Single Father Faces Charges in Baby’s Death

A single man so eager for a family that he paid a surrogate mother $30,000 to bear his child was charged Wednesday with beating his 5-week-old son to death.

James Alan Austin told police that he had beaten the boy with his fists and a plastic coat hanger, authorities said.

The 26-year-old bank analyst from the Bethlehem, Pa., area was arraigned on charges of criminal homicide in the death of Jonathan Alan Austin. Bail was set at $500,000.

Jonathan was born Dec. 8 to Phyllis Ann Huddleston, 29, of Lafayette, Ind., who had been paid to be artificially inseminated with Austin’s sperm.

The boy died Tuesday at a Philadelphia hospital, more than a week after he was taken to a hospital in the Bethlehem area, unconscious with a fractured skull and internal bleeding.

It was unclear why Austin beat the child, and authorities would not say whether he gave them a motive.

Austin, an only child whose father had died at an early age, lived with his mother until she died after a long bout with cancer in 1993, said his lawyer, John Waldron. Since then, he had been living alone with his dog.