As Crown Counsel Patti Tomasson described the partial remains of a baby boy discovered by police at the Burns Bog landfill in Delta last year, Surrey's Courtny Dawn Taylor showed no emotion on her face, save for a long, deep, blink.
Taylor appeared before Richmond provincial court Judge Jodie Werier for a sentencing hearing on Friday morning after pleading guilty to concealing the body of a child and interference with a dead body.
For the first time, complete details about the case were revealed to the public.
According to the statement of facts agreed to by the Crown and defence, Taylor gave birth to a full-term baby boy in the bathroom of her boyfriend's Richmond home on Jan. 31, 2010.
She claims the baby was born with its umbilical cord wrapped around its neck, and that it was not moving or breathing, its face purply blue.
She used a pair of scissors to cut the umbilical cord, tied it off, then wrapped the baby in a towel, cleaned up the blood in the bathroom, and then awoke her sleeping boyfriend to tell him she'd had a miscarriage.
Worried that the decomposing body would begin to smell, she suggested that they throw the body into the garbage, and half a day later placed the remains in a dumpster at a school about a block-and-a-half away.
According to the Crown, Taylor missed only one shift at work, and continued to go out socially, including going to the casino, in the days that followed.
When her coworkers noticed her stomach had become smaller, she confided in one of them that she'd had a miscarriage.
"It was like a giant blood clot," Taylor said to one coworker. It was another coworker who called in the police.
Following a three-day search, police found the lower part of the baby's body, including its abdomen, legs and feet, but nothing else at the landfill.
A pathologist found that the remains had suffered post-mortem trauma, possibly caused by a trash compactor. The infant's cause of death could not be determined.
During an interview with investigators, Taylor claimed she'd taken pregnancy tests in May and August of 2009, but they came back negative.
When asked if she tried to hide the pregnancy, she allegedly told the investigator: "Yeah, just because I didn't know what to do. I was really worried about what people would think."
Whether Taylor really knew she was pregnant appears to be a contentious issue.
Tomasson said the Crown submits Taylor knew she was pregnant for many months.
In handing in the agreed statement of facts, Tomasson also submitted the transcripts of the interview with Taylor, her boyfriend, as well as a doctor who saw Taylor for a cold complaint late during her pregnancy.
Judge Werier questioned why the transcripts were being submitted to her, rather than just the statement of facts, which don't substantiate that Taylor knew about her pregnancy prior to two days before she gave birth.
Those arguments continued in court on Friday, after The Review's deadline.
Based on the court cases she referred to in court, Tomasson appears to want Taylor to receive a jail sentence, either in custody or in the form of a conditional sentence to be served at home.
She said the fact that Taylor disposed of the body in the way she did, impeded the police's investigation into the baby's cause of death, and any criminal charges that may flow from that.
Tomasson said she'd be seeking a court order that Taylor be required to notify the court should she become pregnant again.
Meanwhile, Taylor's lawyer, Chandra Corriveau, referred to a 2003 case before Richmond provincial court Judge Ron Fratkin in which he handed down a conditional discharge under apparently similar circumstances. But that case has been sealed, and Corriveau is seeking to have it unsealed.
Judge Werier declined to unseal the case without knowing the reasons for why that case was sealed, and suggested Tomasson make an application to Judge Fratkin directly.
Taylor was repeatedly asked by family, including her mother, and friends, including her boyfriend, if she was pregnant, but she continued to deny it.
She initially told her boss she was ill, with a cancerous tumor and that's why she was gaining weight.
She also claimed to have an ovarian cyst.
Her boyfriend has not been charged.