Megan Huntsman pleaded guilty in February 2015 to six counts of murder for the deaths of six of her newborn children. Between 1996 and 2006, while she lived with her husband and their three daughters in Pleasant Grove, Utah, she hid seven pregnancies, gave birth alone at home each time, and killed six of the babies within minutes of their birth. She kept their bodies in boxes in the garage. The seventh baby, she said, was born dead.
No one outside the house learned of it for years, and police found no sign that anyone inside it knew either. The deaths came to light on April 12, 2014, when her estranged husband, newly out of federal prison, was clearing the garage of the family home and opened a box that held an infant's body. Police found six more. Huntsman, then 39 and living in West Valley City, was arrested within hours, confessed, and was held on bail of $6 million. A judge in Provo sentenced her in April 2015 to six terms of five years to life, ordering three of them to run one after another. The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole set her first parole hearing for April 2064, when she will be 89.
Pleasant Grove is a mostly Latter-day Saint community in Utah County, about 35 miles south of Salt Lake City, as the Associated Press described it at the time of her sentencing. Huntsman's early life is known mostly through what her family told the court in 2015. Her mother described her as a shy, timid and secretive girl who never asked for help. She became pregnant while in high school, moved out of her parents' home at 18, and married the man who would father all of her children.
According to Pleasant Grove police, her first two daughters were born in a hospital, but even those pregnancies had been kept from her family. "I was told she hid the first two," Capt. Michael Roberts told the Deseret News in April 2014. "The family didn't know about it until the day she delivered." Her mother said Megan withdrew further after the first pregnancy and the early marriage.
The couple lived in a split-level house in Pleasant Grove owned by her husband's parents, with apartments upstairs and downstairs. Relatives also lived at the address. Neighbors who spoke to reporters in 2014 knew her as a quiet woman and a good mother who babysat their children and grandchildren. Court records showed no criminal history for her in Utah beyond a 2011 traffic citation.
After their first two daughters were born, according to what she later told police, she and her husband began using methamphetamine, and for part of the decade that followed she was also drinking. Prosecutors said in court that she could not support both a drug habit and more children and chose the drugs. Her husband told detectives in 2014 that he had spent most of that decade using cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana.
From 2006 her husband was serving a federal prison sentence on a drug charge. He served more than eight years, the last months in a Salt Lake City halfway house, to which he was moved in January 2014.
Huntsman moved out of the Pleasant Grove house around 2011 and went to live in West Valley City, in Salt Lake County. By 2014 she had lived for at least a year and a half with a boyfriend there and looked after his young son. Her three daughters stayed in Pleasant Grove. The boxes stayed in the garage.
The charging document filed in April 2014 covers the period from January 1, 1996, to December 31, 2006. In that time, prosecutors said, Huntsman gave birth to six live babies at home and, "immediately after each child's birth, choked or smothered the child causing his or her death." A seventh baby, born in 2006 according to investigators, was stillborn. She delivered all seven without a doctor or a hospital. Capt. Roberts said she never saw a doctor during any of those pregnancies.
Detective Dan Beckstrom testified at her sentencing that she gave birth in secret in her bathroom or her bedroom. Prosecutor Jeff Buhman told the court that on two occasions she gave birth at home while other people were in the house, and cleaned up before anyone noticed. In police interviews released in 2015, her husband described one such night: she said she was going to bed while he watched television with relatives, and she gave birth in another room.
How she hid the pregnancies was one of the first questions police asked. Capt. Roberts suggested baggy clothing and keeping out of public view. Neighbors told reporters they had noticed her weight going up and down over the years, and a change in how she dressed, but none of them had thought she was pregnant. Her husband told detectives that he knew of some pregnancies in those years, but that she told him they had ended in miscarriage.
After each death she kept the baby's body in a sealed box, and the boxes were stored in the garage. She later told police she had kept them there because she was afraid that if she moved them or got rid of them she would be caught.
Huntsman had three living daughters. In the spring of 2014 two were young adults and one was a teenager, and all three were living in the Pleasant Grove house. Police said she had not been charged over any of them.
Detective Beckstrom explained the reason at her sentencing, as the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News reported it. The two eldest were born before she had a drug problem. She was using drugs when she became pregnant with the youngest, but two women in her family were pregnant at about the same time, and she had told them she was expecting too. The detective said that child lived because the pregnancy was known. After that, he said, Huntsman took care never to let anyone know she was pregnant.
The six babies had no birth certificates and no medical records, and by every account no one but their mother ever saw them alive. Little can be said about them as individuals beyond what forensic science recovered years later. All seven infants found in the garage, the six and the stillborn child, were full term. DNA showed that five were girls and two were boys, and that all seven had the same father, Huntsman's husband. Beckstrom testified that each of the six lived for only minutes.
Investigators could not establish the order of the births or exactly when each child died. The remains had been in the boxes for between two and more than ten years, according to early estimates by the state laboratory, and their condition made identification slow. The children had no birth certificates, no dental records and no medical histories that could be used for comparison.
At her sentencing, prosecutors called no one to speak for the infants.
In early 2014 Huntsman's husband was preparing to leave the halfway house and move back into the Pleasant Grove house. On Saturday, April 12, he and members of his family were cleaning out the garage, which had been used for storage. A neighbor had spoken to him that morning. In a sealed box that, according to the search warrant, was labeled as holding baby things, they found what looked like a dead baby in a plastic bag. Accounts of who opened the box differ. Early reports said the husband found it; at the sentencing hearing the Deseret News reported that the couple's youngest daughter opened it, and the Associated Press wrote that a daughter found the first body while cleaning with her father.
The husband telephoned his wife and then called 911. Pleasant Grove officers responded, and a judge signed a search warrant that day. The judge who signed it, Darold McDade, would later be assigned the case and would sentence her. Searching the garage, officers opened boxes inside boxes, as well as a cabinet and storage spaces, and found six more infants, each wrapped and boxed separately. Capt. Roberts called it "unfathomable." Police said no other crimes and no other infants were found at the address.
Huntsman went with police that weekend. She was interviewed by Detective Beckstrom. At first only one body had been found, and she told him it was a stillborn baby, born shortly after her husband went to prison, whose body she had hidden because she did not know what else to do. About an hour into the interview, word came that officers had found a second baby in the garage. In the end, Beckstrom testified, she admitted killing all but one of the seven.
On the day of the discovery she told police there might be eight or nine babies. Capt. Roberts said later that she had been confused and was guessing, and investigators continued to believe there were seven. They also said they did not believe she had killed any babies beyond the six she admitted.
She was arrested early on Sunday, April 13, at her boyfriend's home in West Valley City and booked into the Utah County Jail for investigation of six counts of murder. (Some reports give the arrest date as April 12.) Jail records listed her as 5 feet 4 inches tall and 105 pounds. She was placed on a special watch to prevent self-harm.
A probable cause statement released on Monday, April 14, said that between 1996 and 2006 she had given birth to at least seven babies at the Pleasant Grove house, all but one of them born alive, and that she had strangled or suffocated them right after birth. The same day she appeared by video before Judge Steven Hansen, who set bail at $6 million in cash, $1 million for each child. She did not argue. "That's fine," she said.
Her boyfriend, who had been away at a family funeral when police searched his home, told reporters he had known nothing. A West Valley City neighbor said she had babysat his children and that he had never seen anything to worry him. Her husband's family said in a statement that they were in a "state of shock and confusion" and mourning "this tragic loss of life."
"I've never seen anything like this in my career," Beckstrom said in the first days. Most of the Pleasant Grove police department was put to work on the evidence. Over three search warrants, covering the Pleasant Grove house, her modular home in West Valley City and her mother's home in Pleasant Grove, officers took more than 1,000 photographs. A search of a relative's home that week turned up nothing useful, police said. The warrant returns, made public in May, listed clothing, gloves and stains on a mattress among the items noted, and baby clothes hanging in a closet.
The bodies went to the Utah State Office of the Medical Examiner. The chief medical examiner, Dr. Todd Grey, said their age and decomposition were the main obstacles. Derinna Kopp, the state's only forensic anthropologist, was brought in to help, including to determine whether any skeletal damage had occurred before or after death. By April 17 the autopsies were complete. Because the DNA in the remains was degraded, the testing had to be done by the FBI at a laboratory outside Utah. Forensic scientists used nuclear DNA, which carries more genetic information than the more commonly tested mitochondrial DNA, to establish each child's sex and parentage.
Police also had to decide what the husband knew. He told detectives in his first interview, on April 12, that he had known nothing about the pregnancies. He then hired a lawyer and was not interviewed again for some time. Police said early on that they did not consider him a suspect or a person of interest. A judge ordered a psychological evaluation of Huntsman on May 16, 2014; its results were not made public.
Until July police said they believed they knew the motive but would not disclose it, citing "too many open doors." In April Capt. Roberts said that drugs, alcohol and mental illness did not appear to be factors, though nothing was ruled out.
On July 8, 2014, when the DNA results were released, police gave a different account. Roberts said Huntsman had told investigators she was heavily using methamphetamine during the years of the killings and drinking during part of that time, and that she needed money for drugs. "She had to make a decision between the drugs and the babies," he told the Salt Lake Tribune. He told the Associated Press that she had not been worried about what the drugs might do to the babies during pregnancy; she simply did not want to care for them. "It was completely selfish," he said. "She was high on drugs and didn't want the babies, or the responsibility." He said he could not tell whether she felt remorse, but that she had been calm and willing to share information.
Utah County prosecutors filed six counts of murder, each a first-degree felony, on April 28, 2014, in the Fourth District Court in Provo. Buhman explained why the charges were not more serious. Under the law in force from 1996 to 2006, he said, these killings could not be charged as aggravated murder or as a capital offense; a 2007 change in the statute would have allowed aggravated murder charges had they occurred after that date. Each count therefore carried the penalty of that time, five years to life in prison, and she could not face what was by 2014 the maximum for murder, 25 years to life. "When these offenses occurred in 1996 to 2006, it was not a capital offense, it was not aggravated murder," he said.
At her first hearing on the charges, before Judge Claudia Laycock, Huntsman said little and answered the judge's questions so quietly they could not be heard in the courtroom. Her lawyer, Doug Thompson, said she understood the charges and waived a full reading. The case later passed to Judge McDade, and her defense to the public defender Anthony Howell.
On December 8, 2014, Huntsman waived her right to a preliminary hearing, at which prosecutors would have had to present evidence. Buhman called the case unique in Utah County, both for its nature and for the number of victims, and said he expected to talk with her lawyers about a resolution.
On February 12, 2015, in the Fourth District Court in Provo, Huntsman pleaded guilty to all six counts of murder, saying "guilty" six times in a quiet voice. Under the plea agreement, prosecutors would recommend that the six terms of five years to life run concurrently, which would have set her minimum term at five years. Buhman said that concurrent terms could help her move into the general prison population sooner, that she had cooperated throughout the investigation and had come to court "ready and willing to take responsibility," and that he would be "shocked" if the parole board did not keep her in prison for life. By pleading guilty she gave up her right to appeal, which Buhman said should mean the case was essentially finished after sentencing.
Beckstrom said he had no explanation for why the bodies had been kept in the garage, calling it "unexplainable." A spokesman for her husband's family attended the hearing and left without comment.
Huntsman, now 40, was sentenced in Provo on April 20, 2015. In what Beckstrom himself called an unusual step, prosecutors called the detective to the witness stand so that the judge would understand the whole investigation before passing sentence. He described the discovery, the interviews and her admissions. He said the department had been deeply affected and that the officers who searched the garage "can never unsee" what they found. Some of her relatives sobbed during his testimony.
Howell told the court that his client had suffered from chronic depression, had been in a troubled marriage, and had been afraid to ask anyone for help. He said she had become pregnant as a teenager, had two children young, and soon afterward became addicted to drugs. She had "a rough go of adult life," he said; her shy and secretive nature did not explain what she did but had probably played a part. He reminded the court that she had not been forthcoming at first but had in the end given a full confession, and that without it the state would probably have had no case. The confession, he said, had relieved her of 18 years of guilt.
Huntsman did not speak. Howell read her written statement. She wrote that drugs had taken hold of her, then alcohol and depression, and that she could give no reasonable answer for what she had done. She said she had held her secret for 18 years. "I didn't feel strong enough to be a mother to those tiny babies," she wrote. She said that "in some small way" she had wanted to spare them the life she would have given them, and that she had deprived them of the chance of life. She showed little emotion beyond dabbing at her eyes.
Her mother spoke of a quiet daughter who had never asked for help, and urged parents to watch for signs of addiction in their own children; the family, she said, had known nothing of the drug use in the couple's home. Her younger sister read letters from two of Huntsman's daughters, who described a warm, loving mother and wrote that she was a good person no matter what anyone thought. The youngest wrote that she was shocked and heartbroken. "This is not the mom I know," one letter said. The sister, weeping, told the judge that her sister was not the person the crimes suggested and had been "scared." Huntsman's husband sat in the courtroom and did not address the court.
Buhman asked the judge to see the killings for what they were. They were "very cold and calculated," he said, the acts of a woman he called "incredibly indifferent and callous," who had smothered or strangled "six of her own flesh and blood" and hidden it so carefully that her family never noticed.
Judge McDade told the court that he had signed the search warrant on the day the babies were found and had privately hoped the case would not be assigned to him. "I really thought I had seen it all until this case," he said; it had shocked him then and it still did. He called it a tragedy.
He then departed from the plea agreement. Concurrent terms, he said, were not appropriate for these crimes. He imposed six terms of five years to life, one for each child, and ordered three of them to run consecutively and the other three concurrently with them. The Deseret News later described the result as 15 years to life. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to write to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole about her cooperation. Buhman said afterward that he did not expect her ever to be released and that she was unlikely to receive a parole hearing until she had served at least 30 years.
Buhman also remarked that Huntsman would probably be "the most prolific serial killer at our Utah State Prison," as FOX 13 News reported.
How much of the sentence she actually serves is for the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole to decide, as the Associated Press noted at her sentencing. On May 29, 2015, the board's spokesman, Jim Hatch, confirmed that Huntsman's first hearing had been scheduled for April 2064. She will be 89. The Associated Press described it as a minimum of 49 years before she could first ask for release, and the Deseret News noted that there was no guarantee of release even then.
In June 2015 the Associated Press obtained transcripts of police interviews with Huntsman's husband through a public records request. Investigators had found it hard to believe that he did not know, the transcripts showed, but they had no evidence to charge him, and they came to think that he may have been too impaired by drugs to grasp what was happening. Questioned on April 12, 2014, hours after the discovery, he denied again and again that he had known. "I can tell that you know about more than, than what you're telling me," Beckstrom told him. "I promise. I swear to God I never knew about all these pregnancies," he replied. He said he had known she was pregnant at times but "was so messed up" on drugs that he did not know what was going on.
His lawyer, Michael Esplin, said he was "deeply confused and saddened" and had played no part. Deputy Utah County Attorney Jared Perkins said that, given his denials, prosecutors had no case: "there just turned out to be no evidence that would implicate him." He was never charged.
The case renewed attention to Utah's Safe Haven law, sponsored by then-Representative Patrice Arent and in effect since 2001. It allows a parent to leave a newborn anonymously at any 24-hour hospital without legal consequences. Utah officials said in 2012 that at least one baby a year was being left under the law. The Deseret News, the Salt Lake Tribune and KSL printed the state's Safe Haven hotline number alongside their first reports.
For the Pleasant Grove police the case was without precedent in their experience. Capt. Roberts said in April 2014 that he could not believe something like it had happened, and Beckstrom said at the sentencing that the department had been deeply affected by it.
In June 2015 Huntsman was serving her sentence at the Utah State Prison, with her first parole hearing set for April 2064.
The motive. In April 2014 police said drugs, alcohol and mental illness did not appear to be factors. In July they said methamphetamine addiction and its cost were the motive, which is what she told investigators and what prosecutors argued in court. Her own statement at sentencing named addiction, an abusive marriage and depression, and said she could give no reasonable answer.
Who opened the first box. Early reports said her husband found the first body; later court coverage said the couple's youngest daughter opened the box while helping him clean.
The arrest date. Most reports say she was arrested early on Sunday, April 13, 2014; some say April 12, the day of the discovery. One later report dated the discovery itself to April 13.
The hidden pregnancies of her living daughters. Capt. Roberts said in April 2014 that she had hidden her pregnancies with her two eldest daughters until the day she delivered. At sentencing the point made was different: the two eldest were born before her drug use began.
How much her husband knew. He told police he knew nothing about the pregnancies, then that he knew of some but was told they were miscarriages. Investigators doubted him but found no evidence against him, and he was never charged.
The number of babies. On the day of the discovery she told police there might be eight or nine. Investigators concluded there were seven, six of whom she killed.
1990s: Huntsman becomes pregnant in high school, leaves home at 18 and marries; her two eldest daughters are born before her drug use begins.
January 1, 1996, to December 31, 2006: the charged period, in which she gives birth at home to six babies who are killed at birth, and to a seventh, stillborn in 2006 according to investigators.
2005: her husband pleads guilty in federal court to possessing chemicals for making methamphetamine.
August 2006: he is sentenced to nine years in federal prison.
About 2011: Huntsman moves from Pleasant Grove to West Valley City.
January 2014: her husband is moved to a Salt Lake City halfway house.
April 12, 2014: the first body is found in the garage of the Pleasant Grove house; police find six more under a search warrant.
April 13, 2014: Huntsman is arrested in West Valley City and booked into the Utah County Jail.
April 14, 2014: probable cause statement released; bail set at $6 million.
April 17, 2014: autopsies complete; DNA testing sent to the FBI.
April 28, 2014: six counts of murder, each a first-degree felony, filed in the Fourth District Court.
May 16, 2014: Judge Darold McDade orders a psychological evaluation.
July 8, 2014: DNA results show five girls and two boys, all with the same father; police announce the motive.
December 8, 2014: Huntsman waives her preliminary hearing.
February 12, 2015: she pleads guilty to six counts of murder.
April 20, 2015: sentenced to six terms of five years to life, three consecutive and three concurrent.
May 29, 2015: the Board of Pardons and Parole announces her first parole hearing for April 2064.
June 23, 2015: interview transcripts show her husband denied knowing; prosecutors say there was no evidence to charge him.
April 2064: scheduled first parole hearing.