Mom Found Guilty Of Attempted Murder

Woman Who Left Baby In Trash Could Face 30 Years

May 06, 1997|By Desiree Chen, Tribune Staff Writer.

In the time it takes to see a movie, a jury reviewed the events that unfolded around a baby known as Mary Grace and on Monday found her mother, Germaine Hovland, guilty of attempted first-degree murder.

Hovland, 36, closed her eyes and put her face in her hands as the verdict was read Monday evening in the Rolling Meadows courtroom of Cook County Circuit Judge Brendan McCooey.

The seven-woman, five-man jury took just more than two hours to agree that Hovland intended to kill the blond, blue-eyed girl she had given birth to hours earlier.

In October 1995 Hovland put the baby in a white plastic garbage bag and placed the bag in a large trash bin behind Columbia Hoffman Estates Medical Center.

"This just goes to show that justice will be done," said Assistant State's Atty. Lawrence Spector. "There was no reason to do what she did unless it was to hide the baby from the world."

Hovland's attorney, Dennis Born, indicated that he would appeal the verdict.

From the beginning, both sides agreed on this much: On the morning of Oct. 16, 1995, Hovland gave birth alone in her Elk Grove Village apartment to a baby girl.

Hovland cleaned and fed the baby and stayed with her for several hours. That afternoon, she drove around with the baby and ended up at the hospital.

She wrapped the baby girl in a bath towel, put the bundle in a plastic bag, tied the top twice and put it in the trash bin.

A construction boss heard an infant crying faintly and summoned help. Nurses rescued the infant and named her Baby Mary Grace.

Both sides used these events to draw the jurors toward opposite conclusions.

Prosecutors said Hovland meant all along to kill her child in order to preserve the string of lies she told to keep secret her pregnancy, the result of a brief affair.

She told her husband, her children by another marriage and her co-workers that she had cancer, and that her steady weight gain was the result of cancer treatments.

"She didn't want this child," said Assistant State's Atty. Marilyn Hite Ross during closing arguments Monday morning. "This child would break wide open all the lies she told from conception up until the time she got arrested."

Hite Ross said the only reason Hovland cleaned the baby was to remove any body fluids police might use to trace the baby to her mother.

The only reason Hovland fed the baby was to keep her quiet and prevent someone in her apartment complex from discovering her, Hite Ross said.

But Hovland's attorney, Dennis Born, used some of the same events to portray how much Hovland, in her own panicked way, cared about the baby.

"Was there any evidence that for the six hours Miss Hovland stayed in her apartment holding that baby, feeding that baby, that there was any intent other than to bring this child safely into the world?" Born said during his closing arguments.

"If her intent was to kill her baby, why not then? Why not simply take the baby out and dispose of it? But what did she do? She drove to a hospital and ended up 100 yards away from an entrance to an emergency room."

Placing the baby in the trash bag, tying the handles at the top to leave an opening for air, and placing the bag on top of a pile of debris rather than down in the trash bin, were Hovland's ways of ensuring that nothing would fall on the baby and that the baby would be discovered, Born said.

"Do you bring somebody to an emergency room if your intent is to take that person's life?" Born said. "Put yourself in Germaine Hovland's position. Think about what she's feeling."

The jury was asked to find whether Hovland was not guilty, guilty of endangering the life or health of a child, or guilty of attempted first-degree murder.

It was those facts--that Hovland had the baby in secret, put the baby in a plastic bag and knotted the top, and put the bag in a trash bin--that convinced jurors like Khaldun Everage, 26, of Chicago to find Hovland guilty of the most serious charge.

"That's all we needed," Everage said after the verdict. "It was just the facts, really."

Juror Carmen Browne, 43, of Chicago said, "I think if it hadn't been for the fact that the bag was tied twice and put in a Dumpster, maybe I could have gone with endangerment. But the bag was tied twice."

The baby is in the custody of her biological father.

Hovland is scheduled to be sentenced on June 3. She could receive a maximum of 30 years in prison.

"There's no other (verdict) to be justified," Hite Ross said after the verdict was read. "People are getting away with killing their children. Fortunately, this child did not die."