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Safeway/Albertsons Advertiser (15:24)

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Ashley Banfield (15:54)

The discovery understandably rocked the small town of Carlisle. The image of the quiet cheerleader with the flawless smile, the girl everybody thought they knew, suddenly collided with a very different reality. And just as suddenly, reporters swarmed the neighborhood. Police units gathered outside the Richardson home, And soon after, 18 year old Skylar Richardson was taken into custody. She was charged with multiple offenses, including abuse of a corpse, child endangerment, involuntary manslaughter and here's the big one aggravated murder. Aggravated murder. It doesn't get more serious than that. Unless, of course, they're going for the death penalty. It's the most serious charge that carries the possibility of life in prison. Prosecutors argued this was not a case of a frightened teenager overwhelmed by a tragic situation. In their view, Skylar had killed her daughter not out of panic but out of a desire to protect her image, a calculated decision to maintain the perfect life that she believed was slipping away with this inconvenient bump inside her. When detectives brought Skyler in for questioning, she appeared calm at first. Polite, soft spoken, cooperative. And she repeated the same account that she had given her doctor the baby never cried. The baby never moved, and that she believed her daughter had been stillborn. For the first part of the interview, investigators kept their tone steady. They asked her to walk them through the night step by step, how the labor started, where she delivered the baby and how she cleaned up afterwards. And how she buried that newborn infant's body in the flower bed in the backyard. Skyler answered quietly, sometimes pausing for long stretches as she tried to piece the memory together. But as the interview went on, detectives began to press her more directly. They revisited certain details, asked repeated questions, and they pushed her to clarify anything that seemed uncertain or inconsistent. The tone in the room shifted, and so did the direction of the investigation. They told her they had found some troubling things during the excavation. Signs. They said that the baby's bones were charred, burned. They suggested that Skylar might have tried to set fire to the baby's remains. At first, Skylar denied it. She told detectives she hadn't done anything like that, that she hadn't set fire or tried to burn the baby's remains but as the hours passed in that small interrogation room, the pressure mounted. And finally, in tears, Skylar confessed that she had, quote, used a lighter. She said she was sorry, she didn't mean any harm, and she insisted the baby was stillborn and that she didn't kill her. But she told her father later that she had, quote, tried to cremate the baby just a little. End quote. That single admission became a turning point in the prosecution's argument the moment they would call proof of intent and consciousness of guilt. What no one knew at the time was that the claim about the burned bones wouldn't hold up in the end, when the remains were later tested by forensic anthropologists, they couldn't find any definitive evidence of fire damage. In fact, the state's own experts eventually walked back their initial conclusions, acknowledging that what looked like charring could just as easily have been natural discoloration from the soil. But the damage was already done. The image of a cheerleader using a lighter on her newborn's remains raced across the headlines, and talk shows around the world ran with it. To the public, it sounded like a confession. To prosecutors, it was their smoking gun. The coroner gave the baby a name. Annabelle. It actually was the same name that Skyler had chosen and told the detectives about in her interview. For the first time, the infant buried beneath the flower bed wasn't just a piece of evidence. She was a little person with a name. At first, the coroner's report listed the cause of death as, quote, homicidal violence of undetermined means, which sounded really damning. Prosecutors seized on that phrase immediately, calling it proof that Annabelle's death was the result of foul play. But when the autopsy results came back, they raised more questions than answers. Looking closer at the details, the science did not line up with the accusation. There was no evidence of strangulation. There were no fractures. There was no skull trauma, no broken bones, and no definitive proof that the baby had ever taken a breath. The coroner could not say with certainty whether Annabel had been born alive or stillborn. The remains were just too decomposed, too fragile, and too incomplete to tell if that newborn had ever taken a breath or to tell if a hand had ever gone over that newborn's mouth and nose. So inconclusive is a lot different than not true. There was no trace of umbilical cord blood that would suggest circulation. There was no lung tissue that could confirm breathing. In short, there was just nothing there to prove whether Skyler was telling the truth or whether Skyler was telling a lie. So the entire case, every serious charge from aggravated murder all the way down to involuntary manslaughter and the rest of the charges. It all relied on one thing. Skyler's own words. Her confession about using a lighter, her statements about how she found the baby still and what the prosecutors argued were inconsistencies in her retelling of the events that night. There was no physical evidence tying her to an act of violence. That evidence was just gone. There was no witness. There was no medical proof. Again, all of that had decomposed. Just the story that she told under intense interrogation and how the state chose to interpret it. By the time the case finally went to trial In September of 2019, more than two years after Annabelle's remains were found, the story of Brook Schuyler Richardson had already become a national obsession. The courthouse in Warren County, Ohio, looked more like the site of a media event than a criminal trial. Reporters lined the sidewalks. Satellite trucks filled the parking lot. Neighbors who had once waved to the Richardsons on their morning walks now crowded the benches in court, waiting for a glimpse of the girl who had once seemed incapable of doing anything wrong. Inside the courtroom, every seat was taken. Jurors sat just a few feet from the defense table where Skyler sat silently between her lawyers. She stared straight ahead. She looked small and even fragile herself. She was dressed in a modest sweater, light makeup, a stark contrast to the girl in the prom photos that splashed across the world's media, wearing a tight, tight red dress. From the very start, prosecutors painted her as a cold and calculating person. They told the jury that this was not the story of a frightened teenager, but of a narcissistic young woman obsessed with image and control. They said Skylar cared more about her figure than about the baby. They said she saw the pregnancy as a stain on her reputation, something that would humiliate her family and destroy the perfect life that her parents expected her to live. The prosecutor, David Fornshell, told the jury that Skylar saw her baby, her daughter, not as a person, but as a problem. He said she delivered the infant alive, heard her cry, and then smothered her to keep anyone from finding out. To the state, it was premeditated, deliberate and fueled by vanity. The defense, though, well, that was entirely different. The defense team was led by attorney Charlie Ritkers, and of course, they saw something totally opposite. They called the state's case a tragedy built on assumptions, not evidence. The defense told the jury that Skyler hadn't killed anyone, that she was an 18 year old girl who had given birth alone, panicked, and had believed that the baby was stillborn. He reminded them that there was no physical evidence of murder, no bruising, no internal injuries, nothing to suggest smothering or violence of any kind. This was not a homicide, he told them. It was a heartbreak. That's what it was. Not homicide. Heartbreak. He described a young woman so desperate to please her parents and so terrified of shame that she made a series of terrible, impulsive choices, but not criminal ones. As he spoke, jurors glanced back and forth between the prosecution and the defense, trying to make sense of a story that seemed impossible either way. During the trial, jurors heard from nearly everyone connected to the case. Police officers who dug up the backyard, forensics experts who analyzed the remains, Skyler's parents, who described those strange, silent days before the birthday, and even her former boyfriend, Trey Johnson, who didn't even learn he was a father until the detectives showed up at his door. When Trey took the stand, he looked stunned. He told jurors that he had no idea that Skyler had ever been pregnant. Their relationship had been short, just a couple of months, and by the time the baby would have been born, they had long broken up. He said that he'd learned about baby Annabelle's existence the same way everybody else did, from the police and from the press. Jurors also watched hours of interrogation footage, listening to Skyler's voice filling the courtroom. She called the baby Annabelle, the same name that the coroner would later use. And she told investigators that she buried her daughter, quote, with love, end quote. And the defense highlighted those details again and again. They reminded jurors that Skyler had gone back to the gravesite days later and planted flowers. They said that was an act that showed remorse, not malice. They argued that she wasn't trying to hide a crime, but to honor a loss that she couldn't begin to process. The prosecution, though, leaned hard into emotion. They read text messages where she wrote to friends that her stomach was finally flat again. To them, those words weren't harmless teenage chatter. They were a window into motive. They said that message showed relief, not grief, and that the flowers she planted were nothing more than a cover up. They argued that Skylar wasn't mourning a baby.

Shopify/RealReal Advertiser (28:11)

She.

Ashley Banfield (28:12)

She was celebrating her freedom. But to others, especially mothers who were sitting in the gallery, those same text messages sounded less like cruelty and more like confusion, the kind of disjointed, impulsive thoughts that come from a teenager in shock trying to make sense of something that she didn't have the tools to understand. After eight days of testimony and just four hours of deliberation, the jury came back with its decision. The courtroom went silent as the foreperson stood up to read the verdicts one by one. As to aggravated murder not guilty Involuntary manslaughter not guilty Child endangerment not guilty. In fact, the only charge that stuck was one she pretty much admitted to abuse of a corpse, abuse of a baby that was already dead.

Safeway/Albertsons Advertiser (29:15)

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Ashley Banfield (30:42)

Try gasps rippled through the courtroom. Some people shook their heads in disbelief. Others quietly wept. And at the defense table, Skyler Richardson sat frozen. Her hands were trembling as she tried to process what what she had just heard when the judge announced her sentence. Three years of probation and no jail time. The weight of the moment hit everybody differently. To some, it felt like mercy, but to others, it felt like injustice. But what came next silenced even the chatter outside the courthouse. Because before adjourning the court, the judge looked directly at Skylar Richardson, and if you were expecting him to read her a riot act, that didn't happen. Instead, the judge's voice was calm, almost fatherly, as he said, quote I firmly believe that you have been punished Enough. It wasn't just a line for the record. It was a statement that seemed to cut through everything, all of the outrage, all of the speculation that had surrounded this case for two years. As the words sank in, Skyler began to sob, loud, uncontrollably, sobs that echoed through the courtroom as the judge's gavel came down one last time. Her parents reached for her in tears while reporters in the gallery scribbled furiously. Reaction to the verdict was both immediate and explosive. Outside the courthouse and among the online community, people debated this verdict with fury, some calling it a miscarriage of justice, arguing that if Skyler hadn't been a suburban white cheerleader, the case might have ended very differently. But others believe the jury got it right, that without medical proof of a homicide or a murder, and with the emotional toll that Skyler had already endured, the verdict was the only just outcome. To them, this wasn't a story about murder. It was a story about mental health and fear and a teenager who'd been punished every single day since that night in her bathroom. In the years that followed, her parents described life after the trial as nothing short of hell. They said Skyler rarely left the house, afraid of the cameras that sometimes parked on their street. She became reclusive, withdrawn, they said, and at times, suicidal. Friends that she'd known since childhood stopped calling. She couldn't go to college or get a job without somebody recognizing her name. When Dateline NBC sat down with her later on, Skyler said she felt vilified, hated by people who didn't know her, condemned for something she insisted she did not do. Looking directly into the camera, she said quietly, I loved my baby. I would have done anything to have her back. But even now, the bigger questions haven't gone away. Why didn't she tell anyone she was pregnant? How could her parents, her classmates, her cheer squad and an entire community that saw her almost every day? How could they all have missed it? What about her mom, who lived with her in that house every single day? How could her mom have not known? And what really happened inside that bathroom during those dark early hours of May 7th? I can tell you from doing stories like this at least a half dozen times, it's almost always the same. If the baby has decomposed too far, it's nearly impossible to prove a murder. What if it's true in any of these cases? What if it's true that a baby born in the worst of circumstances with no medical care, a terrified teenager, often early, with no prenatal care? What if it is true the baby didn't survive birth. It certainly could be. Is it right to just go with your gut that she's guilty without the actual physical evidence to prove it? That's a really tough one. Many say, I'd rather many guilty men go free than one innocent man be locked up. And there is some truth to that. It's called justice.

Shopify/RealReal Advertiser (35:35)

Right.

Ashley Banfield (35:36)

And I have to say, I do have sympathy for young girls who don't know they're pregnant until it's too late, don't know what to do and put their heads in the sand out of fear or mental health until it's far too late. No one who hasn't been through it can understand what this is like. Certainly 50% of the population will never understand what it's like to be pregnant. And certainly what it's like to be pregnant when you're already yourself a child right now. Skyler was 18, but in my books, that's pretty damn young. If you don't know what it's like to be in that situation, it is unfair to judge so morally, legally, different story, right? She went through the process. She had her day in court. But judging someone when you don't actually know the truth, and sadly, it's unfortunate for all of us that we don't know that baby had decomposed too far. It's wrong to judge. Right. I have been in many a case where that baby has shown evidence of being alive and that the mother has shown evidence of lying. Cases where babies are thrown into dumpsters or in a hospital garbage can or at a dance in the bathroom in the garbage. I mean, there are cases where the forensics do prove if the baby draws a breath. But in the cases where they can't prove that, unfortunately, that's the law. And the jury has to see the evidence. And in Casey Anthony's case, the jury couldn't determine how little Kaylee died because she was too far decomposed. They couldn't tell if what the prosecutor said was true. And how would the prosecutors know? They said Casey put her hand over that baby's mouth and taped her baby's nose and mouth shut and watched her die. Well, how the hell could they know that? The only people who know that are the dead child and that mother. So they just made up a theory and gave it to the jury. And none of the evidence could actually prove that one way or the other. And in this particular case, it's kind of the same. It's an awful thing that happened. But nothing can prove whether Skyler was telling the truth or Skyler was telling a lie and a jury has a duty to go by the evidence, not by their morals or their anger. And in this case, that's what they did. In the end. The law is the law, even when a suspect is young and naive and in over her head. I'm Ashley Banfield. Thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for watching. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.

Safeway/Albertsons Advertiser (38:43)

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Ashley Banfield (39:15)

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Ashley Banfield (39:34)

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