By Dave Andrusko
Megan Huntsman
When last we reported on Megan Huntsman, accused of murdering six newborns over the space of ten years and stuffing their bodies into a garage, police had offered a possible motive for the 39-year’s murderous rampage: that Huntsman had been heavily into a meth addiction “when she strangled or suffocated the infants from 1996 to 2006.”
On Monday, the Associated Press reported that her attorneys decided not to waive her right to a preliminary hearing. That will take place December 11 at the end of which time “a judge will decide if there is sufficient proof to send the case to trial,” according to AP’s Brady McCombs. Huntsman was in the court room for a short time yesterday but said nothing.
She remains in jail on $6 million bail. Huntsman has yet to enter a plea.
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It was Huntsman’s estranged husband, Darren West, who found the first dead baby back in April in a small white box covered with electrician’s tape. He was cleaning out the garage of the house he had shared at one point with Huntsman. Police secured a search warranted and found six more babies in individual boxes. (Authorities believe the seventh baby was stillborn.)
West “spent more than eight years in federal prison after pleading guilty to meth charges,” the AP reported. “He was released to a halfway house in Salt Lake City in January.”
Back in April authorities conducted DNA tests, confirming that West was the biological father. West is not a suspect.
DNA results also “showed that all seven babies were full term and that five were girls and two were boys,” the AP reported.
While a motive may have been discovered, there remain any number of obvious questions.
Just to take the most obvious example, how could Huntsman, a relatively slight woman, have seven pregnancies during this time span and no one, including West or her children, know?