Amy Grace Carr (El Paso County Sheriff’s Office)
A 21-year-old mother from Colorado will spend more than half of a century behind bars for strangling her newborn daughter to death and then burying the child in a shallow grave in the family’s backyard. District Court Judge Thomas Kelly Kane on Friday ordered Amy Grace Carr to serve a sentence of 55 years in prison for the 2021 death of young Lily Carr, authorities announced.
According to Colorado’s Fourth District Attorney’s Office, Carr entered into an agreement with prosecutors in which she pleaded guilty to reduced charges, including one count of second-degree murder and one count of tampering with a deceased human body, both felonies. Carr initially had five charges, including two counts of first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death.
Judge Kane handed down a 48-year sentence on the murder conviction and a 7-year sentence on the tampering conviction, to be served consecutively. Following her release from incarceration, Carr will also be required to spend an additional five years on parole.
Carr was credited with 687 days of time served.
According to a press release from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, deputies at approximately 1:23 p.m. on Jan. 23, 2021, responded to a 911 call regarding an unresponsive newborn at a residence in Yoder, about 30 miles east of Colorado Springs. The individual who placed the initial 911 call told the emergency dispatcher that “the newborn was lying partially buried in her yard,” the release states.
After a five-month investigation conducted by the EPCSO Major Crimes Unit, deputies on June 3, 2021, placed a then-19-year-old Carr under arrest and charged her with murder.
According to a report from The Gazette, Judge Kane initially threatened to reject the guilty plea because Carr initially told the court that she could not remember exactly how she killed the baby during Friday’s hearing. However, she eventually confirmed that she began trying to kill her child when it was still in utero and Carr attempted to cause a miscarriage on several occasions, per the report.
Carr also reportedly affirmed that she sent text messages to her then-boyfriend in which the two discussed Carr killing the baby in bone-chilling detail.
“I’m surprised it was alive and not stillborn,” Carr’s boyfriend reportedly wrote in one of the texts.
“Seriously, me too. How long I had to strangle it before it stopped breathing. Strong little girl,” Carr reportedly responded.
According to the Gazette, Carr also confirmed to the court that she buried her daughter in the yard to prevent the body from being discovered because she was “afraid of criminal charges.”
Andrew Vaughan, chief deputy district attorney for the Fourth Judicial District, applauded the sentence after the hearing
“I’m glad we could get justice for Lilly,” Vaughan said, according to Colorado Springs CBS affiliate KKTV. “Just because nobody loved her coming into this world or coming out of this world doesn’t mean that this community doesn’t care for her. This community fought for her, and this community wanted to get her justice.”
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