Woman pleads guilty to leaving her newborn to die

Jennifer+Matters+mugshot+after+being+convicted+of+second-degree+murder

Photo via flickr under the creative commons license

Jennifer Matter’s mugshot after being convicted of second-degree murder

A Minnesota woman admitted in a guilty plea Wednesday that she left her baby alone to die on the Mississippi river banks in 2003. 

Jennifer Matter, 50, was found guilty of second-degree murder in her baby’s death. Prosecutors say that the baby’s DNA evidence links Matter to a baby girl found dead by the Mississippi River in 1999, but has not been charged for that case. 

Teenagers found the baby boy’s body on December 7, 2003, in Frontenac on the shore of Lake Pepin, a body of water on the Mississippi. The coroner determined that the baby’s death was a homicide, but his cause of death is undetermined. 

I left the baby on the beach, walked away, got into my car, and drove away with no intention of returning

— Jennifer Matter

According to a criminal complaint, Matter said she hoped a person who lives nearby would find her son alive. 

In a third interview with investigators, Matter told them back in 1999, that she has been in and out of jail, drinking too much, doing a lot of things, and that she didn’t know she was pregnant until she started bleeding while on the way to drop off her other two kids at school and daycare. 

She could face up to 27 years and two months in prison and her sentence hearing is scheduled for April 28th.