A Wampum man is in the Lawrence County jail one year after local law enforcement authorities allege that he killed a newborn boy and a covered up the death.
Investigators allege that Christopher Lee Kennedy, 38, of 536 Oswald St., had repeated sex with a teen since she was around 13, impregnated her at age 16, killed their newborn infant by strangling him, encased him in cement inside a metal safe and hid it in a closet.
The probe has been unfolding for more than a year. During that time, the teen lay hovering between life and death in a hospital as the result of the horrific occurrences, according to District Attorney Joshua Lamancusa, whose agency led the investigation in partnership with the Ellwood City Police Department.
Interviews with the girl, her father and stepmother culminated with Kennedy's arrest around 6 p.m. Wednesday on a multitude of charges including homicide, sexual assault, abuse of a corpse and other offenses. He was found at a house on Shady Grove Lane in Wilmington Township, where he was visiting. The Neshannock Township police assisted in arresting him.
Kennedy was arraigned around 10 p.m. Wednesday by District Judge Jerry Cartwright and is in the Lawrence County jail without bond.
Police say they learned through their investigation that Kennedy had fathered seven other children and that three of the eight are deceased.
Lamancusa said the investigation is ongoing.
According to a criminal complaint, the Ellwood City police received information on Nov. 13, 2017, from UPMC Children's Hospital that a juvenile patient had been sexually assaulted, and the hospital system police advised that Kennedy was the alleged offender. The police also were advised that the teen recently had given birth to Kennedy's baby at her home on Todd Avenue, where she lived with her father and stepmother, and that the baby had been hidden in a box in a bedroom closet.
The Ellwood City police in turn contacted the district attorney's office, and detectives went to the house, where the girl's father allowed them to check the bedroom closet. They opened the closet, the report said, where they found a blue plastic tote with a plastic garbage bag inside of it that contained a black Sentry safe. They noted a strong odor coming from inside.
Investigators obtained a search warrant for the safe and its contents, paint and carpet samples, garments, sheets and towels. The police also seized a perfume bottle and collected samples of blood droplets found.
Because of the odor, detectives contacted Noga Ambulance Service to transport the safe to the Beaver County medical examiner's office at Heritage Valley Health Center in Beaver. The safe was opened Nov. 14, 2017, and police noted in the report that it appeared to be filled with an unknown fluid that contained a rocky substance, later identified as cement and acrylic caulking sealer.
The police pried the cement from the safe and found three plastic bags inside that contained the remains of an 18 1/2-inch, brown-haired baby boy, which were wrapped in a towel, the report said.
The teen was hospitalized Oct. 23, 2017, and police through questioning learned she had given birth to the baby on Oct. 9. She subsequently fell gravely ill and was breathing by a ventilator for about two weeks upon her earliest admission to Children's Hospital. She remained ill throughout the past year, due to her ingesting quantities of herbal supplements and medications at Kennedy's direction and not receiving proper medical care, according to the criminal complaint.
She also has undergone about 35 operations and was hospitalized for about eight months, and she continues to receive medical treatment, the police reported.
"This was a joint effort between the Ellwood City police and the D.A.' s detective bureau," Vincent Martwinski, district attorney's head detective, said Thursday. "The reason it was so long was because the juvenile victim was so sick. She was hospitalized for so many months out of the entire year. We knew it was his child."
He said that at first she gave a different story to the police, and that she had been coached. But a comment made by someone at the hospital opened up the real story and she agreed to take a lie detector test, Martwinski said.
"She did pass the polygraph test to confirm it all," he said.
Regarding Kennedy's other deceased children, Martwinski said, "we're going to look into the circumstances of the other children's deaths and possibly the autopsy reports."
In an interview with the teen Nov. 15 in the presence of her father, the teen told police that Kennedy was the father of the child and that they had a relationship for three years, according to the complaint. She told investigators that when Kennedy found out she was pregnant, he told her they couldn't have the baby because he would get into trouble because she was a minor, the police report alleges.
She reportedly told police that Kennedy had bought her various vitamins and herb supplements, including black cohosh, to try to abort the baby. Black cohosh is known to be highly toxic to pregnant women and mothers who are breast-feeding, according to the paperwork.
The teen reportedly told investigators that Kennedy made her take the pills in September and asked her to take amoxicillin and told her the baby "needed to go."
At first, she told police that she had killed the baby, but during a follow-up interview and the lie detector test, she told detectives that they baby was born alive, the report states. She said Kennedy was with her, that he choked the baby to death, allegedly cutting the umbilical cord and squeezing the baby's neck until it was lifeless, police reported.
She told the detectives that the baby and placenta were placed in a gym bag, then she showered and went to lie down on the couch downstairs, the report said.
The teen also told police said she and Kennedy had been involved in a physical relationship that increased to a regular basis as time went on.
Kennedy is charged with one count each of criminal homicide, criminal conspiracy to commit criminal homicide, criminal attempt to commit murder of an unborn child, criminal attempt to commit aggravated assault of an unborn child, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, concealing the death of a child, abuses of a corpse, recklessly endangering another person, tampering with physical evidence and two counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.