I Was Arrested for Murder After a Miscarriage
My ex-boyfriend sought revenge using a baby that was never born
In May 1998, a SWAT team surrounded my safe house. While my one-year-old son slept inside, unaware, I was yanked out the door, handcuffed against the back of a patrol car, and taken away in my nightgown.
I was stripped naked, searched over, and locked in an isolation cell — without explanation.
When detectives finally talked to me, I figured everything would be straightened out. I answered all their questions. I was compliant and agreeable. I even smiled through the indignities to show my harmlessness — all the things I was taught to do when confronted by authority.
I still did not know why I was arrested.
The detective, however, said I knew exactly what I did. The smile that hid my fear, he said, was proof of my lack of remorse — my guilt.
That’s when I realized that I was accused of murder.
Not just any murder, but the most heinous: the murder of my own child.
It was the miscarriage I had five years earlier in my college apartment. As a nice Irish Catholic girl, I was ashamed and afraid to tell my family or anyone else about it. We never had discussions about such unpleasant things.
But my boyfriend knew. Ex-boyfriend. Three weeks earlier, I fled his abuse and alcoholism with the child we had together. He said if I ever left him, he would ruin my life. His revenge started with a phone call to the police saying he feared for the safety of our child.
I had no proof that I was abused—and there was also no proof that I had killed, though that part didn’t matter. I didn’t react the way they thought I should. I didn’t seek help the way they would have, so they didn’t believe me.
In the eyes of the law, I was a runner — and that was enough to make me guilty.
Shackled and waist-chained inside a cage, I was transported like a farm animal on an overcrowded prisoner van.
We were fed a McDonald’s hamburger and a small cup of water twice a day, and every 24 hours the van stopped at a different prison for sleep.
It took ten days to travel from Virginia to the accusing state of Illinois where I waited behind bars for the murder trial. With a $3 million bond, bail was not an option.
When you’re in jail and the news headlines call you a baby killer, it doesn’t matter if you’re innocent. Or that you were valedictorian. Or that your mom taught you to be friendly even with difficult people.
You have to look strong and be ready to fight — because the other inmates will be coming for you.
My cellblock sisters provided protection and friendship while we passed time playing cards, making toilet hooch, and bonding over common fears. Most of us knew the discrediting shame of domestic violence, and we struggled within a justice system that continued to break us.
As jail relationships chiseled away at my Catholic girl naivete, I realized two things: Lead pencils make nasty wounds. And people need each other.
After six months of courtroom delays, media lies, and the financial ruin of my family, I gave up. With my abusive ex using my incarceration to file for full custody of our child, I could not protect my baby from behind bars.
I accepted a plea bargain for the lesser charge of concealment of a homicide — a homicide that never happened.
I had already lost my liberty and my dignity. Now, as a felon, I was stripped of my civil rights. I would never be able to vote. I would never be a room-mother in my children’s school. I would cringe every time I checked the box on a job application.
But I would get to be there when my children woke in the mornings and hold them when they needed consoling.
My daughter is now the age I was when arrested.
She’s a lot like I was then. When I saw her avoiding the intimacy of sharing her feelings, I showed her the door for difficult conversations would always be open. When she compulsively put others ahead of herself, I reminded her that she is also deserving.
This is not the time to teach girls to clutch their pearls and swoon as male entitlement takes us frighteningly close to The Handmaid’s Tale.
Twenty-five years ago, I learned first-hand that in the eyes of the law, a womb is a liability. With current limitations on women’s privacy and healthcare, I’m afraid not much has changed.
Check out my website www.ginadobson.com as I publish my memoir and pursue a life of relevance.
