Woman who cut out baby from mother's womb jailed for 100 years

The disturbed woman who lured an expectant mother to her home under the false pretense of giving her free maternity and baby clothes, only to cut her baby from her womb, has been sentenced to 100 years in prison.

Dynel Lane, 35, was given the lifelong sentence Friday for attacking and butchering Michelle Wilkins, 27, and killing her unborn baby girl in March 2015.

Judge Maria Berkenkotter said the harshest sentences for the most serious charges were justified by the brutality of the 2015 attack, which she described as performing a cesarean with a kitchen knife.

Berkenkotter also said the victim, Michelle Wilkins, as well as her family and the community needed Dynel Lane, 36, to express remorse.

Lane murmured a “no” when the judge asked if she wanted to speak on April 29. Lane also did not speak in her defence during her trial, which ended in February when jurors found her guilty of attempting to kill Wilkins after luring her victim to her home with an ad for maternity clothes.

Wilkins, who miraculously survived the attack, was in court when the sentence was handed down.

Jurors had heard that Lane went to elaborate lengths to feign her own pregnancy before attacking Wilkins. They did not hear that in 2002, Lane’s 19-month-old son drowned in what investigators ruled was an accident. Relatives who spoke on Lane’s behalf before the sentencing Friday said her remorse over losing her son may have led her to take an action they could not understand or explain.

Berkenkotter sentenced Lane to 48 years for attempted murder and 32 years for unlawful termination of a pregnancy. The remainder of her sentence was for assault charges in the attack. She was given credit for the more than a year she has served since her arrest.

Wilkins was eight-months pregnant in when she went to the home of Lane in Longmont, Colorado, after answering a Craigslist post advertising maternity clothing.

She described how she entered the house and was given the maternity clothes that were advertised. She was just about to leave when Lane asked her to see some baby girls clothes which she said she didn't need.

Out of politeness she stayed, and Lane shut the door behind her. It was then that she said Lane attacked.

She said: "When she attacked me, she hit my back. It was very aggressive and hard, and I asked her, 'Was there a spider on me?' and she said, 'Yeah, I think I got it'.

"And then she continued. I turned around pulled my hands up and said 'What are you doing?' And said, 'I just want to leave, I don’t want to hurt you'.

"I started walking toward the door, and she grabbed me very roughly, pushing me deeper into the house towards the bathroom. We jostled a little bit in the hallway as I tried to push my way back towards the door.

"She’s pushing me deeper into the house. Finally, we get all the way in front of the bathroom and she just lurches me sideways into the back bedroom. There are so many what if’s that go through your head.

"We struggle and she keeps telling me she’s that going to call the police on me. I pull out my phone and I said, 'well I’ll call the police' and that’s when the real struggle begins and she just throws me to the bed and tries to suffocate me with the pillow, with her hands and it had this nightmarish quality.

"She broke something over my head and I just felt the liquid wash over me, and I just kept saying, ''why, why are you doing this? Why?"

Wilkins woke up not knowing what had happened, and called emergency services, saving her own life.

– The Voice