Woman Who Killed Newborn Gets 11 Years

A 19-year-old Van Nuys woman who admitted that she killed her newborn girl last July because she had not wanted her mother to learn of her pregnancy was sentenced Friday to a maximum term of 11 years in state prison.

“How unthinkably cruel and callous to snuff out the life of something the moment it pops out of your womb. That is cruel and inhumane and indecent,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gordon Ringer said in denying Martha Cordero’s request for probation,

Cordero, who was born in Mexico and moved to Los Angeles with her family about five years ago, had originally been charged with murder, but was allowed to plead guilty last August to voluntary manslaughter.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lloyd M. Nash, who prosecuted, said his office would have had difficulty proving that the crime was premeditated, a necessary condition for a murder conviction.

Cordero told a court-appointed psychiatrist that she had concealed her nearly full-term pregnancy from her mother by wearing loose clothing and dressing in private, according to court documents. The young woman had already borne one child out of wedlock and did not want her mother to learn she was pregnant again, she told the psychiatrist.

Last July 7, Cordero told the psychiatrist, she began labor, locked herself in a bathroom at her home, and delivered the baby.

Although Cordero said she at first believed the baby had been born dead, an autopsy confirmed that the little girl had been alive when delivered, Nash said. Cordero first tried to flush the infant down the toilet, and then partially dismembered the child and hid it under a wash basin.