Child Stealing

A newborn boy kidnapped from his mother's hospital room was found apparently unharmed Wednesday night, and police said the woman who took the baby had faked a pregnancy. Police Chief Benny Napoleon said a 20-year-old woman and a man in his mid-20s were arrested shortly after the baby, Moses Champion, was found at the home of the woman's mother. Police withheld the names of the suspects. The infant appeared to be in good shape, the chief said.

A baby police say was cut from the womb of his slain mother left a Ravenna, Ohio, hospital with his grieving father, Jon Andrews, 23. The body of Andrews' wife, Theresa, was found buried in the dirt floor of Michelle Bica's garage, a few blocks away from the Andrews' home, and the baby was found inside Bica's house. The heavyset Bica, 39, told her husband that the baby was theirs and that she had given birth while he was working. The coroner said Andrews was shot once in the head; the .

A pregnant woman was found dead, her baby torn from her belly in a crude Caesarean section, and the woman suspected of stealing the child killed herself as police arrived to question her. The 8-pound, 6-ounce boy was found asleep in a crib in the nursery of Michelle Bica's home in Ravenna, Ohio. The body of Theresa Andrews, 23, was found buried in Bica's dirt-floor garage. She vanished Sept.

A Japanese tourist and a Guatemalan bus driver were killed in a rural market frequented by international tourists after being attacked by a mob of about 500 angry villagers who thought they were there to steal children, police said Sunday. Tetsuo Yamahiro, 40, was killed when he and 22 other Japanese tourists were attacked with stones and sticks by a mob Saturday in the highland village of Todos Santos Cuchumatan, police spokesman Faustino Sanchez said.

A 3-year-old girl taken from her home Monday was returned at 3 a.m. Wednesday, and police booked her noncustodial mother on suspicion of child stealing. Stephanie Angel Allen, who lives with her father, Kevin Allen, was dropped off without notice at 3 a.m. by her mother, Rena Lynn Halpain, 27, police said. Halpain fled when Allen tried to call police, authorities said.

A woman was sentenced to life in prison for killing a pregnant teenager, then cutting the 9-month fetus from her womb and kidnapping the child. Felecia Scott, 31, was found guilty in the shooting death of 17-year-old Carethia Curry, who disappeared after the two went out for pizza on Jan. 31, 1996. Both women were from Tuscaloosa, Ala., about 40 miles east of Montgomery. Curry's body was found several weeks later stuffed inside a garbage can that had been rolled into a ravine.

A judge investigating the systematic kidnapping of babies by the dictatorship that ruled Argentina in the 1970s and '80s ordered the arrest Tuesday of former Adm. Emilio Massera, a feared member of the military junta. Massera, 73, became the second former Argentine military ruler arrested this year in accelerating investigations of the regime's practice of holding pregnant political prisoners until they gave birth, killing the women and turning the babies over to members of the security forces.

A grateful Eugenia Quintanilla, still swollen and red-eyed from being beaten and left for dead, thanked police officers Friday for finding her kidnapped infant. At a news conference at the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Street Station, Quintanilla held her 2-month-old girl as she recounted how the baby was snatched and she was beaten by someone police say was a hired hit man. Michael Becerra, 26, was charged Friday with attempted murder and kidnapping.

A maternity nurse was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of hiring a hit man to kill a patient so she could take the woman's 2-month-old baby, police said. Anna Ramos, 26, a nurse at the Maternity Center of Vermont, was arrested at her home in Los Angeles after Manuel Becerra, 26, allegedly confessed that she offered him $1,000 to kill the mother, Cmdr. David Kalish of the Los Angeles Police Department said.

Her name, at the time, was Nancy. Her parents told her: You were abandoned at birth. We found you in the street, thanks be to God, and adopted you. They raised her in a small house on a dirt street, a home where she was slapped if she talked back. She got good grades in Catholic school. She played on weekends at the police country club and at family barbecues with her father, uncles and grandfather, who were all police officers.