The parents of a pregnant woman who disappeared mere weeks before her due date allegedly cut her unborn baby out of her womb and left her for dead in the woods of Michigan.
Rebecca Park, 22, was found dead in the Manistee National Forest on Nov. 25, weeks after she vanished on Nov. 3, when she was 38 weeks pregnant.
When her body was recovered, she was no longer pregnant, but her baby was nowhere to be found. Authorities have since confirmed that the baby is also deceased, but didn’t provide any additional details, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Now, Park’s biological mother and stepfather, 40-year-old Cortney and 47-year-old Bradly Bartholomew, are accused of her murder.
The couple — who did not raise the victim — brought Park back to their home, forced her into a car, and dragged her to the woods where they stabbed her and cut her baby out of her womb, Wexford County Prosecutor Johanna Carey said, according to the outlet.
Carey said that their evisceration killed both Park and her baby.
“This is, frankly, evil personified,” Carey said during the family’s arraignment Tuesday.
The same day that Park’s body was found, her repeat offender and much older fiancé, 43-year-old Richard Lee Falor, was arrested and charged with distributing methamphetamine. He pleaded not guilty to the charge on Dec. 2.
Park’s sister, 21-year-old Kimberly Park, was arrested on Nov. 26 and charged with tampering with evidence in a criminal case, lying to a police officer during a violent crime investigation and filing a false report of a felony.
At Kimberly’s arraignment, detectives alleged that she lied to police when she claimed their stepfather had struck Park “in the head, causing a seizure and then took her body away,” according to a felony complaint obtained by the outlet.
When Park was first reported missing, Falor told 9and10 News that she was picked up in a back sedan with tinted windows while she was at her mother’s house.
He added that Park was also gifted roughly $2,000 from a family inheritance that day, and her phone was later found on the side of a road near her mother’s home.
Falor told the outlet that he, Cortney Bartholomew, and Kimberly Park were all “calling the hospitals” to make sure Park and his son were safe.
Park was due to give birth on Nov. 18, but Falor said she was already 1 centimeter dilated the day before she went missing.
At the arraignment, Stacey Davis, Bradly Bartholomew’s estranged sister, told the outlet that her brother and Cortney Bartholomew had previously attempted to have a baby but struggled to conceive.
“I’m here for Rebecca and her baby. I’m not here for my brother,” Davis said.
Cortney Bartholomew was Park’s biological mother, but the slain mother and her siblings were raised and adopted by Stephanie Park and her husband.
“[Rebecca] deserves to be remembered as the sweet girl that she was when she was younger,” Stephanie Park told 9&10 News.
The Bartholomews were both denied bond. Cortney Bartholomew’s attorney noted that she was disabled while trying to haggle for a lower bond and home confinement, the outlet reported.
The couple face identical charges, including first-degree premeditated murder, felony murder, torture in a place of confinement, conspiracy to commit torture, assault of a pregnant woman with the intention to cause miscarriage or stillbirth, conspiracy to commit that assault, unlawful imprisonment, and moving a dead body.
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