A woman who killed her newborn and threw the baby’s body away in a California dumpster was caught — and sentenced to six years in prison — after new DNA technology and a Costco receipt tied her to the case.
In May 2009, a man collecting recycling was digging through a dumpster at an apartment complex in Union City, about 30 miles south of San Francisco, and discovered the body of a newborn baby girl, SFGate reported.
Police interviewed residents of the apartment building and identified a physical therapist, Angela Beth Onduto, as a possible person of interest because she was in her 30s at the time.
However, without additional evidence, authorities were unable to charge her with a crime. The investigation remained open until last year, when detectives used new DNA technology to confirm Onduto was a parental match for the baby and arrested her.
Additionally, a Costco receipt found in the dumpster tied her to the scene, police said.
After the baby girl was found, Union City police named her Matea Esperanza and paid for her gravesite at the Chapel of the Chimes, a cemetery in Oakland.
However, 17 years later, Onduto “expressed no remorse,” detectives wrote in a charging document, SFGate reports. Authorities have not shared the identity of the baby’s father.
After her arrest last year, she was extradited to Almeda County to face murder charges. While the legal proceedings were underway, a county judge revoked her medical license to practice physical therapy.
Onduto’s lawyers argued the case had nothing to do with her career as a physical therapist, and that she had “labored for hours overnight and gave birth alone in her bathtub, then drowned the baby almost immediately post-partum,” according to The Mercury News.
In April, Onduto, who is now 47, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter, meaning she will accept the punishment for the crime even though she did not plead guilty.
She was sentenced last week to six years in state prison.
Court records show she has been credited with a year already served, plus an additional 54 days for good conduct. She is being held at the Santa Rita Jail.
