A Wisconsin sixteen-year-old has reportedly admitted to fatally shooting his newborn daughter and leaving her body inside a fallen tree.
“Logan Kruckenburg-Anderson, of Albany, is charged as an adult with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse. He’s being held on $1 million bail following a hearing this week in Green County Circuit Court in Monroe,” the Associated Press (AP) reported Friday.
Shortly after the baby was born on January 5, the teenager allegedly took her to a wooded area in Albany, placed her inside a fallen tree, and shot her twice in the head, according to a criminal complaint.
The complaint also said Kruckenburg-Anderson’s girlfriend gave birth to the infant, named Harper, in a bathtub at her Albany home.
As WTMJ reported:
Under questioning, the father, Logan Kruckenberg-Anderson, first told investigators that he had given the child to his friend, the complaint states. The mother of the child told deputies that after giving birth, they had decided to give the child to an adoptive agency in Madison.
In a second interview, Kruckenberg-Anderson told investigators said [sic] they had decided they could not keep the child and needed to do something “to not have the child in their life.” They discussed several options, including dropping the child off at a fire department or an adoption “place,” according to the complaint.
However, the teenager told detectives he later put the baby in his backpack and walked to his mother’s home where he transferred her to a larger backpack before leaving.
When he got to the remote wooded area, he placed the infant inside the tree and put more snow on top of her, investigators said.
However, the teen could still hear the infant crying as he walked away, “which caused him to emotionally break down, fall to his knees and cry,” detectives noted.
He later directed officers to where he left the baby and the local medical examiner’s office discovered a bullet hole in the infant and a casing lying nearby.
The teenager is scheduled to appear in court again on January 20 for a preliminary hearing, according to NBC 15.
“Investigators also believe they have recovered the gun used to kill Harper. They say a juvenile turned in a firearm, saying Kruckenberg-Anderson gave it to him days earlier. The weapon’s caliber was consistent with the bullets and casings found at the scene,” the outlet said.