Stolen Dreams: Mom-to-be had unborn daughter ripped from her womb by woman who thought 'baby was hers'
Investigation Discovery’s ‘Impact of Murder: Stolen Dreams’ revisits the bone-chilling story of a pregnant woman whose stomach was ripped open and who was left to die in the basement of a home following a horrific attack by another woman in 2015. The riveting documentary starts with a 911 dispatcher listening to the distressed pleas of a dying victim in Longmont, Colorado. The story then uncovers grisly details of a heinous event that connects the two women together. Michelle Wilkins, however, ends up losing her unborn daughter in the worst way possible. The expectant mom was more than content with her life in 2015. She could finally say she had a good home, a positive mindset, and everything she needed to welcome her baby girl -- named Aurora -- into the world. But one chance encounter was all it took to snatch her perfect life away from her.
Michelle responded to a Craigslist ad for maternity and baby clothes on March 17, 2015. Following a conversation, she arrived at the seller's home shortly before noon the following day. The lady of the house, Dynel Lane, would eventually ambush the heavily pregnant woman and unleash an attack so brutal that it's a miracle Michelle is still alive. All she knew was that her throat had been slit open -- that's what she told 911 dispatcher Beth Kemper when she somehow managed to make the distress call.
Officer Billy Sawyer was one of the first responders at the scene. Michelle was holding on to dear life as Kemper kept her company over the phone until the officers found her. "There's a huge puddle of blood on the floor right in front of me, with a knife next to it," Sawyer told ID producers as he recalled the gruesome scene. "[Michelle] is just laying across the bed and she has a phone in her hand. As soon as I made an entry, she just dropped the phone."
The officer noticed broken glass on the bed as the victim reached out to grab his hand. Sawyer remembered asking a fellow officer for gloves as she was "completely covered in blood, from head to toe." But as he began talking to Michelle, Sawyer became confused. "We thought it was somebody else, the information that came from dispatch was that of a female who was seven months pregnant...and her stomach was actually flat," he noted.
Kemper also recalled talking to paramedics on their way to the hospital and asking them if the victim was pregnant. They told her she wasn't. At the time, Kemper simply assumed the caller had lied to her about it. Sawyer, for a brief moment, thought he was talking to the attacker and not the victim - owing to the description mismatch. However, what unraveled shortly after would make his blood run cold. "I look down, [Michelle] is holding her stomach, but there is no stomach," he said. "She had a stab wound in her neck and she kept pointing to her stomach, and she was wearing maternity pants."
"I lifted up her maternity pants, and I actually saw her intestines hanging out of a big opening across her stomach," Sawyer recalled.
It was only when she arrived at the trauma bay at a Boulder County hospital that doctors realized the large gash had been made to abduct her baby. Michelle's unborn child had been ripped out of her body by a deranged woman who thought that the child could be hers. While Michelle survived the harrowing ordeal, her daughter did not. Aurora’s death was the result of instant “fetal demise," per the official report by Boulder County coroner’s office. It's worth noting that Michelle was in the ICU for about 5 days, but the heartbroken mum somehow managed to cooperate with the authorities so that Dynel Lane was arrested and charged as quickly as possible.
When the case went to court, Michelle recounted every detail about what really happened on that day. She fearlessly addressed her attacker directly and rehashed how she could feel her intestines hang outside her body. “Up to this very moment you refused to acknowledge us, the victims of your violent actions. I am a compassionate person, this is the foundation of the beliefs from which all others grow. It is clear that you need healing and my sincere belief is that you get it,” Michelle told Dynel in court.
“You embraced your narcissistic fantasy that fulfilled the lie you created, and it was more important than my right to live and Aurora’s right to live…Your inability to acknowledge the immense cruelty and evil you committed only proves you are not fit to walk free amongst us ever again," she concluded.
Michelle later said she considered Dynel's sentencing as a way to give her heavenly daughter some justice.
Investigation Discovery’s ‘Impact of Murder: Stolen Dreams’ premieres Thursday, September 17 at 9 PM ET/PT.