High School Golf Champion Charged in Secret Birth, Death

As a champion high school golfer, Kirsten Sundberg never rattled, even when her shot went into the rough.

When she became pregnant, she played it the same way, going on with her life while keeping her condition secret from everyone. She won a regional championship--the Tournament of Champions--just seven weeks before delivery.

Kirsten carried her secret to full term, but the baby girl suffocated because she was born in a breech position without medical help. More than a year later, Kirsten, 18, was charged in the death.

“I believe she sacrificed herself for our protection. And by protection, I mean the heartache we would feel just because it hurts to be in a situation you just don’t know how to get out of,” said her mother, Kerry Sundberg.

Kirsten, who was 17 when the baby was born, pleaded guilty to juvenile charges of criminally negligent homicide and concealing a birth. She will be sentenced March 24.

After Kirsten became pregnant in the winter of 1995, she decided to have the baby and give it up for adoption. Her parents don’t talk about the boy who fathered the child, other than to say Kirsten stopped seeing him after their relationship became physical.

Her father, Gary Sundberg, noticed Kirsten was gaining weight and worried she might have inherited a thyroid condition. Kerry Sundberg joked with her daughter that she walked as though she were pregnant.

“I know it’s incredible. People say, ‘How could you not know?’ ” she said.

On Nov. 7, 1995, Kirsten left school early, feeling ill. Alone in the bathroom that night as her parents slept, she gave birth. The baby was dead.

“Kerry got up and she heard Kirsten,” Sundberg said. “Then we discovered she’d had a baby. There was no noise. No crying.”

They went to the hospital, where Kerry Sundberg told doctors that her daughter had a miscarriage. But doctors thought the baby was full term. When the Sundbergs returned home, police were waiting for them.

The investigation dragged on for more than a year, and the family began to think there might be no criminal charges. Kirsten, who golfed for Madras High School when it won the state championship, went to college last fall.

But in January, Kirsten was called into court to face the juvenile charges.

When she is sentenced, Dist. Atty. Peter Deuel plans to recommend probation. Deuel said it took a long time to determine that the baby had been alive outside the womb, a condition necessary for a homicide charge.

Unlike the better-known case in Delaware, where a man and woman, both 18, could face the death penalty if convicted of murdering a baby delivered in a motel room, there is no evidence anyone intended to harm Kirsten’s baby, Deuel said.

Some in this farming town of 3,500 people, about 100 miles southeast of Portland, have wanted to see Kirsten pay for her mistake. But many have rallied behind her.

“If Kirsten had a different set of morals, she could have had an abortion any time and no one would have said boo,” said Jeff Nagell, pastor of the Friends Church.

“The tragedy is somehow the legal system has got to be involved in this and continued to prolong the suffering.”