Gail Eastwood-Ritchey confessed to leaving her newborn baby to die in the woods outside Cleveland in 1993 — and told authorities she’d done it before
Geauga County Sheriff’s Office
Gail Eastwood Ritchey
The same genetic genealogy that helped catch the notorious Golden State Killer suspect in 2018 has been used to solve handfuls of mysterious criminal cases around the United States that were once thought to be unsolvable, including the harrowing story of Gail Eastwood-Ritchey.
PEOPLE is looking back at Ritchey’s 2019 arrest and conviction for the murder of her newborn baby in 1993, which was solved using the technology that’s since cracked open many cold cases.
Ritchey, now 54, was living an unassuming life as a married mother of three in Ohio was arrested in June 2019, when investigators tied her DNA to the unnamed baby who’d died after being abandoned in the woods outside the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio. PEOPLE previously reported that Ritchey quickly admitted to the crime and showed no emotion when investigators finally confronted her about it, which led to her 2022 conviction and life in prison.
Here’s what took place.
Geauga County Sheriff’s Office
Gail Eastwood Ritchey
‘Geauga’s Child’
Cuyahoga County police discovered Ritchey’s deceased newborn baby in the woods outside Euclid after it had allegedly been mauled by animals, WGN reported at the time. CBS News reported the baby was left in a trash bag and prosecutors alleged during Ritchey’s trial that an autopsy showed the baby was still breathing at the time Ritchey abandoned the child in the woods.
Community members raised funds for a funeral and a gravestone for the child, identified only as “Geauga’s Child,” named after Ohio’s Geauga County.
“Geauga’s Child lies here now in safety – just too late,” the headstone reads, according to CBS. “Too late to save his life. Too late to make things right. But not too late to teach us all to love and cherish life.”
An ‘Exemplary Life’
After Ritchey abandoned her newborn in 1993, the Ohio woman lived what her attorney Steven Bradley claimed was “an exemplary life” over the next 30 years. Ritchey later married the child’s father and they went on to share three more children together, PEOPLE previously reported.
Related: Ohio Mom Accused of Leaving Baby to Die in Woods in 1993 Allegedly Admits to ‘Similar Crime’
Bradley told a Geauga County judge at her 2022 sentencing that she believed the child was stillborn and was not aware she was pregnant, having the baby on a toilet while nannying at a family’s home, according to CBS. The attorney claimed Ritchey’s father was strict and would not approve of her pregnancy. Judge David Ondrey, however, told Ritchey she “took the easy way out,” according to CBS, and said her newborn child “didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
She Had Done It Before
Judge Ondrey also told Ritchey that he was taking into account her confession that the 1993 incident wasn’t the first time she had given birth and left her newborn for dead.
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PEOPLE reported that after investigators approached her about the 1993 murder 26 years after her newborn was found dead in the woods, Ritchey told them she did the same thing with another newborn child she gave birth to about two years prior, in 1990 or 1991.
“I think you knew what to do because you had done it before,” Ondrey told Ritchey, according to CBS. “Calling you a monster who deserves life imprisonment is not an exaggeration.”
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