Life Without Parole for KY Woman Charged With Grisly Murder and Fetal Abduction
A southern Kentucky woman who has pleaded guilty but mentally ill for killing a young expectant mother and cutting a baby boy from his mother’s uterus was sentenced to life without parole on Thursday.
Kathy Coy, 34, had pleaded guilty on Feb. 17 to kidnapping and murdering 21-year-old Jamie Stice, removing Stice’s unborn child from her womb and kidnapping the infant to pass off as her own in April. Stice's son, Isaiah Allen Stice Reynolds, who was born five weeks premature, survived the attack and is currently living with his father, according to Bowling Green Daily News reports.
Warren Circuit Judge John Grise said Coy’s “horrendous” crime were a “true display of evil at work” before sentencing her to life behind bars.
During a victim impact statement made during court, Carolyn Miracle, Stice’s first cousin said that Coy must one day answer to another court "that will give sufficient punishment for Kathy."
The Bowling Green paper reported that Coy, who was severely hearing impaired but can read lips had closed her eyes during much of Miracle’s statement. The paper reported that Coy had also chosen not to wear headphones that would have helped her hear what was said in court.
Coy had been arrested in April 2011 at Bowling Green hospital after she was brought in by an ambulance. She had claimed that she was the mother of the newborn infant who was still attached to his umbilical cord and his mother’s uterus and ovaries, the police reported.
Prosecutors said Coy had friend requested Stice on Facebook social networking website and used a stun gun to subdue Stice after luring the pregnant woman out of the house saying that they were going to go buy baby supplies last April.
Coy then slashed the wrists and throat of the subdued Stice, cut the baby from the mother’s body and left the disemboweled mother to die.
Coy, who has a 13-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son, had initially told police that she gave birth to the boy, but then she said she bought him for $550.
“Quite simply, this is one of the rare cases that I simply do not believe justice can be done,” Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris Cohron said, according to the Bowling Green Daily News. “The nature of the offense is something that just is unimaginable. ... This is just, I believe, a mechanism to allow the family maybe to take a breath and move on.”