Pregnant woman found dead may have been victim of ‘womb raiders’

The body of a missing pregnant woman was found wrapped in plastic in a North Dakota river, ending an eight-day search and raising the macabre possibility that “womb raiders” forcibly removed her baby before she was killed, authorities and reports say.

Fargo Police Chief David Todd told reporters late Sunday that kayakers found the body of Savanna Greywind, 22, hanging from a log in the Red River. Todd, who spoke to the media from the Minnesota side of the river about six miles north of Moorhead, said investigators found suspicious material at a nearby farmstead that may be a crime scene, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

Greywind, a nursing assistant at a senior care facility, disappeared on Aug. 19 from the apartment she shared with her parents in north Fargo. Five days after she went missing, a 2-day-old baby girl was found at a neighbor’s home.

A DNA test proved the baby was Greywind’s daughter — leading investigators to suspect labor was somehow induced, or that the child could have been removed from the mother’s womb.

The grisly discovery has now taken over conversations at local coffee shops, churches and hotels, where some residents are making the grim realization that Greywind may have been the victim of “womb raiders,” the Star Tribune reports.

“It’s like a Lifetime movie,” one Fargo resident, Tammy Krause, told the newspaper.

“Nothing surprises me anymore,” said Bill Larson, of Moorhead, Minn.

The woman’s parents have told police she visited a neighbor’s apartment to work on a sewing project and never came back. The two neighbors — Brooke Crews, 38, and William Hoehn, 32 — were taken into custody after the baby was found and charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

“Brooke Crews was home during the execution of the search warrant,” Todd announced Thursday on Facebook. “A newborn infant was also present in the apartment. The infant was alive and was immediately taken to a medical facility. Our investigation thus far indicates the possibility that this is Savanna Greywind’s child.”

The baby was found in good condition and is now at a hospital in Fargo under the custody of Cass County social services.

Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick said Hoehn and Crews are expected to appear in court Monday afternoon to be formally charged with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and providing false information to law enforcement. There’s no indication that other suspects are involved, WDAY reports.

Clay County Sheriff Bill Bergquist said the farmstead where the woman’s body was found has an abandoned home with barns, but hasn’t had an official address for some time. The owner of the property has been cooperative with investigators, Bergquist said.

“The team that was searching, when they went to that house, they found some things that were very, very suspicious,” he said. “That’s what brought us here.”

The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office is expected to released preliminary information from an autopsy later Monday or early Tuesday, WDAY reports. Greywind was the victim of a “cruel and vicious act of depravity,” Todd said during a news conference on Monday.

Up to 400 people, including one man from as far away as Arizona, took part in searches for the woman since they began Friday, one day after her newborn baby was found alive, the Bismarck Tribune reports.

“It’s shocking because I knew her as a childhood friend,” said Jewel Azure, who volunteered for the search over the weekend with her mother. “It’s so sad. It seems like something you’d see on a crime show. Everything about it just horrific.”

The father of the woman’s baby told WDAY that he and Greywind had been expecting a baby girl who was due in late September. They had planned to name her Haisley Jo, he said.

“They said it’s healthy, but they’re running more tests,” Ashton Matheny said Thursday.

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