Woman charged with 2003 murders of newborn twin sons in Stickney Township
COOK COUNTY - A 41-year-old Michigan woman has been charged for the deaths of her newborn twin sons which occurred in 2003, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Saturday.
Antoinette Briley of Holland, Mich., was charged Friday night with two counts of first-degree murder.
On June 6, 2003, the twins were discovered by a Waste Management employee who was emptying trash bins in an alley in the 4800 block of South Latrobe Avenue in unincorporated Stickney Township. The employee saw the bodies in the front lift bucket of her garbage truck.
An autopsy determined the victims were born alive and died of asphyxiation. The deaths were ruled homicides.
Sheriff’s Police conducted an investigation at the time, but the case remained unsolved.
In 2018, Sheriff’s Police reopened the case and utilized DNA from evidence recovered from the scene in an effort to identify the birth mother.
A breakthrough from that research and investigations allowed detectives to identify Briley as the victims’ potential birth mother.
Sheriff’s Police detectives travelled to Holland, Mich. and obtained a discarded item containing Briley’s DNA, which was matched to the DNA from the victims.
On Thursday, Sheriff’s Police obtained information that Briley was in Cook County and took her into custody after a traffic stop in Oak Lawn.
Briley is scheduled to appear in court on Saturday for a bond hearing on the charges.
Investigators said that Briley told them she had given birth to the boys in a bathtub in her grandfather's house. She said that she had put them in a duffel bag and meant to take them to a hospital, but panicked and dumped them in a garbage can instead.