Pregnant Woman Dead, Baby Taken

Authorities have conducted DNA tests on a baby boy to confirm what they already suspect that he was stolen from his slain mother's womb by another woman, who passed the baby off as her own until she killed herself under police scrutiny.

The bizarre tragedy was uncovered on Tuesday, when police arrived at the home of Michelle Bica to ask her about the week-old disappearance of Theresa Andrews, who lived a few blocks away. Before police could reach her, Bica shot herself to death, and an eight-pound, 6-ounce baby boy was found in her home.

The body of Andrews, 23, was found buried in Bica's dirt-floor garage. Portage County Coroner Roger Marcial said Tuesday night that Andrews had been shot in the back before her baby was taken sliced from his mother's womb.

Andrews' grieving husband, Jon, was awaiting DNA tests to confirm that the healthy infant is his son. The results of those tests could come Wednesday, said Andrews' attorney, Nicholas Phillips.

Mr. Andrews spent Tuesday at Robinson Memorial Hospital with friends and family as they watched over the baby. Mrs. Andrews' due date was Wednesday.

"He's a long way from facing reality," Phillips said of his client. "It's such a difficult, unique situation where you're enjoying your newborn son and mourning the loss of your wife."

Andrews, who vanished a week before her due date, had a horizontal cut on her abdomen, which is "the only way to have gotten the baby out," Marcial said Tuesday.

Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci said the baby probably was born Sept. 27, the day Andrews disappeared.

There was no indication whether the women had known each other. A series of cellular phone calls to the Andrews' house led police to Bica.

On Monday, they questioned Bica, 39, about the calls she made on Sept. 27. When police returned that night, they heard what sounded like a gunshot and Bica's husband, Thomas, shouting her name. Her body was found in an upstairs bedroom.

Thomas Bica, 41, a corrections officer for the county sheriff, was questioned and released Tuesday. He met his wife in 1994 as she served a jail sentence for receiving stolen property, Vigluicci said.

On the day she disappeared, Andrews had paged her husband at work and said a woman had called inquiring about a 1999 Jeep Wrangler they were trying to sell.

Jon Andrews, a sheet-metal worker, told police that he called home at lunch to see how the potential sale went but no one answered. When he got home at 4:30 p.m., the house was open, the vehicle gone and his wife missing. Police found the vehicle about a block away and later found the Jeep keys in Bica's purse.

The two couples lived about four blocks apart in this city of about 12,000, 30 miles southeast of Cleveland.

Ralph Reaser, 39, who lives next door to the Bicas, said Bica told him last week that she had just had a baby. At a nearby drug store, clerks were talking Tuesday about how Thomas Bica was in the store a couple of days agboasting about how his wife just had a baby boy.

Mike Edgell, 22, who lives across the street from the Bicas, said that about three months ago Bica told him she was finishing painting the nursery in their house.

"I saw her not that long ago. She looked to me as if she was pregnant," Edgell said. "We were excited for them because they were having a baby. And now we find out this. It's hard to believe."

A similar case occurred 13 years ago in Albuquerque, N.M., when a woman faked a pregnancy, then abducted and strangled Cindy Ray, 23, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant. Darci Pierce used a car key to cut the baby from the womb and tried to pass the child off as her own. Pierce was found guilty but mentally ill; the baby was returned to Ray's husband.

In suburban Chicago in 1995, a woman and two of her children were killed, and her unborn child was slashed from her womb because another woman wanted the baby. The infant boy survived.

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