Investigators say phone evidence and court testimony deepened the case against Anne Mae Demegillo, who is scheduled to be arraigned April 21.
BUNNELL, Fla. — A Flagler County grand jury has indicted Anne Mae Demegillo, a 20-year-old Palm Coast woman, on first-degree murder and two other charges after investigators said she gave birth at home in March and let her newborn drown in a toilet.
The indictment raises the stakes in a case that began with an aggravated manslaughter arrest and later expanded as detectives reviewed phones, medical findings and hearing testimony. Authorities say Demegillo hid the infant’s body, went out for part of the day, and later buried the baby in her backyard. Prosecutors now say the record supports a premeditated murder charge, while the defense has previously argued that the episode was isolated and that Demegillo was not in the right state of mind after giving birth.
According to the sheriff’s office, the case started with a welfare check around 4 a.m. Friday, March 6, after a friend told dispatchers that Demegillo had sent messages saying she had secretly been pregnant, had given birth at home and had done something to the baby. Deputies went to the Palm Coast home and met Demegillo, who told them she had begun having severe abdominal pain around 3 a.m. the day before, on March 5, and delivered the child in her bathroom toilet. Investigators said the baby was born alive and crying. Demegillo later told deputies she believed the infant was dead, hid the body in a duffel bag in her closet and continued with her day. Local investigators said she later went to a theater performance in New Smyrna Beach, returned home around 10 p.m. and buried the baby in a shallow grave in the backyard. Chief Deputy Joe Barile said at an early briefing, “It baffles me, to be completely honest.”
Over the next month, detectives said, the case changed as more evidence came in. The sheriff’s office said investigators found searches on Demegillo’s phone for “newborn premature babies,” “Palm Coast OBGYN” and “foods to decrease fertility.” Detectives also reported finding images of Casey Anthony and newborn babies on the phone. In the sheriff’s telling, that material suggested Demegillo had looked at child death cases and what comes after them, a claim that has not yet been tested in court. At a March 12 hearing, Detective Shannon Smith said the baby’s nose was partly under water while the child cried and Demegillo cleaned blood in the bathroom because she did not want her mother to find out what had happened. Smith also testified that when she asked Demegillo whether she had hoped that outcome would occur, Demegillo answered, “A little bit.” Smith said the newborn girl weighed about 3 pounds, 6 ounces, measured 18.7 inches and was estimated to be 30 to 36 weeks gestational age. Smith said hemorrhaging on the head and buttocks indicated the baby was alive at birth, and Sheriff Rick Staly said preliminary medical examiner findings showed drowning.
Public accounts of the case also show why prosecutors and the defense may keep fighting over Demegillo’s state of mind. Deputies said at first that no one else appeared to know she was pregnant and that her mother was home during the birth. The sheriff’s office said Demegillo initially told deputies she was not sure she was pregnant. Later, at the March 12 hearing, Smith testified that Demegillo had admitted she missed a couple of periods and assumed she was pregnant but did not want to face it. That split matters because it goes to intent, planning and what she understood before the birth. The scene described by investigators also became part of the public record. Barile said deputies found the infant wrapped in a towel in a grave so shallow that only about four to five inches of dirt had to be removed. He also said Demegillo had performed in the musical “Anything Goes” in New Smyrna Beach after the birth. Sheriff officials called the case a community shock and later pointed to Florida’s Safe Haven Law and Palm Coast’s Safe Haven Baby Box at Fire Station 25 as part of the broader local context after the arrest.
The legal path has shifted quickly. Demegillo was first arrested March 6 on an aggravated manslaughter count. At a March 12 hearing, State Prosecutor Andrew Urbanak argued she should stay jailed, saying investigators believed she had cleaned the bathroom, hidden the baby in a closet and buried the body, steps he said showed destruction of evidence and danger to the community. Defense lawyer Michael Politis pushed back, describing the episode as isolated and arguing that Demegillo did not pose an ongoing threat. Judge Dawn Nichols denied the state’s request for pretrial detention and set bond at $250,000. Conditions reported at the time included GPS monitoring, surrender of her passport and no contact with minors. Records cited by local television showed she left jail later that day. That changed on April 6, when the Flagler County grand jury returned what prosecutors called a true bill charging first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated child abuse and failure to report a death with intent to conceal it or alter evidence. The state attorney’s office identified Assistant State Attorney Andrew Urbanak as the assigned prosecutor. After the indictment, the sheriff said Demegillo turned herself in and would be held without bond pending another hearing.
The public response has mixed grief, disbelief and hard legal language. Staly called the case “tragic” and said it was difficult to understand how a mother could watch an infant drown instead of lifting the baby out of the toilet. Barile, speaking earlier in the investigation, said, “Sometimes you can’t explain everything.” Prosecutors used even sharper language in court, arguing that the child took both her first and last breath in the toilet bowl. Politis, by contrast, told the court that there was no diagnosed mental condition in the record but said something was “obviously” wrong and urged the judge to view the incident as a single episode, not a wider threat. Those competing frames now sit beside the physical details of the case: the welfare check before dawn, the backyard grave, the duffel bag in the closet, the theater trip, and the phone evidence that detectives say changed how they understood the death. The unanswered questions are now mostly legal ones, including how the defense will challenge the phone evidence and hearing testimony once the case moves deeper into court.
As of Tuesday, Demegillo remained in custody at the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility, and the next public milestone in the case is her April 21 arraignment in Flagler County. The charges are now set; the court fight over what they prove is only beginning.
Author note: Last updated April 8, 2026.