Teen in Prom Baby Case Is Charged With Murder

NEW YORK — A New Jersey teenager who gave birth in a bathroom at her prom and then returned to the dance floor was charged Tuesday with murder after an autopsy found that the baby she discarded in a trash can was either strangled or suffocated in a plastic bag.

“The child was alive when he was born,” said Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye. “It fits the definition of a ‘knowing murder.’ ”

The prosecutor told a news conference Tuesday in Freehold, N.J., that Melissa Drexler, 18, may have used the sharp edge of a sanitary-napkin dispenser to cut the umbilical cord on her June 6 prom night before dumping her newborn boy in a bag she found in a bathroom stall.

“Go tell the boys we’ll be right out,” Kaye quoted Drexler as telling a girlfriend who had come into the bathroom to fetch her. The prosecutor said Drexler, a vocational high school senior who lives in Forked River, N.J., then put back on her long, sleeveless, loose-fitting black dress, cleaned herself up and went out to meet her 19-year-old date. He has since said he was the unknowing father of the child.

The floor of the bathroom stall was left covered with blood, and the dead baby was soon found by a maintenance worker. Drexler, the prosecutor said, apparently had kept her pregnancy a secret from family and friends.

Wearing a flowered denim dress and looking frightened, Drexler appeared in court Tuesday with her parents and uttered a barely audible “yes” to questions from Superior Court Judge John A. Ricciardi, who set bail at $50,000. Her attorney, Steven Secare, entered a plea of innocent on Drexler’s behalf.

If convicted, Drexler could get life in prison. Prosecutors said they probably will not seek the death penalty. After posting bail, Drexler appeared on the verge of tears as she dodged reporters and cameramen before being driven away in a black Chevy Blazer.

Details of the baby boy’s death emerged the day after the June 6 prom, but prosecutors had waited to file charges until the medical examiner’s office could figure out if he was born alive and was capable of breathing on his own.

Kaye said the autopsy found air in the baby’s intestines, proving he was able to breathe.