Why Is This 19-Year-Old on Trial for Murder?

Photo credit: AP
Photo credit: AP

From Good Housekeeping

It was July, a month after her high school graduation, and Skylar Richardson was swimming with her cousins in her grandmother’s pool when her dad called. The police were at their house saying Skylar (whose first name is Brooke, but she goes by her middle name) needed to come down to the station for questioning because she “may have witnessed something.” “Get over here, now,” Skylar’s dad, Scott, told her over the phone, and together they drove the half-mile to the Carlisle, Ohio police station for the interview. No need for a lawyer, the police said, according to Skylar’s aunt Vanessa. The questions would be routine.

Skylar knew why she was there. In a private room, away from her parents, Vanessa says the officers asked about a tip they’d received from the county coroner. Skylar, then 18, told them everything: that she’d unexpectedly given birth to a stillborn baby in the middle of the night two months earlier. That she hadn’t known what to do, so she did what she thought you do with dead bodies: She buried it.

She tried to be cooperative and forthcoming. Without alerting her parents, Vanessa says, the police drove Skylar back to her home, where she showed them the shovel she'd used to dig a hole, and pointed to the grave site between two trees in her parents' back yard. They cordoned off the house with yellow crime-scene tape, then took Skylar back to the station, where she finally told her parents what happened. (The Warren County Sheriff's Office says they will not be commenting on the case.)

Meanwhile, whispers were spreading through the small, suburban community. A relative who saw the yellow tape go up called Skylar's uncle, Vanessa's husband Jay, who lives down the street. "The police are at the house," she told Jay breathlessly. "They're saying Skylar had a baby and buried it in the yard." Vanessa and Jay thought of Skylar as a second daughter; the two families did everything together. He would've known if she'd been pregnant, wouldn't he? The families had been swimming together all summer, he thought. He definitely would've noticed. He ran to his sister's house but was stopped by the tape. An officer told him to get off the sidewalk. "I can't go into my sister's house but those people can stand here and stare?" he said, waving toward the crowd assembling. A media van had already pulled up.

The Richardsons were well-known and respected in the village of Carlisle, a town that hadn't been rocked by scandal since longtime teacher and high school football coach Joseph Marshall had killed himself at a nearby motel in 2003. Now, seeing the crime scene tape, several neighbors called Jay and Vanessa to ask if the Richardsons were okay.

Night fell, and when Scott, Skylar, and her mother Kim got home, it was clear to Jay they had been crying. Exhausted, they pushed through the crowd still gathered outside their house, grabbed some clothes and toiletries, and left again to find a hotel room. Vanessa says the Richardsons watched on TV, shocked, as authorities took soil samples from their yard and bagged burned scraps from their fire pit. They were inside the house, too, ripping out the carpets and confiscating computer hard drives, phones, iPads, Kindles. Why did they need the bathroom rugs?

That evening, the Warren County Sheriff's Office issued a media release: "Detectives Investigate Skeletal Remains Found Near Carlisle Home," it read. "Although the remains have not yet been identified, initial reports have led investigators to believe they are that of a stillborn baby." Six days later they issued an update:

"Brooke S. Richardson, 18, of Carlisle, was arrested and charged with one count of Reckless Homicide."

More on Skylar Richardson:

Although no evidence of homicide has been made public in Skylar's case and Skylar has maintained that her baby was stillborn, gossip has gripped her town. I've been a local news reporter here for years, and in the week between Skylar's initial questioning and her arrest, I watched the local story shift from a tragic one of a teenage girl who committed a crime by burying her stillborn baby, to a salacious one of a teen murderer who gave birth to a live, full-term baby, then killed it and mutilated its corpse. Because of a gag order issued by the judge, Skylar, her parents, and both sides' lawyers have been barred from speaking about the case for most of its duration, and Skylar maintains that she won't speak publicly until her trial. But through interviews with her close family members and friends - and with those who accuse her of murder - I've pieced together what she says really happened.

The outrage first took hold on Facebook. Within days of Skylar's arrest and same-day release on bond, a closed Facebook group called "Justice For Baby Doe in Carlisle, Ohio" popped up, and another called "Justice For Baby Carlisle." "Our Goal here is to Support Justice for Baby Carlisle," the original description of the second group read. "Baby Carlisle is the newborn baby who was born Alive, then murdered, burned, and its charred bones buried in a shallow grave behind the 'Monster Mom's' House that belongs to her parents." (The names and descriptions of the groups have since been changed.)

The groups now have 1,396 and 952 members respectively. One of the admins, Terri Schneider, parks her car outside the Richardson home, armed with bottles of Coke and crackers, so she can take pictures of the family coming and going to post on the group page. "White SUV just pulled out of the garage," she posted on July 24 at 10:37 pm. Schneider did not return my request for comment, and Tiffany Cooke, the administrator of the other page, replied, "I don't want to be a part of your bullshit story."

The "murdered" and "charred bones" details came from an August 4 press conference, called by Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell. (The video has since been removed from his professional Facebook page.) Fornshell, who publicly identifies as "extraordinarily pro-life," announced that Skylar had been indicted for five felony charges: aggravated murder, involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment, tampering with evidence, and gross abuse of a corpse. He said he'd decided not to seek the death penalty, but the aggravated murder charge he's seeking could mean life in prison, as well as additional lengthy sentences for the other charges.

"Sometime during the night of May 6 to May 7, 2017, she did give birth to a newborn infant and that she caused the death of that infant," Fornshell says in the video. "To be frank with you, I'm not sure that we ever will be able to provide to you the exact medical cause of death, and the reason is because the child was after death burned and subsequently buried." He later adds that, because they couldn't determine a cause of death, he cannot not say with certainty that the baby was not burned alive.

In the same video, Fornshell implicates some involvement by Skylar's mother, Kim Richardson. "Skylar and her family, particularly her mother, were pretty obsessed with external appearances," he says. "You have a situation where she's a cute recent high school graduate, she was a cheerleader... I think that kind of perception is one that Skylar wanted to perpetuate and her mother wanted to perpetuate. …A lot of this, from my perspective in viewing this evidence, came down to a situation where if members of the community were to find out that the Richardson girl was pregnant and perhaps gave birth, and even if after giving birth gave that child up for adoption, that was something that simply was not going to be accepted in that household, at least by Skylar and her mother."

Three days after the press conference, the lawyer Skylar's family had hired, Charlie Rittgers, addressed the media. "Brooke Skylar Richardson did not kill her baby," he said, adding that he has seen no evidence "that supports the prosecutor's claim." He said the defense would hire its own independent experts to examine the baby's remains.

 

Skylar spent the weekend of August 4 in a single jail cell, awaiting her bail hearing on Monday. Her family says she was stoic as the police took her into custody. She drank the milk and juice that came with her meals but ate nothing. Skylar was used to this coping mechanism. Her body was trained to be hungry

Brooke Skylar Richardson was born on March 9, 1999, during a snowstorm about three years after Scott and Kim were married. She was an easy, quiet baby, and when her younger brother was born two and half years later, she loved being an older sibling. “She was and is the best big sister,” her aunt Vanessa says. “She was and is always so sweet and sensitive.”

Skylar met her best friend Annie in fourth grade (who asked me to identify her by her first name in order to avoid association with the murder trial). "I was bullied a lot, and Skylar was there for me," Annie, now 18, says. They did gymnastics together, and cheerleading. "When we were younger, we looked a lot alike…but I'm not as girly as she was."

Although they were always close, Annie says Skylar's bouncy positivity meant she usually kept her personal struggles quiet. In middle school, Skylar developed anorexia and bulimia. "She never told me even though I was her best friend," Annie says. "Like, I knew. It was very obvious. …There were times where you could see that she was struggling with herself… She would say, 'Oh, I can't have that, it's too many calories.'" Vanessa remembers a particular low point: Skylar nearly passed out from lack of nourishment during a cheer competition on her 16th birthday. Distraught by their daughter's illness, Kim and Scott signed her up for counseling and carefully monitored her diet. What appeared as overbearing mothering to outsiders, Vanessa says, was actually Kim desperately trying to keep her daughter healthy.

But Skylar's disorder persisted through high school. When she was really sick, Vanessa says, she would come out of the bathroom after clearly having made herself throw up, with red eyes, and smile. "She would come out and go, 'Oh, hi Aunt Vanessa. Can I help you do the dishes or anything?'" Vanessa says. "She's just that kind of person. She doesn't want to make you sad, so she acts happy even if she's struggling on the inside."

Friends, classmates, and family testify to Skylar's kindness, and especially her care for children, like the time she found out a girl in her grade didn't have a homecoming dress and asked her mom to anonymously donate money for a dress to the girl's teacher. Or the fact that she'd always bring coloring books and toys to family gatherings for the younger kids. Or her decision to take a high school job working with babies and children at the YMCA.

"She once texted us a picture of herself at her job at the Y holding a baby saying, 'Perks of work,'" Vanessa says. "We always thought that when she grew up, if she did something other than something with kids, it would be such a waste." One of Skylar's coworkers at the YMCA says Skylar was known as a "baby whisperer" because all the babies would stop crying when she rocked and sang to them.

Skylar didn't need a job - her family lived comfortably in Eagle Ridge, an upscale subdivision. Scott works as an accountant and Kim as an HR manager. Community members have cited the family's privilege as a sign they would do anything to maintain their image, noting Skylar's always-styled hair and the convertible she got for her 16th birthday. But Skylar's family says Kim started styling Skylar's hair to keep her confidence up while she struggled with her eating disorders, and her car is used - Jay says it's a 2004 with 178,000 miles on it.

When senior year rolled around, Skylar was excited about her future for the first time in a while. She was on student council and the honor roll, volunteered at a soup kitchen, and taught cheerleading to kids with disabilities. She'd been accepted to the University of Cincinnati, and planned to move onto campus as a freshman the next fall to study psychology.

After years of severely disordered eating, Skylar's family was relieved when she started putting on weight. She was more confident, and briefly dated a student from another school in the fall of 2016, then found Brandon, a guy who was a year younger at her school. They started dating in January 2017.

Brandon and Skylar's families say they don't believe Brandon was the father of the baby, and he says he never suspected she was pregnant. "She looked beautiful, we were hanging out every day," Brandon says. "I didn't notice anything." Annie also says she never thought Skylar was pregnant, despite seeing her nearly every day of senior year. "Skylar usually did wear tight clothes and there's nothing significant that I can remember," Annie says. "Like, even her saying, 'Oh I didn't get my period.' Now people say they knew, but no one knew."

When I asked one of Skylar's childhood friends, Taylor, 18, if Skylar's pregnancy was known around the school, she texted me, "I guess thinking back on it she kind of gained a little weight but at this age most people do, lol I know I did. I never assumed she was pregnant, it never crossed my mind. She was never the type to run around with people either."

Vanessa says their families went on a spring break trip together in late March of last year. "I saw her in a bikini and she in no way, shape, or form looked pregnant. At all," Vanessa says. "I was happy because I was like, 'Oh, she's met this nice boy. She doesn't care about how she looks anymore, doesn't care if she's getting thick.' I mean, the eating disorders were always horrible. So we were all like, 'Oh, yay! She's putting weight on.'"

On April 26, the week before her prom, Kim confirms that Skylar went to her first-ever gynecologist appointment with Dr. William Andrew at Hilltop OB-GYN. Her body had always menstruated erratically because of her eating, and she was concerned about the abnormally heavy periods with sporadic spotting she'd been experiencing over the past few months. Vanessa says that Kim had also noticed Skylar had been spending a lot of time with Brandon, and the two had discussed Skylar getting a prescription for birth control pills.

But at her appointment, after an examination, Dr. Andrew told Skylar that he could not prescribe her birth control because she was already approximately 32 weeks pregnant. According to Vanessa, who says she heard the story from Skylar after her arrest, Skylar left that appointment with a warning from her doctor: he would give her the birth control prescription so her mom wouldn't ask questions, but she should tell her parents about the pregnancy as soon as possible. When I reached out, Dr. Andrew said he is "not at liberty to discuss this issue at all."

After the appointment, according to Vanessa, Skylar seemed upset, but Kim didn't question her daughter. A young woman's first trip to the gynecologist can be stressful, she figured. They filled the birth control prescription and didn't discuss the appointment any further.

Prom was May 5, and Skylar and Brandon posed for pictures at the Richardsons' home before heading to the dance with friends. Vanessa sighs looking at the photo that went viral after the first reports about Skylar's case came out, the photo of Skylar in her tight-fitting prom dress just a day or two before she would give birth. "In hindsight, she does have a bump. We are hating ourselves for that now," she says. "But at the time, we just thought she was eating good and not making herself throw up. She looked curvy and radiant."

At prom, Skylar danced with Brandon and her friends. "Skylar asked me 'Do I look fat?' a couple of times and I said no, because I didn't think she looked fat," a friend of Skylar's from school, who wished to remain anonymous, says. "She's very pretty, and I told her she looked so beautiful."

Only Skylar knows for sure what happened about 36 hours later, when she says she gave birth to a lifeless baby in the middle of the night. Her mother, Kim, tells me that Skylar had woken up with some stomach pains and needed to go to the bathroom. When she went, the baby came out quickly. Shocked, Skylar looked for a pulse in its limp body, but couldn't find one. She wrapped the baby in a towel and cradled it for hours, crying. According to court documents filed by Rittgers and confirmed by Kim, sometime in the night, Skylar decided to name her baby Annabelle. "When she saw her, she thought of how pure and beautiful she was," Kim tells me. "I'd never heard the name before." Eventually, Skylar took the baby outside through the back door, found a shovel in the garage, and dug a small grave.

When I ask if the prosecutor's accusation that Skylar burned the body is accurate, Kim unequivocally says no. She does offer an explanation that might explain any ash in the tested remains: The family often burns boxes and other biodegradable trash in their backyard fire pit, Kim says, and, after prom, Skylar had dropped the then-wilting flowers Brandon had given her - a bunch of small sweetheart roses - into the pile of ash for the next burn. But as she dug Annabelle's grave, Skylar remembered the flowers, and retrieved them. Kim says Skylar recalled placing a pink rose on her grandmother's casket the year prior, and decided to do the same for the baby. "That was all she had to give her," Kim says, "and they were her favorite color: pink." Skylar covered her baby's body with the flowers - and the ash coating them - before scooping the dirt back over the grave.

Two doctors who were approached by the prosecution to testify to the condition of the baby's remains have now said they can't testify that the body was burned. The first, a forensic anthropologist named Dr. Elizabeth Murray, originally agreed the baby was burned, but later retracted that assessment. The second, Dr. Krista Latham, also a forensic anthropologist, has now reported that there were "no signs of burning" and further confirmed that she saw no evidence of trauma "that could be related to the cause of death of this individual," according to a court filing by Rittgers. Neither doctor responded to my requests for comment, and Fornshell replied that he didn't think it would be appropriate to comment on expert testimony.

Vanessa has played the details of Skylar's childbirth over and over in her head, trying to see how she could have missed it all. There was only one day she remembers between prom and graduation a couple weeks later when Skylar answered the door with red-rimmed eyes looking sick, but she said she wasn't feeling well and Vanessa let it go. Over the next two months, Skylar's friends and family say she didn't let on that anything was the matter - until July 12, when she went back to her gynecologist.

There, Vanessa says, Skylar told Dr. Andrew through tears that she had delivered a stillborn baby and buried it. Alarmed, he called another doctor into the room, and together they filed a report with the Ohio Department of Health, listing the date of death for the baby as May 7 and leaving the cause of death blank. The report was sent to the coroner's office, who alerted the police on July 14.

On August 10, six days after his press conference, Fornshell tweeted, "Victim in State v. Richardson will officially be referred to as Baby Jane Doe in legal proceedings. Testing has confirmed child was a girl," and the same day, Judge Donald Oda II issued a gag order on both sides' lawyers, Skylar, and her parents in order to preserve any remaining hope of an impartial jury. (Fornshell confirms the Richardson case will now be tried by first assistant prosecutors Steven T. Knippen and Julie Kraft. Both declined to comment.) On March 1 this year, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that they'd won a lawsuit to have the gag order lifted, but Skylar is still refusing interviews, and Rittgers has requested that the trial be moved away from Carlisle. "If the state had not voluntarily injected into the public sphere alleged facts that are contradicted by opinions of all the experts, state and defense, there would be no need for the motion for change in venue," Rittgers wrote.

Much of the town had already made up their minds. Cherie Martin Young and Karen Miller both belong to the Facebook group now called "Justice for Baby Carlisle (Annabelle)," and, early in the case, showed up at court appearances with handwritten signs that read "Abortion is legal. Murder is not." Calling themselves community informants, they say they'd write letters and make phone calls to the prosecutors and police, encouraging harsh punishment for Skylar and reporting on her comings and goings. Facebook group members delightedly picked apart new photos of the Richardsons' home or old photos of Skylar another member found online.

News of the harassment spread fast. One woman says she asked to be added to the Facebook group now called "Justice for Baby (Annabelle) in Carlisle, Ohio" because she "heard there was a crazy woman from our community stalking the Richardsons. I joined to see it was true and sure enough… I do not want any part of dealings with her," she says, referring to Terri Schneider, who regularly posts photos of the Richardsons' home. The woman says she remains in the group to keep an eye on her community. "People reveal a lot about themselves with the comments."

A young woman named Taylor - a classmate of Skylar's, and a different Taylor than the one quoted earlier in this article - is active in the "Justice for Baby (Annabelle) in Carlisle, Ohio" Facebook group. She's pro-life, she says, and echoes Fornshell's assertion that the baby was born alive and Skylar may have murdered the baby out of vanity. "I have heard stories of Skylar wrapping her belly with Saran wrap, taking water and diet pills and not eating just so that she can be a cheerleader," she says. "I think she could have definitely told someone, asked for help, we have safe haven laws. This was a baby, who if she lived, would be a human being, who could have been adopted and would have a chance at a life." Taylor says she ignores the "drama in the group," but reads the news articles and legal updates.

"She is hated in Carlisle," Taylor says of Skylar. "Really, her life is ruined. When you hurt someone, people want justice for the victim."

Ande Morris, a hairstylist in town and single mother with two small children, has known the Richardsons for 15 years - both Skylar and Kim get their hair done at her salon. Morris did Skylar's hair on the day of her prom, as she's done every year. She lives near the Richardsons and started calling friends with the news as soon as she saw the yellow tape go up around their home. She considers herself a friend of the family, but now she often sits on her friend's porch, from which they have a direct view of the Richardsons' house, and has taken pictures.

Morris spoke to the police after Skylar was arrested, and says they told her that "anything I say will be useful because at the end of the day there is a dead baby." She agreed to testify at the trial, and the prosecution added her to their list of subpoenaed witnesses, but even Morris was surprised when I told her I'd gotten her name from the state's list. "I didn't know anything more than anyone suspected," she says. "No one knows the truth." She excitedly told me via text that an official working on the case told her this case will be "as big as Casey Anthony's" and probably "a Lifetime movie."

Morris says she told investigators about a conversation she had with Kim at her hair salon. "She said that Skylar had the baby prom night," Morris says. "It was a girl. She had it in the toilet and was alone. Cord was around the neck and something was dis-attached. And she kept saying, 'I can't believe she did it alone.' I found it odd that she even told me." She texts me her extensive collection of pictures of Skylar and Brandon over the past year, which she found on Facebook and Instagram. She's tried to enlarge them digitally, she says, to study Skylar's stomach for a bump, and later for stretch marks.

"Skylar is a good girl. A sweet girl. If all these horrible things 'happened' …then why was she honest with her doctor? Then why did she tell the police where the baby was and talk before getting a lawyer? Most who are guilty won't speak at all before getting a lawyer. None of it makes any sense," Morris says. "She couldn't have done it." But she recalls Fornshell's implication that Kim could've somehow been involved, and sees some truth to that.

A few weeks after talking with Morris on October 23, I contacted Fornshell for comment on her quotes and her status as a witness. Due to the gag order, he couldn't speak to Morris's status directly, but wrote in an email, "Oftentimes in high-profile cases, people… may think they are key witnesses or critical witnesses just by virtue of the fact that they had discussions with police or our office or received a subpoena. That doesn't mean that we find them credible or that they have information relevant to proving the charges." Then, just before a routine hearing in December, Fornshell emailed me to say that, because Morris's statements to me about testifying because she thinks the trial will be infamous are considered "Brady material" - in this case, information that calls a witness's credibility into question - he has no choice but to pass the information on to the defense. Morris has since been removed from the state's witness list.

The Richardsons maintain that it was Fornshell's press conference video that spread sensational, unproven details around social media, and got people like Morris riled up over the case. Morris, who says she posts in the Facebook groups under an alias, admits that the story's inherent salaciousness was attractive to her. "I think if Skylar wasn't pretty, picture perfect and her family didn't live in a nice house, the media wouldn't have gone so far with it at all," Morris says. "Social media is so terrible."

Skylar's 19th birthday was this past weekend, and Kim says Terri Schneider sat outside their home while family members came to the house to wish Skylar well. (Members of Schneider's Facebook group chastised her for not posting any photos.) While the Richardsons' next-door neighbors are supportive, Kim says others in the neighborhood walk by and scream, "Baby killer!" if they spot Skylar on the porch. When some come onto the lawn to try to get videos and photos of Skylar, her parents, or just the house, to sell to the media, Kim goes out onto the porch to ask them to leave her family alone.

"I think the town loves the drama. It's little Carlisle and nothing exciting ever happened here, so when one little thing happens, people are taking it and going crazy with it," Annie says. "The part that really bugs me the most about this whole thing is that …people are in love with the idea of Skylar being a bad person even though she is not. …They want entertainment, and it's sick because it's her life that's entertaining them. They don't think about the fact that she is a human being and she has feelings and she is not a show for them. Skylar is no danger to anyone."

Last fall, Annie started college in a nearby state. She's reached out to Skylar and tried to be there for her, she says, but it's hard to find the right thing to say when her best friend is awaiting a murder trial. "She is just sad," Annie says, "I just feel bad for her. She's my friend she deserves to be at college experiencing everything that we are experiencing."

Brandon, whom Skylar is still dating and who, according to court records, has been subpoenaed for the trial, says he's standing by her "200 percent." "I believe her. I am not going anywhere," he says. Vanessa tells me that he and his parents visit almost daily while she's on house arrest, and Skylar's family rarely leaves her side. Vanessa says the topic that comes up most will sound strikingly normal to any woman who has suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth: grief and self-blame. "She keeps wrestling with the distressing idea that she may have somehow caused the baby to be born stillborn," says Vanessa, who wonders if Skylar talked about that in front of the police. It's possible, she thinks, that investigators "twisted that around to prove that she is guilty of murder."

The trial, originally scheduled for November 2017, is now set to take place April 16 in the Warren County Common Pleas Court. Although his initial request to have the location of the trial changed was denied, Rittgers has filed another request in hopes of finding an unbiased jury. "We just want a fair trial for our daughter. She was vilified by the prosecutor prior to the gag order and our attorneys have not been allowed to respond," Kim and Scott tell me. "We know that many of the statements in the prosecutor's press conference were found to be false after further investigation and we know that Skylar would never harm a child."

Skylar, Vanessa says, knows she might've done something wrong by burying the baby in the yard. "She got scared," Vanessa explains. "She should not have buried her. But that's not murder." When I spoke with her last week, Vanessa said the family has requested that Annabelle's remains be returned to them. She said Skylar wants to have a proper funeral for her daughter, this time surrounded by family.


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