Woman who cut baby from a stranger’s womb is jailed for 100 years

A woman who cut a seven-month-old foetus from the womb of an expectant mother has been sentenced to a total of 100 years in prison. Dynel Lane was jailed after being found guilty of attempting to kill Michelle Wilkins in Denver in March last year. The 36-year-old was also convicted of four assault charges and another count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy. She gasped ‘No’ as she was sentenced … but she may have got off lightly as prosecutors had pressed for the maximum term of 188 years.

People are hungry to hear from you, Miss Lane. Hungry, desperate to hear you express genuine remorse from the bottom of your heart

Judge Maria Berkenkotter

Lane spent months faking a pregnancy before she lured her victim, 28, to her apartment with a Craigslist ad for maternity clothes. She bludgeoned her over the head with a lava lamp and stabbed her in the neck with the broken glass before cutting open her abdomen, taking out the unborn baby. In court, Ms Wilkins, who recovered from her ordeal, addressed her attacker while sitting next to a poster-sized picture of her baby, named Aurora, who did not survive. "It is clear that you need healing and I hope that you get it,“ she told Lane.

You knowingly left me to die multiple times. The only tears you shed during the trial were those of self-pity, to the sound of your own voice as your lies were slowly revealed

Victim Michelle Wilkins

Dynel Lane