Brooke Lynn Crews, charged with conspiring to murder a pregnant neighbor and kidnap her unborn child, told police the neighbor gave Crews the baby and left, according to court documents released Monday.
William Henry Hoehn, Crews’ boyfriend and co-defendant, told police he arrived home to find Crews cleaning up blood in the bathroom and presenting him with the child saying, “This is our baby. This is our family.”
The neighbor, Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, 22, went missing Aug. 19. She was eight months pregnant at the time. Her body was found wrapped in plastic bags in the Red River on Sunday night, Aug. 27.
Crews, 38, and Hoehn, 32, have each been charged with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and providing false information to law enforcement. They were set to appear in Cass County District Court at 2 p.m. Monday.
According to court records, after police found a baby in the apartment that Crews and Hoehn shared on Aug. 24, Crews told detectives she had asked Greywind to come to the apartment and taught her how to self-induce birth by breaking her own water.
Greywind’s family said she had told them she was visiting an upstairs neighbor at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 19. Crews said Greywind then left the apartment and returned at 3 a.m. Aug. 21 to give Crews the baby.
Hoehn told police that he returned home from work at 2:30 p.m. Aug. 19, an hour after Greywind allegedly visited, to find Crews cleaning up blood in the bathroom and presenting him with the baby. He told police that he did remove garbage bags containing bloody towels and his own bloody shoes and leaving them in a dumpster at a West Fargo apartment building.
LaFontaine-Greywind’s body was found about 8:20 p.m. in the river near the 90th Avenue Northwest bridge. About the same time, investigators from the Clay County (Minn.) sheriff’s office were called to an abandoned farmstead after a search party reported finding suspicious items that could indicate criminal activity.
“The team that was searching, when they went to the house, they found some things that were very, very suspicious,” Clay County Sheriff Bill Bergquist said. “That’s what brought us there.”
The Clay County sheriff’s office is handling the search and investigation of the farmstead, Fargo Police Chief David Todd said.
On the property is an abandoned house with barns, and it has not had an official address for years. The owner has cooperated with investigators, Bergquist said.
LaFontaine-Greywind’s body, which was found bound in plastic and duct tape, was sent to the Ramsey County medical examiner’s office in St. Paul for an autopsy.
On Monday, investigators could not say where LaFontaine-Greywind may have died or how. Preliminary information from the autopsy is expected later today or early Tuesday.
Todd said, “Savanna was the victim of a cruel and vicious act of depravity.”
Lt. Jason Nelson of the Fargo Police Department provided additional information about earlier searches of Hoehn and Crews’ Fargo apartment. Officers searched that apartment twice for LaFontaine-Greywind on Saturday, the day she went missing, and a detective searched the apartment Sunday. There was no indication of LaFontaine-Greywind or a child during those three searches, Nelson said.
During those searches, the suspects were cooperative and there were no signs of a crime scene, Nelson said.
No one else is expected to face charges in the case. “We have no indication that there are any other suspects involved in this crime,” Nelson said.