American Infanticide

On April 22, 2015, the bathroom on the first floor of the Delta house at Ohio’s Muskingum University could have been confused with the set of a horror movie. Whatever feminine-hygiene nightmare caused the bloody havoc, Brittany Higgenbotham, the Delta’s house manager, was certain she wasn’t responsible for cleaning it up by herself. In a text message sent to the sorority, Brittany instructed whoever made the mess to deal with the “unsanitary, disgusting…murder scene.”
 
Brittany’s text message raised suspicion among the Deltas. The sorority had gossiped about the possibility that one of its sisters, Emile Weaver, might be pregnant. Studious, athletic, and well-liked, Emile appeared to breeze through the routines of campus life, attending her classes and weekend parties as usual. But in the weeks leading up to Brittany’s text, Emile had conspicuously taken to wearing bulky sweat suits and carrying a stuffed animal or laptop computer over her midsection. She seemed to be concealing a distinctive weight gain. Emboldened by fear, four of the sorority sisters investigated. In the driveway next to the kitchen door, their detective work revealed Emile’s newborn baby girl dead inside a garbage bag.
 
Emile’s family, friends, and teachers describe her as a consummate good girl—always eager to please. Until the tragedy. What happened?  
American Infanticide answers this question by situating Emile’s tragic crime in a long intellectual, social, and legal history. In a genre-bending mix of scholarship and true crime, the book uncovers disturbing missing chapters in our national history that undercut the myths and stereotypes that have shaped public reactions to so-called monster moms and dumpster babies since the colonial era. Ultimately, the book sheds light on how and why our legal responses to infanticide are so deeply misguided.