Iowa parents are arrested ‘for drowning their newborn baby daughter in bath to stop her crying after mother asked for METH to help ease the pain of the home birth’.
Hours after drowning the tot, Thoma disposed of the baby in a nearby landfill. When detectives from the Webster County Sheriff’s Office seized their phones after learning about the incident they discovered that both had been searching for ways to induce a miscarriage.
The pair have been charged with first-degree murder after their arrest on Wednesday. Thoma has also been charged with abuse of a corpse.
Blaha told the detective she never had any intention of keeping the baby and that the plan was to allow her sister to adopt her.
In a statement on December 7, Thoma revealed that he was concerned that should law enforcement find out about the baby, they could find meth in its system and confiscate their other child, the two-year-old son.
The couple decided that the baby’s crying was likely to raise the suspicion of a neighbor so made a joint decision to drown her.
According to the affidavit, Thoma demonstrated to Blaha that could be achieved by placing the baby in the bathtub, which was half full, and submerging her.
Once she had been killed Thoma removed the baby’s body from the bathtub before wrapping it up in trash bags and placing it in a backpack, which he used to take her out of the apartment.
Blaha told the detective that Thoma left with the backpack in the early hours of the morning the next day and when he returned it was empty.
On December 5 Thomas eventually told police where the body had been discarded, in a rural area to the north of the North Central Iowa Regional landfill.
Thoma also spoke of how he cut the baby’s umbilical cord with a pair of scissors they had in their apartment and kept segments of it as a means to remember the baby.
