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CYPRESS : Wife Disavowed Pregnancy, Man Says

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Denying even her husband’s suspicions, a woman who was arrested on suspicion of killing her newborn baby denied her pregnancy by insisting that her change in appearance was due to other medical problems, neighbors said Monday.

Marchelle Lynn Black, 27, was arrested Sunday afternoon, several hours after her husband discovered the dead infant in a plastic bag in the bedroom closet.

Neighbors said Jeffrey Black often asked his wife if she was pregnant but she denied it. Jeffrey’s father, Richard Black, said he believes that his daughter-in-law convinced even herself that she wasn’t expecting a child.

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“She just kept denying it,” Richard Black said outside the couple’s two-bedroom, white stucco home. “It’s amazing what the mind can do.

Richard Black said his son and daughter-in-law had their ups and downs, but that “was like any marriage.”

“She was just worn out,” he said.

The Blacks have three children, ages 3, 2 and 1.

Jo Ann Navarro, a neighbor who said she is Marchelle Black’s best friend, said she asked Marchelle every day for the past two weeks whether she was pregnant, but her friend kept denying it. In the past week, she had grown more tired, started walking in a hunchlike fashion and had gotten more nervous, Navarro said.

Black explained that her change in appearance was due to complications from a previous childbirth and that she planned to have a hysterectomy, Navarro said.

Pioneer Hospital in Norwalk notified police that Black had been admitted to the emergency room Saturday evening. She claimed that she had given the child away, but later told police that she had given birth in the bathtub and hid the baby in a closet.

Navarro said Jeffrey Black, alarmed at his wife’s appearance, kept urging her to see a doctor. Marchelle would say she made an appointment, but when the time came to go, she told her husband and friends that the appointment had been canceled, Navarro said.

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Navarro’s mother, Angie, said that on Saturday, Jeffrey demanded that Marchelle go to the doctor Monday. But later that day, she began hemorrhaging inexplicably.

Jo Ann Navarro called her friend “a very good mother.”

“She had a lot of stress built up inside of her,” Navarro said. “She wanted time off from her children . . . she was with her kids day and night.”

“To me, I think she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown.”

Marchelle Black is being held at Orange County Jail. Cypress police are expected to take their case to the district attorney’s office today, when a decision will be made whether to file murder charges.

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