OCEAN CITY, Md. (AP) - Backhoes and cadaver dogs combed the back yard of a home Monday where four infant cadavers have been found since last week.
Police say the babies belong to Christy L. Freeman, 37, a taxi company owner and mother of four in this Atlantic beach town.
Freeman was charged with murder in the death of one of the babies, a male fetus in the 26th week of pregnancy who was found in a vanity under a bathroom sink in Freeman's house. A preliminary report from the state medical examiner's office said the baby was stillborn.
The child was discovered after Freeman went Thursday to a local hospital, where doctors found she had recently been pregnant.
"There was a placenta and umbilical cord and no baby," said Ocean City Police Chief Bernadette DiPino.
Police searched Freeman's home, looking for the missing fetus, and found it wrapped in a bloody white towel with a blue stripe in her bathroom. They also found, in a trunk in her bedroom, two trash bags containing what police say are human bones. After interviewing the mother, police looked in a recreational vehicle in the backyard and found remains of a fourth infant.
All died before coming to term, but authorities have not said how old the three sets of remains are.
Worcester County State's Attorney Joel Todd said Freeman was charged with murder under a 2005 state law authorizing murder convictions for fetuses killed after 20 weeks.
Todd said investigators are still probing whether Freeman caused the babies' deaths.
"We will have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she did something to cause that baby to be stillborn," Todd said.
DiPino declined to discuss any evidence about how the baby could have been born dead, such as whether Freeman induced an abortion. She said investigators needed to keep any such details confidential because the case was complex and in its early stages.
He said he was not sure whether it is a crime to improperly dispose of a fetus that dies naturally.
DiPino said all four fetuses are presumed to be the offspring of Freeman and her boyfriend, who is also father of her four living children. The boyfriend, Raymond W. Godman Jr., has not been charged, but DiPino said investigators were still interviewing him.
"It's going to take us some time to develop all the facts.
We are not ruling out any further suspects in this case," DiPino said.
DiPino said the children were staying with Godman.
Barry Neeb, a police spokesman, said, "What we need to do is collect all the evidence we can, turn that over to the grand jury and let the grand jury determine what the appropriate charges are," he said.
Worcester County District Judge Daniel Mumford denied bond Monday for Freeman and set a preliminary hearing for Aug. 27. At the bail review hearing, Freeman told Mumford she was not a flight risk.
"I want to clear my name in this case," Freeman said. "If you offer me a bond, I'm not going to leave ... I'm going to be here. I'm going to help clear this situation up."
Her attorney, Frank Benvenuto, said Freeman had lived in Ocean City for 20 years, owns a business and has four children. Freeman is the owner of Classic Taxi in Ocean City.
Outside Freeman's small, rundown white home, bulldozers cleared mounds of dirt from Freeman's backyard, while police taped off her block and erected a temporary wall to shield the investigation from onlookers. The site was behind a 7-Eleven that faces the Coastal Highway, the main north-south route in this resort town.
Two cadaver dogs hit on possible scents, suggesting bodies might be buried there, DiPino said. By dusk Monday, no additional human remains had been found. Police said the ground search could take up to three days.
Police described it as a "complex crime scene" and called in the FBI for help in recovering evidence.
Emergency medical technicians and police were called early Thursday to Freeman's home. Godman said Freeman had passed out in the bathroom and he carried her to the sofa, according to the charging documents. She was lying down and bleeding heavily, and had a garbage bag and towels under her. Freeman told rescue workers she was not and had not been pregnant.
She was taken to Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin, where tests by doctors determined she had been pregnant. Freeman maintained that was not the case, the charging documents said. After she was transferred to Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, doctors there found a placenta and an umbilical cord with an "irregular cut."
Freeman eventually told police that she had delivered a dead and deformed baby - claiming that she did not see any hands or feet - and that she had flushed the body down the toilet, charging documents said.
Police said they then obtained a search warrant for the home and found the infant below the bathroom sink. The charging documents described the baby as a "viable fetus/infant," with hands, feet and facial features.
Police found the two other babies' remains Thursday in Freeman's room. A search Friday of the motor home found the fourth infant's remains.
Classic Taxi specializes in using cars from the 1950s and 1960s, according to the company's Web site. On the Web site, Freeman's profile said she and Godman had been a couple since 1988 and her hobbies were "our four children." She said the family were NASCAR fans and liked to fish, boat and camp together. Godman was described as a "motorhead" who, through the company, found a way to fulfill his dream of working on multiple classic cars.
Paint was peeling from the couple's house and an air conditioning unit was rusting. A number of fishing poles were stored on an upstairs balcony.
Neighbor Jodi Kerlin, 31, said she saw Freeman about a month ago as Freeman took out her trash and it appeared then that Freeman might have been pregnant. "The thought passed through my head," said Kerlin, who recently gave birth. "I passed it off."
Neeb said the bodies were sent to the office of the chief medical examiner in Baltimore to determine the causes of death, their ages and when they died. Investigators will also conduct DNA tests to determine whether the babies were Freeman's, Neeb said.
Ron Cecil, 71, the owner of Aaron Taxi, met Freeman through the town's taxi association and said he saw her driving a cab several weeks ago. He said she was short and chunky and wore sweatshirts. The charging documents described Freeman as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, and weighing 180 pounds.
"She could have easily been pregnant and it not have been known," Cecil said.
Former employee Mike Larrimore said Freeman's older children were two teenage girls, an 11-year-old boy and a younger boy he hadn't met.
He said he worked at Classic Taxi from March until the first week of June, when he quit, and had no idea Freeman was pregnant.
"That fascinated me - nobody seemed to know," Larrimore said. "There was never any talk of being pregnant or anything like that."
Associated Press writers Ben Greene in Baltimore, Brian Witte in Annapolis and Ocean City, Md., and Kristen Wyatt in Ocean City contributed to this story.
