Poplar Grove, Illinois, with a population of only 750 people is a village where serious crime was at one time practically unheard of. The little farming community was understandably stunned when on February 11, 1996, a newborn baby girl was found dead in a snowy backyard, abandoned by her mother.
The man who lived at the home made the gruesome discovery when he went out his back door to check on some frozen pipes and notified police. When detectives responded they found a seven pound girl laying between a tractor and the back steps of the home, the snow around her melted by her own body heat, indicating she was left there alive. The newborn's umbilical cord was still attached and she was covered only in some thin clothing and a towel.
News spread quickly and the people of Poplar Grove and the surrounding area leapt into action. Cards and donations flooded in and the little girl was buried in Poplar Grove Cemetary under the name Angelica Faith Grove. A headstone was donated to mark the grave and the townspeople awaited and arrest in the tragic case.
They would have to wait for some time. Leads were scarce. The crime scene had held little int he way of clues. Police could locate no woman in the area that might have been hiding her pregnancy. A Crime Stoppers tip placed over a year after Angelica Faith's discovery looked promising but led nowhere. Over time it was assumed that an outsider had dumped the baby in Poplar Grove and disappeared and the case might never be solved.
That all changed on October 10, 1999. A young woman named Kelli Moye called her father, Jim, claiming her boyfriend Michael Mirshak had hit her. When Jim Moye confronted Mirshak the boyfriend shocked him and his wife Sue by claiming that their daughter was the mother of Angelica Faith, found in the backyard of the house next to the Moye's in 1996. Kelli had been only fifteen at the time.
Boone County Detective Scott Rogers, a freind of the Moye family, was in charge of the case and arrived at the Moye's home to question Kelli, and she confessed. She had become pregnant by Mirshak but had nobody, though she later claimed she had told him. She hid the pregnancy with baggy clothing until her water broke int he early moring hours of February 9, 1996.
Kelli had delivered her child in her bedroom alone, with Jim and Sue sleeping unaware downstairs,and cut the unbilical cord with a pair of scissors. She washed the baby, dressed her in doll clothing, threw they soiled sheets and blanket in the garbage, and waited until her parents left for work at five. They were none the wiser, Angelica Faith had not made a peep to give them away. Later in the morning Kelli called off of school, seemingly clueless as to what to do next but knowing she had to make a decision before her parents would be home in the afternoon.
Though most points would later be challenged and portions of the story seemed to change, apparently this is what happened next: Kelli wrapped her child in a towel, walked across her backyard to her neighbor's in the unseasonably warn 45 degree day, and laid the newborn down in the snow just off the back porch. Kelli claims that just before her parent's arrival home she went back out and brought the baby back in before panicking and returning her to the same spot in the neighbor's yard (though she has always contended she placed her baby on the steps and not on the ground). Despite never hearing any news of an abandoned baby being found, which certainly would have been the talk of such a small town, she never went out to check on the baby's whereabouts or condiditon. it was two days before Angelica Faith was found dead from the exposure.
Kelli was never suspected and appeared normal when routinely quesitoned by police after the discovery. She attended the community's services for Angelica Faith without arousing the slightest suspicion, was soon back together with Mirshak, and misdirecting any possible suspicion by openly accusing a fellow schoolmate of being the abandoned girl's mother. She went on with her life.
When Detective Rogers was done questioning Kelli after Jim Moye's call that night she was placed under arrest. Despite much support in the town, including a petition for leniency that was signed by many, she was charged with first-degree murder andheld in jail on $500,000 bail. Mirshak was quickly cleared of any wrongdoing in the child's death but was arrested for domestic battery for allegedly hitting Kelli during their fight. Those charges were later dropped.
Kelli pled not guilty and went to trial on June 12, 2000. The defense argued tha Kelli was a confused young girl with a below average IQ who feared losing Mirshak for good if he found out she was pregnant but wanted her child to be found alive. Prosecutors painted a picture of a cold, selfish young woman who knew exactly what would happen to her little girl if left outside in that sort of weather for very long but simply didn't care, content to be rid of the problem resume her normal life. Even a scared fifteen-year-old girl would know that a newborn would die if left out in even mild winter weather, the prosecution argued, and that Kelli wanted the baby found but not alive. Mirshak testified for the prosecution, denying that he knew about the pregnancy until about a month before Kelli's arrest in 1999. He also said Kelli bragged to him that police questioned her that day while the bedding she had given birth on sat just feet away in the garbage and that she had disguised the footprints she had made in the snow to defelect any possible suspicion.
Kelli was found guilty on June 21, but of manslaughter and not first-degree murder, a victory for the defense. On September 5 she was sentenced to four years in prison. With previous time served and good behavior she was released on September 4, 2001, on day less than year since her sentencing. After causing the death of her own child, she was a free woman at 21-years-old.
In the aftermath, many questions have gone unanswered . Is Kelli Moye a cold-blooded, premeditating murderess who dumped her daughter in the snow on a winter day knowing the child would likely die there? If so why choose such a close location that easily could have thrown suspicion on herself no matter if she had appeared pregnant beforehand or not? Was she simply a confused, frightened young girl who acted out of desperation and truly believed somebody would soon discover the girl alive? Then why did she not check on Angelica Faith after it became obvious later that day that nobody had found her? Why cast suspicion on another girl? Sadly, it could have all been avoided if Kelli had just found in in herself to tell somebody months before that she was pregnant.
Nobody but Kelli will likely ever know what her true motivations and feelings were during her pregnancy or on that fateful day when Angelica Faith died alone in the snow in Poplar Grove, Illinois.