Ohio cheerleader Skylar Richardson killed her baby, believes detective who allegedly coerced her murder confession
One of the detectives who was accused of coercing a murder confession out of former cheerleader Skylar Richardson — a 20-year-old woman who was acquitted of killing her infant child and received three years of probation for burying the corpse — said he still believes the mother killed the baby.
"I still believe that the baby was alive. It was just the way she kept adamantly wanting to interject, 'I didn't kill it. I didn't kill it'," Lt. John Faine from the Warren County Sheriff's Office told WLWT, recalling her interrogation session with him.
"Just from experience, a lot of times over the course of my career, people who are guilty are the ones who are so adamantly, defiantly, telling us overtly, 'I didn't do this'. That was part of it, and then, just the secrecy."
Back in 2017, at the age of 18, Richardson gave birth in secret to the infant in her parents' house in Carlisle, Ohio, without even telling anyone that she was pregnant at the time. She later told a gynecologist that she had buried her baby girl after she was stillborn.
However, prosecutors built a murder case against her after a pathologist studied the buried bones and came to the conclusion that they showed signs of being burned. The pathologist later recanted her expert opinion.
Richardson was interviewed twice by Faine and one of his colleagues in July 2017 six days apart. After the first interview, she was allowed to go without any charges against her. However, during the second interrogation session, the investigating duo was armed with the original statement of the pathologist.
After being repeatedly told that they "knew" she did "something with fire", Richardson confessed to "cremating the baby a little". She was charged with murder, manslaughter, child endangerment and gross abuse of a corpse.
Her lawyers argued in court last week that their client never hurt her baby and that the confession was coerced out of her by the detectives. The judge sided with her and she was only convicted of the last charge.