CRIME

West Melbourne mom charged with killing newborn twins

Police say the West Melbourne woman said she didn't know she was pregnant.

Tyler Vazquez
Florida Today
  • The newborn twins were called "Baby Jane" and "Baby John"
  • Paramedics worked to get the boy to a local hospital. He was pronounced dead there
  • Study estimated 1 in 7,225 women claim not to know they were pregnant until the moment of delivery
Rachel Lynn Thomas, 30, arrested for two counts of child neglect and tampering with evidence.

A 30-year-old mother is accused of killing her newborn twins — including stuffing what the medical examiner's office describes as 'a foreign object' into the mouth of one of the babies — after giving birth at home over the weekend. She remains in jail without bond. 

Both babies born to Rachael Lynn Thomas suffered multiple blunt force trauma injuries to the head, according to West Melbourne police investigators. 

Preliminary autopsy results show the cause of death for both babies is homicide and that the twins were carried to 39 weeks before being born healthy, police said. Thomas, who has two other children, was charged late Tuesday with two each counts each of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse, records show. 

Police also released audio from the 911 call Thomas made Sunday. 

"I had a baby, and then I passed out. Now the baby's not responding and I don't know what to do," Thomas told 911 dispatchers when she called Sunday around noon. "It's not doing anything. It's cold and it's blue." 

Dispatchers instructed Thomas — who said it might have been two hours since she passed out after giving birth — on how to resuscitate him. The call ends when ambulances arrive and Thomas tells responding paramedics that she attempted to revive the newborn. She had cleaned and wrapped the child in a towel. 

The body of a second infant — "Baby Jane"— was found later in a plastic bag, sitting in an outside trash bin near the carport. Police determined Thomas tried to cover the newborn girl's remains with trash, including cat litter. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck and underneath her arm, police said. 

Detectives initially charged Thomas with child neglect and waited for the medical examiner's office to make a determination of death. Once that happened, the charges were upgraded from neglect to first-degree murder in the deaths of "Baby John" and "Baby Jane," West Melbourne Police Department spokesman Capt. Richard Cordeau said in a statement Tuesday evening. 

Thomas told detectives in the hours after calling for help that she hadn't known she was pregnant and that both babies had been born dead at her Laurel Oak Street duplex unit after she gave birth on the toilet. She had left her job at a discount store earlier that day after saying she wasn't feeling well. 

[W. Melbourne mother told police she didn't know she was pregnant after newborns found dead]

Thomas waived her first appearance in court at the Brevard County Jail Complex Wednesday. Waiving first appearance means she is acknowledging she is aware of the charges and enters an initial plea of not guilty. She will be arraigned on May. 17. 

Thomas also faces tampering with evidence charges because police said she did not tell them about the infant girl. 

Thomas' two other children, ages 8 and 1 years old, were removed from her custody and placed with other family members by the Department of Children and Families.

Police reports show that Thomas' primary defense is that she did not know she was pregnant.

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Thomas told police that, aside from heartburn and swollen feet, she had no other symptoms of pregnancy. Police said in her arrest warrant that she "is not diagnosed with any ailments and takes no medication on a daily basis."

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The father of her two older children — questioned Tuesday by police — was not named.

The case left residents in the neighborhood, which sits off of U.S. 192 just west of Wickham Road, stunned. 

West Melbourne City Councilwoman Barbara Smith said she was shocked by the infant death at a meeting Tuesday evening. 

“It made me silent for four minutes. I couldn’t even … all I could fathom was me being the one that discovered some of this stuff,” Smith said. “It’s horrific." 

“This is a different era. This is not little West Melbourne,” Smith said.

Contact Vazquez at tvazquez@floridatoday.com, 321-917-7491 or on Twitter @tyler_vazquez. 

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