A Makeshift Tomb
One of Huntsman’s surviving children made the macabre discovery as she was helping her dad clean out the garage so he could move, detectives said. She found the remains of the first dead infant wrapped in a blanket, placed in a plastic bag, and concealed in a box within a box.
Investigators recovered six more dead newborns hidden in a similar fashion in the garage-turned-makeshift tomb.
“Once they started finding other babies, it just got more and more devastating,” Roberts recalls.
Huntsman confessed to investigators that between 1996 and 2006, she secretly gave birth to seven babies, claiming one was stillborn. Of the six, she choked or suffocated them to death seconds after they were born, police said.
Testing confirmed that all the infants—five boys and two girls—were fathered by West, although he alleged he had no knowledge of these pregnancies and only discovered the corpses after returning home following an eight-year stint in federal prison on meth charges, according to authorities.
“How can a guy have a wife pregnant seven times in his house and not know?” Roberts wonders. “That's crazy. I didn’t buy it, not for a second.”
Still, Roberts says there wasn’t enough evidence to charge West in connection with the serial murders.
West has never spoken publicly about the incident and didn’t respond to A&E Crime + Investigation’s requests for comment.
Why Did Megan Huntsman Kill Her Babies?
Megan Huntsman and Darren West already shared three children when she killed their first baby in 1996.
“She would put a hair tie around their neck, tighten it up and choke them to death” before hiding them in the garage, Roberts says.
At other times, she would manually strangle the infants using her fingers.
Roberts says the couple got deep into meth and speculates the combination of drugs, alcohol and their spiraling marriage were contributing factors in the slayings.
Huntsman admitted to police that addiction and depression drove her to murder moments after each home delivery.
“These cases really are the product of an accumulation or interaction of risk factors,” Dr. Mindy Mechanic, a psychologist and expert on neonaticide, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
Neonaticide is the deliberate act of a parent murdering their infant less than 24 hours after their birth.
“There are cases where there's postpartum psychosis immediately after giving birth, and it leaves the mother experiencing delusions and hallucinations, and the killing is committed as the product of that disturbed, psychotic mental process, which is usually temporary,” Mechanic says.
Additionally, “other mental illness, socio-environmental factors like poverty, lack of education, substance abuse, problems in relationships and a lack of support” may have also played a part in Huntsman’s deadly decision making, Mechanic surmises.
“Neonaticide, let alone serial neonaticide, is really rare, so it makes it extremely difficult to systematically study,” she says, but “once you get to more than five [murders], it starts to take on a different complexion and may have more of the undertones of premeditation."
Where Is Megan Huntsman Now?
According to police, Huntsman had her first two living children with West before they both started regularly using hard drugs. By the third, Huntsman was addicted to meth, but her pregnancy was public, and she had to follow through with birthing and raising the child.
Later forced to choose between meth and her babies, she chose the former, and every pregnancy thereafter was kept a secret, police alleged.
"In some small way, I wanted to help them avoid the terrible life I would have given them," Huntsman said in a statement read by defense attorney Anthony Howell during her sentencing in April 2015. "I deprived my little babies of the opportunity of life."
Howell said his client had a “rough go” of adult life and was trapped in an unstable marriage marred by addiction, while prosecutor Jeff Buhman described Huntsman as “a woman who was remarkably, unbelievably, incredibly indifferent and callous.”
Despite her purported shortcomings, two of her surviving daughters supported their mom during the court case.
"Nobody could guess my mom would do anything like this," they wrote in a letter read in court. "No matter what anyone thinks you are, you are a good person."
Huntsman pleaded guilty to six counts of murder.
“I've seen a lot of weird stuff—bad stuff—but never this,” Roberts says of his nearly 30 years as a cop. “It's just evil.”
She will be eligible for parole in 2064.
