Stacy Michelle Rabon, 50, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her daughter. The verdict was handed down on Wednesday, more than 31 years after the discovery of the girl’s body in a plastic bag in the Catawba River in South Carolina. She will be eligible for parole after eight years in prison.
On August 12, 1992, the corpse of a child was found wrapped in a sheet and packed in a plastic bag in a river. At that time, his identity could not be established. The girl was buried in an anonymous grave. Only DNA tests carried out 29 years later allowed to identify who she was, according to the local portal The Herald. The DNA samples secured on the child’s body were compared with samples from individuals in the US National Convict Database. They were determined to match Stacy Michelle Rabon’s DNA. In 2021, a woman was arrested and charged with murdering her own daughter. The woman claimed at the time that after she gave birth to the child, she gave him up for adoption and never saw him again. The prosecution determined that the story was made up.
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Stacy Michelle Rabon convicted of murdering her daughter after more than 30 years
According to investigators, the girl found in the York County River was stabbed more than 50 times, then wrapped in a sheet, put in a plastic bag and thrown into the river. It is unclear whether she died from stab wounds or asphyxiation. On August 11, a jury found Rabon guilty of murdering her daughter.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Rabon asked the judge for mercy. The woman continued to claim that she had given the child up for adoption. She claimed that the decision to leave him continued to haunt her. I can’t think of anything but her face. About her growing up and everything that was taken away from her because of the bad decisions I made – said the 50-year-old, quoted by ABC News.
Stacy Michelle RabonAP/EastNews
South Carolina District Court Judge Bill McKinnon sentenced Rabon to life imprisonment. – When babies come into this world, they need parents who will protect them. This child was stabbed (by a parent) more than 50 times,” Judge McKinnon said, adding that because the victim was vulnerable, he judged the life sentence to be warranted.
“She will never admit to what she did,” the prosecutor said in the courtroom. “Stacy Rabon threw her baby into the cold Catawba River, never looking back, abandoning her and keeping it a secret for 29 years,” said Lanelle Day, the York County Sheriff’s deputy who oversaw the DNA testing of the body found in the Catawba River on Wednesday.
As the 50-year-old was on trial under the laws in force at the time of the murder, she will be eligible for parole after serving 10 years of her sentence. Rabon has already spent two years in custody, so she will be able to apply for an early release in eight years, explains The Herald.
Main photo source: AP/EastNews