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Colorado woman who cut unborn fetus out of mother’s womb sentenced to 100 years

Posted at 4:31 PM, Apr 29, 2016
and last updated 2016-04-29 18:31:47-04

By Ralph Ellis

CNN

(CNN) — A Colorado woman convicted of cutting an unborn baby from its mother’s womb was sentenced Friday to 100 years in prison.

Former nurse’s aide Dynel Lane, 35, attacked Michelle Wilkins, who was seven months pregnant and had responded to Lane’s online ad for baby clothes. Wilkins survived the March 18, 2015, attack but her unborn baby — a girl — did not.

“You knowingly left me to die multiple times,” Wilkins said Friday in a victim impact statement. “The only tears you shed during the trial were those of self-pity, to the sound of your own voice as your lies were slowly revealed. Yet even now you cannot come clean about what actually occurred. You embrace your narcissistic fantasy to fulfill the lie you created and it was more important than my right to live and Aurora’s right to live.

“I believe you should receive the maximum penalty because I believe that you have lost the privilege to live in our society,” she said.

Authorities said Lane was carrying out a ruse that she was pregnant. Her partner testified that when he came home that day, he found Lane covered in blood and saying she’d had a miscarriage.

Not knowing Wilkins was in the basement, the partner said he grabbed the baby and took Lane and the baby to the hospital.

Wilkins, who was 26 at the time, managed to lock herself in a room and call 911, and she did what she could to stem the bleeding.

Lane was found guilty in February of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree assault, two counts of second-degree assault and unlawful termination of a pregnancy.