WINONA, Minn.— The mother in the 2011 Baby Angel death was sentenced to two years of supervised probation and 40 hours of community service. The mother. Jennifer Baechle, now 44, will serve no jail time. The sentence was issued by Judge Nancy Buytendorp, who accepted a plea agreement. The agreement, negotiated by prosecution and defense attorneys, was that Baeceh would plead guilty to one count of a gross misdemeanor — interference with a dead body — in exchange for dismissal of a manslaughter charge. She also was fined $400. In 2011, when the body was found, Sheriff Dave Brand called her Baby Angel for want of any clues to her identity. The body of the new-born girl had been found packed with angel figurines in a bag in the Mississippi River. For 12 years police were stymied trying to trace the Infant’s origins. In March 2023 newly developed genetic policing tools pointed to Baechle, Also: Police knew she collected angel figurines.
Her details of an ordeal
In asking Judge Buytendorp to accept the plea agreement, Baechle offered a difficult, tearful and moving account of the pregnancy. Here are details as drawn from her courtroom testimony, many never reported before, and many drawn from earlier investigatory reports and court documents:
Baechle, in her 20s, discovered her unplanned pregnancy. She told no one — not her family, with whom she had had a falling out. Not her roommate. She was struggling: No money for prenatal care. No money for medical insurance. She decided to deliver the baby on her own and leave it at the door of a hospital emergency room. She went into labor in the middle of a weekend night in the Winona apartment shared with the roommate and had the baby in the early morning in the bathroom — her roommate was away. She lost consciousness. When she woke up, the baby was lifeless on the floor.
Concerned that nobody would accept the truth of what happened., she cleaned up the baby and spent the day wrapping the body in a towel and placing her inside two garbage bags and a canvas bag. Also in the bags: Two nine-inch angel figurines, a bracelet with an eye pendant, and two porcelain bells that were decorated with angels. After dark she walked to the Winona bridge over the Mississippi River. She dropped the bags with the baby into the current.
The body was discovered later in the day seven miles downriver near the former Pla-Mor campground. The death moved Sheriff Brand emotionally. He organized a burial ceremony with deputies and police officers paying their respects and showing that someone cared. The regional medical examiner was unable to determine whether the baby had been born alive or still-born. Bruising could have been caused by river turbulence.
Baechle has remained in Winona all these years and kept her secret until the 2023 DNA revelations. In the meantime she has married and has children. She has taught English off and on at Winona State University.
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