Guilty plea in deaths of pregnant Ill. woman, kids (AP)
Tiffany Hall, 26, pleaded guilty to quite five charges against her — four counts of kill cruelly and one count of intentional killing of a human being in the death of the fetus — and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Hall struck her confidant Jimella Tunstall, 23, onward the main repeatedly with a table leg, then divide Tunstall’s fetus from her womb in a bathtub, prosecutor Robert Haida said. Tunstall bled to death, Haida declared. Hall then dumped her friend’s body in an East St. Louis lot.
Hours later, Hall told police in Illinois she had given blood to a stillborn child. When police arrived, she had the dead fetus with her. She refused to be examined at a hospital.
Three days later, Hall visited the father of two of Tunstall’s children and the unborn child, Haida said. The father was caring for all the children, Haida uttered. Hall told the adopt that Tunstall wanted her to clean up the children and Tunstall’s vehicle, he told police.
The father told the officers that was the last confinement he saw his children, Haida said.
Hall then drowned the three children — DeMond Tunstall, 7, Ivan Tunstall-Collins 2, and Jinella Tunstall, 1 — in the same bathtub to which place she killed their spring, Haida said.
Authorities said Hall’s story began to resolve on Sept. 21, 2006, about a week after Tunstall’s death, when she told her boyfriend that she killed a pregnant woman and stole the fetus. He told police.
The bodies of the three children were found two days later hidden in a washer and dryer inside the East St. Louis apartment where the children had lived through their mother.
One of Hall’s attorneys, James Gomric, said he could not proclaim to a motive or discuss whether his client had shown remorse. He said Hall had been mentally fit to stand trial, but she also had unresolved intellectual health issues and had an IQ in the mid-70s.
After the hearing, some of Tunstall’s relatives said they had already forgiven Hall. Sandra Myers, Jimella Tunstall’s mother, declared taking one life would not have been justice for losing the lives of others. “I have to acquit her,” she said.
