person simply would not make. You know, what's really sad about this is that we have this couple out of Houston that basically, you know, agreed to adopt the baby. I mean, there were several people, several couples who were involved. But we have the couple, you know, Wendy Williams and her husband, and they took the baby home. I mean, they wanted to adopt the baby

and they're still hoping that they can somehow regain some type of custody of this baby. So do they have any shot of doing this? Because the standard really is always, they want to reunite the child with the mother, I mean, with the family, that's what they wanna do is keep the birth child with the mother, I mean, you know, with the family. That's what they want to do is keep the birth child with the family. So do you see in Texas the Williams's having any shot of getting custody of this baby?

Right now, the baby is with a family member of Juniper Bryson. I think the Williams participating in this illegal action might very well be a big disqualification for them even applying to adopt the child. We have a very structured system in Texas for adoptions. And perhaps they were a couple that was trying to adopt and was having a difficult time and saw this as an opportunity to bypass the system. But we have a system for adoption in Texas, and all states have this system of, you know, severe background checks, household checks, and sometimes people have a hard time getting through the hurdles of adopting a child. I would guess that the Williams don't have much of a chance of adopting this child given that they were willing to engage in felonious behavior to get a child outside of the rule of the law.

Well, it sounds like Wendy Williams is saying she was not familiar with this. And she stated that she had that Juniper Bryson had not asked her for any compensation. You know, it's very, very interesting to me because she had been reached out to by the aunt. You know, Wendy Williams had been contacted by the aunt, and it sounds like she was trying to foster and adopt the baby. She was licensed to adopt the baby and it sounds like she was taken by surprise when she's in the hospital and the baby is born and she was tagged in a Facebook post and it says, you know, somebody asked her, did you buy her baby? And Reportee Williams stated she did not

understand what was going on. And then people started to send her screenshots of the original Facebook post, which she was not previously familiar with. So Reportee Williams stated she immediately gave the screenshots to the nurse and involved CPS. So it sounds like she may not have been aware of all of this. She got contacted by the aunt being asked, hey, do you think you could take care of the baby because she doesn't want the baby going into foster care? And she wanted to wait, Juniper wanted to wait to see if the baby tested positive for drugs before agreeing to let her take the baby so it's um she may not have actually known about this whole trying to sell the baby arrangement

so does that how does that bode for her well it sounds like she at least knew that the baby was probably going to test positive for drugs and somebody was trying to bypass some sort of a consequence for the mother and she was participating in that somehow. I think there's, I think it's going to be difficult for her to adopt this baby. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, it's a really, it's a really sad case. Just the fact though, that somebody would say, you know, in this affidavit, it's saying she wanted $150. She's going through her aunt. Her aunt is trying to get people on Facebook who might actually be interested in adopting a baby and actually providing care for this baby. But then Juniper is accused of trying to manipulate these people and get money for the baby.

I mean, just $150. It's just so sad and ridiculous to me. How do you see this case ending up? I mean, a lot of these cases are such slam dunks. It's like, do you even take it to trial or do you work out some type of plea agreement? I think it's pretty unlikely this case would go to trial unless the prosecutors were seeking a severe sentence i believe this statute calls for up to 10 years in the in prison i think that if the prosecutors were to say for instance i want a 10-year prison sentence on a plea of guilty then as a lawyer you really have no choice but to take the case to trial either on guilt innocence or on the sentencing in texas we have a right to jury

trial to determine a sentence, which is when I was talking earlier about the packet of information of mitigation that you could present on behalf of Juniper that might give some context to why she was in the situation she was. And I would also advise her to get treatment while the case is being resolved to try to show the court or the jury, whoever ends up being her sentencing body, that she can deal with her addiction, she can overcome her addiction, and she can function as a normal member of society eventually. It's a long road for her. So I think it's a very difficult case. But I do think she likely at least faces a felony conviction and probation, if not

some incarceration. Yeah, most certainly. I mean, it's not often you hear of something like this. I mean, you hear of people maybe doing desperate things like this, but selling a baby on Facebook, I mean, it's pretty bold and pretty insane. Have you seen anything like this in your career? I have not seen an attempt to sell a baby on social media. No, I have not. Now, I have had cases where mothers who are losing custody of a child will flee to outside the country and hide with the child. But that's a whole different kind of context. That's a mother trying to actually keep the child and keep the child away from a spouse that she may deem to be harmful or dangerous but i've never seen anything like this where a mother is trying to get rid of a child for a small amount of money on social media yeah it's definitely um

something i haven't i haven't seen uh well thank you so much sam bassett we'll see how this case unfolds and keep an eye on it. We appreciate your time. Thank you. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.