The 15-Year-Old Who Stabbed Her Baby | The Oprah Winfrey Show | Oprah Winfrey Network

this is the headline that Columbia Station Ohio woke up to one Tuesday morning newborn boy found stabbed in duffel bag in quarry the community named this baby baby boy hope and they held a funeral and they buried him in a local cemetery and for the next six years that murder weighed on the hearts of many people there police made it their mission to bring the person responsible for the crime to justice they had believed that they were on the hunt for a monster who they found shocked them all this is Jessica Coleman she was a cheerleader she was a star athlete and honor student and only 15 years old when she gave birth to baby boy hope I could be playing in a park right now with my son but I'm not I'm staying in prison this is never what I thought thankfully I made a terrible terrible mistake Jessica was very much the all-american girl she was a role model for every young kid she was a great sister she had tons of friends despite the picture-perfect appearance jessica says life at home could be chaotic my parents are divorced and when we were with my mom you could pretty much do whatever you wanted she's always been more comfortable in the role of a friend during her freshman year of high school Jessica started dating a senior Tom trulson a popular basketball star things got really serious very fast about four or five months into the relationship before Tom and I became intimate and he was my first then came a life changing development Jessica began missing her period a drugstore test confirmed she was pregnant it's as if within those few minutes that that test registered I felt like my life was completely taken away from me so Jessica and Tom made a pact they would keep the pregnancy a secret no matter what Tom would stand on my stomach to prevent it from showing it all and I lived in such a deep denial that whole entire time the morning that the birth took place I went to school just like every other day and as the day progresses I started having pains which felt like period cramps when Jessica's pain became unbearable she left class and called her mom a nurse I was in so much pain by that point that I literally like hobbled out to the car I asked her if she was gonna be okay she said she was gonna be fine I went back to work and I got home I took some Tylenol and I went straight into my room and I laid down my cramps started getting a lot worse after being checked on a few times by my mom I felt like I needed to use the restroom and when I went to push it says if she fell out of the top for nine months Jessica Coleman hid her pregnancy from her teachers from her parents and her friends no one knew but her boyfriend Tom Jessica's joining us via satellite from Lorraine county jail in Ohio she's serving a six-year sentence for the death of her baby boy so what happened Jessica after the baby fell in the toilet um right after that happened I picked him up and I carried him into my bedroom he was a lives wrapped was he alive I don't believe he was he never made any noises or moved it all by himself and by the time I had got to my room I had fallen on top of him I had blacked out I believe from losing so much blood by the time that I came to and I looked down he was underneath me um I'm sorry I tried to do everything I could at that point to help him I tried cleaning him off and wiping what was mucus off of his face and out of his mouth but you still attached to the umbilical cord at that time I believe he was but at some point I did cut the umbilical cord and put a barrette that I had on it I remember seeing that if the baby's cord wasn't black somehow that he could bleed to death and I felt I wasn't sure if he was still alive or if he was still born at that time so the baby never whimpered never cried no he never made any noise the entire time so you attached your barrette your hair of erect to the umbilical cord cleaned him up and then what did you do i sat there with him for a little while and I just kept doing the same things over and over again trying so hard to think of new things but I didn't know what to do I was so scared and I went back to the bathroom and I tried to clean it up a little bit by that time my mom and my sisters were starting to call me up call me out to dinner and check on me and things like that so you went to dinner I had I had to go sit with my family at the dinner table yes so you had just given birth in your bedroom and how long from the time that you gave birth and went to dinner sat at the dinner table I'd say maybe a half hour so so you cleaned up all the blood went into the wherever you eat dinner the dining table and you sat with your family and you had dinner yes and this whole time I kept thinking I need to say something right now I need to get help while they're still possibly a chance to help him in any way and I couldn't so what did you do after dinner Jessica I went back in and I at him and nothing had changed there was nothing changed he still wasn't making any noise I couldn't think of anything to do other than to tell my mom and I couldn't I great let me just stop him here because this doesn't sound real to me that you wouldn't know if the baby was dead or alive that doesn't make any sense to me that you wouldn't know if the baby was dead or alive I understand where you're coming from too but he never made any noises and he never moved on his own and I think I was in such a state of shock I believe right now I think that he was stillborn uh-huh tell me what else you did you finished dinner you go back into your bedroom you see that nothing's changed with the baby is the baby turning blue where's the baby he wasn't doing anything okay as I'm sitting there with him I just kept thinking to myself what if what if he is in pain right now what if I just don't know and I just felt that I needed to take away his pain if there if he wasn't if he was suffering at all and that's when I decided say it say what you decided I stabbed him I stared into the chest because I thought I was taking away his pain what did you stab him with he's denied how many times did you stab him Woods okay well if you thought he was stillborn what would be the reason to stab him I have no idea why I did that I I was so scared at the time and I was in such shock and I I I'm so sorry for everything that I've done but at the time I just felt that if he wasn't any kind of pain that I could take it away for him and he looked he was so small and he just didn't look right I what do you mean he didn't look like his face looked deformed his head was misshapen he was so small after the fact I learned he had a cleft palate and I believe that's when the lip is attached on the upper part of the face or something along those lines I'm not sure I just remember when I saw him I felt everything was wrong okay I'm having just a little trouble with believing that you stabbed him because you wanted to take away his pain you know I I do understand I'm thinking that part of you're stabbing him was to remove him from this earth that's what I'm thinking I didn't do it to hurt him intentionally and I know it's it's hard for me to explain how I felt at that time because if I stab a newborn baby in the chest if you stab a new but if you have the intention to stab a newborn baby in the chest Jessica you know that that is going to hurt him and possibly kill him correct you do know that right so after stabbing her baby Jessica put him in a duffle bag and then hit him in her closet and the next day she went back to school let's take a look the next morning I got up to get ready just like I would any other day and I went to the bathroom and the afterbirth came out as I was going to the bathroom and I remember thinking oh my god this cannot be happening again as her ride to school pulled up Jessica cleaned up the bloody bathroom changed her stained clothes and hurried out the door I needed to go to school I needed to act like nothing was wrong Tom and I had decided that there could not be anything that led to any suspicion remember sitting in Spanish class and I was looking through a magazine and there was a picture of a little baby in the magazine and I just remember thinking in my mind if I would have made maybe one different decision anything you know I could be a mother Jessica came home from school and waited for her boyfriend Tom to arrive she showed him the baby I had bundled him up and I put it back in my closet it gonna black duffel bag and then what did Tom do with the baby Jessica Tom took the duffel bag and he ended up tossing the duffel bag in a quarry near where we lived at the time how did you feel about that I feel awful about it absolutely everything that's happened did you feel a sense of relief no there was never any sense of relief I but why wouldn't there be a sense of relief you had this baby you hid the baby you stabbed the baby he put the baby baby into the duffle bag and threw the baby into the quarry because your whole intention at that time was to get rid of the baby so that nobody would ever know that you'd had the baby so why wouldn't you feel some sense of relief I was still so scared I'm excited to give you an update about our own YouTube channel now you can find new videos every day they're the kind of videos that will make you look at life differently they may even make you laugh a little bit subscribe to the own channel today and we'll see you on YouTube

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Views: 5,907,519

Rating: 4.4143109 out of 5

Keywords: Oprah, Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Winfrey Network YouTube, Oprah Where Are They Now, Where Are They Now Oprah, Iyanla Fix My Life, Super Soul Sunday, Oprah Winfrey Show, The Haves and The Have Nots, Have and Have Nots, Livin Lozada, Oprah Life Class, #oprahwinfreyshow, The Oprah Winfrey Show, oprah show, oprah interview, maya angelou, Jessica Coleman, Tom, Lorain County Jail in Ohi, cheerleader, newborn son, star athlete, child's body in a nearby quarry, arresting Jessica and Tom

Id: jgnB55cDsTA

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 17 2019