Aunt gets life for murdering pregnant niece
A medical technician has been sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing her pregnant niece and removing the foetus from the girl’s womb.
Erin Kuhn, 33, pleaded guilty to first and second-degree murder charges to avoid the death penalty for the deaths of Kathaleena Draper, 17, and Draper’s unborn baby, in June 2000.
Prosecutors say Kuhn plotted the killing after Draper reneged on plans to allow Kuhn to adopt the baby.
‘‘In over 14 years on this bench this clearly is the most barbaric crime that has ever been presented in this courtroom,’’ Judge Archie Blake told the Yerington, Nevada, court.
Kuhn, whose own 11-year-old son lives with his father in Arizona, told the judge she had been obsessed for years about having another child.
The judge rejected Kuhn’s lawyers’ arguments that she was mentally unstable at the time and should remain eligible for release at some point following extensive treatment.
Defence lawyer Tod Young said she became fixated on her desire to have more children and be a stay-at-home mother after she developed cancer and had to have a hysterectomy. She also had been abusing prescription drugs, he said.
