Texas Dumpster Mom tried to induce abortion
FORT WORTH -- Each time her baby kicked, Dana Wilson tried to miscarry -- one time drinking eight wine coolers.
When she went into labor Nov. 14, 2003, Wilson delivered her infant alone in her bathroom, snipped the umbilical cord with scissors and stuffed the boy into a plastic bag. She laid the bag to the side, cleaned the bathroom carpet and washed herself.
She then drove to a nearby trash bin in Hurst, rebagged the child and tossed him into the bin.
"I knew I just didn't want a part of the baby," Wilson later told a forensic psychiatrist. "I wanted to remove myself from the situation."
Those details and her quote were released Wednesday during the third day of testimony on Wilson's attempted capital murder trial.
The information came from an evaluation of Wilson conducted June 3 by Dr. Mitchell Dunn of Dallas.
Dunn was the last rebuttal witness called by prosecutors Wednesday. Both sides rested their cases, and closing arguments are scheduled today in Criminal District Court No. 3 in Fort Worth.
Defense witnesses had testified that Wilson suffers from severe mental illnesses.
Dunn's evaluation is that Wilson suffers from three disorders -- learning disability, a personality disorder and borderline intellectual function.
But Wilson was not insane Nov. 14, 2003, when she disposed of her son, Christopher Dale Rechard, Dunn told the Tarrant County jury.
Wilson had met her baby's father in 2003 through an Internet dating service, according to arrest warrant affidavits, and invited him to her Hurst home, where she lived with her mother. Her mother, a former Tarrant County judge, was out of town at the time.
Dunn testified Wednesday that Wilson was disappointed with how her baby's father looked and the red pickup he was driving when she first met him in Hurst.
Wilson told Dunn that she had been a victim because of the unwanted pregnancy and that the baby was a "major curse."
"I'm thinking how he [ Christopher's father] caused me to lose two years of my life," Wilson said during the evaluation.
"I cried because I had a baby that I didn't want to have."
Adoption was out of the question, she told Dunn.
"It wasn't what I wanted to do," Wilson said during their almost three-hour evaluation. "It's my baby. It's my choice."
Wilson showed no remorse during her June interview, Dunn testified Wednesday.
Before Dunn's testimony, Robert Moore, an instructor at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, told jurors that he had Wilson in a criminal justice class in spring 2003.
Moore testified that during one class period he went over a capital murder example, citing a time when someone dumped a baby in a trash bin and left the infant to die.
Wilson never missed a class, according to Moore's attendance record.
Ward Maedgen of Dallas, Wilson's attorney, has described his client as a young woman suffering from severe mental illness who does not have the ability to care for herself or a child.
Under cross-examination by Maedgen, Dunn told jurors that Wilson confessed that she was afraid of her mother, which was why she didn't tell her she was pregnant.
Dunn added that during his evaluation with Wilson she called out as if she were talking to her baby's father.
"She would say, 'Why is a 28-year-old trying to have sex with a 23-year-old?' " Dunn testified. "And, 'Why didn't you wear a condom?'"
The baby's father was not in the interview room, Dunn said.
Christopher's father was not aware that Dana Wilson was pregnant, according to one of her college classmates.
A few hours after he was born, Christopher was found in a trash bin near a Hurst animal clinic about a mile from Wilson's home. He was discovered by a veterinarian and his technician among trash in plastic bags that had been tied shut.
Christopher suffered severe brain damage because of the lack of oxygen, officials said. He is in the custody of his paternal grandparents.
After delivering her baby, Wilson drove to Fort Worth and went to class at Texas Wesleyan University. She left the campus after a classmate told her she needed to go home after having a baby.
After that, Wilson told Dunn, she drove back to the Hurst trash bin to check on the situation. Hurst police were on the scene.
Delbra Wilson, Dana's mother, testified Tuesday that she found out that her daughter had had a baby on Nov. 18, 2003, after Hurst police came to their home.
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Posted by Editor at June 23, 2005 08:58 AM
