An Ohio woman pleaded guilty this week to the aggravated murder of her 4-month-old son and was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison.
Melissa Thorp, 40, entered the guilty plea on Thursday in Franklin County Common Pleas Court. Judge Julie Lynch then handed down the sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
Columbus police were called to a home on September 12, 2022, and found the infant, Aaron Thorp, dead, as CrimeOnline reported. The body was in a state of decomposition, and Thorp was charged with murder.
The Franklin County Coroner’s Office conducted an autopsy the next day and determined the boy’s skull had been “crushed through blunt force trauma or by being crushed between two objects.”
A public defender told the court that Thorp had been in a recovery program and unaware that she was pregnant until she delivered the boy on her own, thinking the baby was a kidney stone.
Investigators were unable to determine just how long the boy had been dead. Thorp told police he had been fine the night before, but investigators said the decomposition made it more likely that he had been dead for several days, the Dispatch said.
