A pregnant woman was sliced open from ‘hip to hip’ by her neighbour who had bore the intention to steal her baby, Metro UK reports.
Savanna Greywind, from Fargo, North Dakota, had been eight months pregnant with her first child when she was lured by Brooke Crews to her flat upstairs on August 19 2017.
The 22-year-old was then pushed to the floor, before Crews performed an amateur cesarean on her, taking her baby from her womb.
Crews later told a courtroom that Savanna woke up during the horrific attack before falling back unconscious once again.
She later died due to the amount of blood lost. Crews had lied to her boyfriend William Hoehn, 32, that she was pregnant in a bid to stop their relationship from ending.
The 36-year-old had managed to convince him with a series of fake scans and the sound of a heartbeat found on the internet.
She got Savanna into her apartment by asking her to model a dress that she was making, then instigated a fight, accusing the nurse’s assistant of mistreating her cat and knocking her to the floor.
Crews, dubbed the ‘womb raider’ in court, then cut the expectant mum from hip to hip while she was still alive.
During his trial, her boyfriend Hoehn claimed that she had then showed him the newborn when he got home and said: ‘This is our baby. This is our family.’
He claimed that he realised what she had done later and admitted to disposing of rubbish bags containing bloody shoes and towels.
Savanna was reported missing and Crews was identified as the last person to see her alive. After officers gained a warrant to search the property, they were stunned to find the couple had a newborn baby, which they originally claimed was theirs.
The child was then identified as Savanna’s as a result of DNA testing and returned to her father Ashton Matheny.
Savanna’s body was later found by kayakers, wrapped in plastic in the Red River, over the Minnesota border, outside Fargo, where the couple had dumped it.
Crews pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and murder and lying to police in December 2017. She was jailed for life without parole in February earlier this year.
During sentencing, Crews apologised to Savanna’s family in which said: ‘I wish I hadn’t done this. There is no excuse. ‘There is no rationalisation. There is nothing. I know it doesn’t help, but I’m sorry.’
After a nine-day trial, Hoehn was acquitted of conspiracy to commit murder, but found guilty of kidnapping and lying to police in October this year.
He was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, to the upset of Savanna’s family.
‘I don’t think this man should ever walk free,’ her mother Norberta Greywind said at the time. ‘He betrayed our family. He looked us in the eye with a straight face while our daughter lay dead in his apartment.
‘Please don’t ever consider letting him out.’
This week, the US Senate unanimously approved Savanna’s Act, which aims to gather data on missing and murdered Native American women.
The legislation will improve data collection on tribal victims, improve tribal access to federal law enforcement databases and create guidelines for responding when someone’s reported missing.
In 2016, North Dakota had 125 cases of Native American women and girls reported missing to the National Crime Information Center. However, the actual figure likely should be higher due to a lack of reporting.
