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Washington (dpa) - A woman charged with the gruesome murder of a pregnant woman, cutting out her fetus and drowning her three young children, pleaded not guilty Monday in East St Louis, Illinois, local media reports said.
Tiffany Hall, 24, has so far only been charged with murdering her long-time friend Jimella Tunstall, 23, and cutting out the woman's fetus, though she has also admitted to killing Tunstall's three children, the Belleville News-Democrat reported.
A two-day city-wide search for the children, aged 1, 2 and 7, ended Saturday night when Hall herself led police to the bodies, hidden in a washer and dryer in their mother's own apartment. The coroner Sunday said they had been drowned, and died before they were hidden in the appliances.
Police had reportedly already been to the mother's apartment before Saturday, but had not been looking their for the children.
"Who would be looking in the washer and dryer?" St Clair Country Deputy Coroner Ace Hart was quoted in the News-Democrat as saying.
Tunstall was found dead on Thursday in a field behind Hall's home. She had bled to death from an abdominal incision, the fetus removed from her body, police said.
Hall is being held on a five-million-dollar bail at St Clair County Jail. She entered a not guilty plea via video phone from a segregated jail cell.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
