New details released in murder of newborn

Pointing to a row of tan and green apartments Becky Spears shudders.

"It's right over there," she said, pointing. "It's pretty close to us. It could have been a friend for my kids to play with."

But the little girl who was born just down the street from Spears was not given that chance. Investigators say she was killed at her Trimble Street apartment by her own mother. Just minutes after she was born, the baby girl was thrown into a plastic shopping bag.

"She just discarded that blessing," Spears said of her neighbor's alleged actions.

It is a blessing Sgt. Brian Laird with Paducah Police said the young woman, 17 at the time, was not ready for.

"We believe she did a good job of concealing she was pregnant. Her mother stated she did not know, as well as she did not know her daughter had given birth inside her apartment."

It is what happened next that investigators say is both shocking and disturbing: the young woman snapped a few pictures of the baby with her cell phone and then allegedly killed the little girl she had not taken the time to name.

The cell phone pictures, as it turns out, were later deleted. The suspect told only one friend of the pregnancy, later telling her the baby had died and that she had buried her in the backyard. It was that friend who called authorities.

"We think she made some choices and she really didn't have a plan or know what she was going to do," Laird said.

Initially, when she was first brought to police headquarters, the girl denied the story, saying the baby survived for just 20 minutes.

"What she told us was when the baby stopped breathing, she placed the child in a bag," Laird said during a Tuesday morning news conference.

Police will not go into details but say the autopsy shows otherwise.

"It's really sad somebody didn't value what they were given. I don't even know what to say," Spears said.