Sheriff says DNA links woman to babies' remains
FORT WORTH — A 36-year-old woman identified through DNA as the mother of three babies whose decomposed remains were found in rural northern Texas under a mobile home porch and nearby has been arrested, Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said.
Rachel Lynnette New, arrested Thursday, faces three charges of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, sheriff's spokesman Terry Grisham said.
Grisham told The Associated Press on Friday that New had been released on $70,000 bond.
Grisham did not know if she had an attorney. A phone number for New could not be found.
Two sets of the remains were found this summer under the porch of a home where New and her brother had been living, while another set was found nearby last year.
Anderson said that the Tarrant County district attorney's office is reviewing whether to file more charges.
Anderson said that New and her brother have consistently denied knowing anything about the remains. He said her brother has not been ruled out as a suspect.
``We're certain that some wrongdoing occurred here,'' Anderson said. ``If someone passes away, you cannot put them in a Tupperware container and pour bleach on them and hide them away.''
In August, the owners of property near Rendon found one set of infant remains beneath the porch of a mobile home after New and her brother moved out. Investigators found another set of remains nearby.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit, property owners in March 2008 found a suitcase containing bones in a field about 40 yards from the mobile home.
At least one set of remains had been doused in bleach, Grisham said.
The bodies of two boys and a girl were so ``badly decomposed and compromised,'' Anderson said, that forensic investigators cannot tell whether the babies were born alive and killed, or were stillborn. They have also been unable to determine who the father was.
Rachel New and her brother rented the mobile home from Rex and Auneta Southern. Rex Southern found the first set of remains, later identified as a boy with blond hair, in a suitcase in thick vegetation, his wife said Thursday.
``I'm spellbound and speechless,'' Auneta Southern told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. ``. . . I've known (New) for more than three years and never had anything but nice conversations with her.''
On Aug. 23, the Southerns' son found a cardboard box containing a set of remains under the mobile home's front porch. A sheriff's deputy discovered a pink plastic container that held a third set of remains, the affidavit stated.
``It's horrible enough once, but to have to live through the same story three times, it's unbelievable. It's like a movie,'' Auneta Southern said.
