Nancy Ortiz, the Orosi woman on trial for murder in the death of her abandoned infant, wept alone in her room when she learned the baby girl had died.
"I went home and I cried," Ortiz, 24, said Tuesday during her trial in Tulare County Superior Court. "I couldn't believe what happened."
She said she learned of the death after going outside and hearing neighbors exclaim, "The baby is dead!"
Taking the stand, a sobbing Ortiz said she hid her pregnancy from her parents and sister and gave birth in her room. Two days later, on Dec. 3, 2006, Ortiz wrapped the baby in a black sweater and put her into the back of a pickup parked down the street.
She expected the new baby would be found by the homeowner; two other infants that she had abandoned in the neighborhood in 2005 and 2006 had been found in time.
This is the Orosi home of 24-year-old Nancy Ortiz, who is accused in the death and abandonment of one infant and the abandonment of two other infants, all of whom were found in the neighborhood.
Nancy Ortiz
But this time the discovery came too late, and the infant girl died of exposure.
Under questioning by her attorney, Michelle Winspur, Ortiz said she did not intend for the baby to die.
Later, under intense questioning by prosecutor Janet Wise, Ortiz said, "It's not that I didn't want it, I just couldn't take care of it."
The dead infant was the third baby abandoned in Orosi. Stumped authorities got a tip that led them to Ortiz, who confessed that the babies were hers.
Ortiz, who kept her first two babies, testified that she hid her last three pregnancies from everyone except her boyfriends. In each abandonment, "I was thinking this baby deserves a better life" than what she could give, she said.
She said she was emotionally torn by knowing that her boyfriend, who had no job and beat her constantly when he wasn't in jail, didn't want her to have more children -- she already had two with him -- while her mother would make her keep any new children.
Ortiz said she got into drugs and gave birth to her first child when she was 17. She never thought about birth control because she often was high on drugs, she said.
Her father was so angry when he learned of his favorite daughter's pregnancy that he attacked her and tried to kick her out of the house, and hardly spoke to her after that, said her older sister, Bettina Ortiz, who also testified Tuesday.
The first two times she abandoned her newborns, Nancy Ortiz said, she watched from her home to make sure the babies were found by a homeowner when they came outside.
Ortiz said she hid her pregnancies by wearing baggy clothes.
The trial continues today.
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