In a shocking case that has spanned over two years, the Suffolk County District Attorney, Kevin Hayden, has announced that no charges will be filed in relation to the discovery of four infant bodies found in a freezer in a Boston home. The gruesome discovery was made on November 17, 2022, when police responded to a call about a possible infant body in a freezer in a house on East Broadway in South Boston. The officers were met with a horrifying scene as they found not one, but four infants, two boys and two girls, frozen solid in the freezer.
The infants were found in shoe boxes, wrapped in tin foil, with their umbilical cords still attached. The two female infants also had their placentas attached. According to Hayden, all four infants were full term, between 37 and 40 weeks of gestational age. DNA tests confirmed that the infants were siblings.
The owner of the apartment, 69-year-old Alexis Aldamir, who had moved from Maryland to Massachusetts in the early 1970s, was identified as the mother of the infants. Aldamir, who had purchased the apartment in 1983, was located in a residential health care facility where she provided a DNA sample to investigators under a court order.
Despite the shocking discovery, investigators faced significant challenges in proving a crime had been committed. Autopsies showed no signs of internal or external trauma or obvious injuries, and the infants’ stomachs were empty. The cause of death was undetermined, and it was not definitively proven whether the infants were born alive or were stillborn.
Further complicating the case, DNA evidence revealed that the father of the infants had died in 2011. Aldamir had given birth to a baby girl in April 1982, and it was later discovered that she had a total of five children with the same man, one of whom was given up for adoption.
The case presented a unique challenge for investigators. To prove a homicide, it must be established that the victim was alive, and a cause of death must be determined by a medical examiner. With no definitive proof that the infants were ever alive and no cause or manner of death listed, the investigation hit a dead end.
Adding to the complexity, Aldamir was deemed unfit for trial. When questioned about the infants, she appeared confused and was unable to provide investigators with any significant information. A probate lawyer confirmed that Aldamir would almost certainly be unable to stand trial due to her state.
In a statement, Hayden described the case as “the most complex, unusual and perplexing” his office had ever encountered. He concluded that the prosecutor’s office could not ethically move forward with a case that it believed it could not bring to trial. As such, the investigation will not result in criminal charges.