MANCHESTER, NH – Alexandra Eckersley testified Wednesday that when she left a makeshift tent after giving premature birth the day after Christmas 2022, she didn’t bring the infant with her because “I thought he was dead.”
Eckersley, 27, took the stand in Hillsborough County Superior Court North to defend herself on charges of second-degree assault, two counts; reckless conduct; falsifying physical evidence, and endangering the welfare of a child.
She said she didn’t take the baby with her because her boyfriend, George Theberge, 46, told her the baby had no pulse.
When she finished testifying, the defense rested its case. The jury then listened to lawyers’ closing arguments and the judge’s instructions on the law. Deliberations began about 3 p.m. and will resume Thursday at 9 a.m.
The trial lasted about 3 ½ days.
Eckersley testified for about an hour. Under questioning by Defense attorney Kim Kossick she said he had “no idea” she was pregnant and had never felt any movement from the fetus. She did not have a large belly, she said. “I was a size zero,” Eckersley testified.
She knew nothing about childbirth.
On Christmas Day 2022, she and Theberge were living in a makeshift tent on the Goffstown side of the rail trail near the West Side Ice Arena in Manchester. They had no money, no food and no heat after they ran out of propane gas during the night when temperatures were hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit. That morning, Eckersley talked on a cell phone with her mother who sent her $200 in cash via cash app.
They received the money that afternoon and then took a cab to a store to buy two tanks of propane, food, drinks and cigarettes. They paid the cab driver in cigarettes.
They returned to the tent and ordered Chinese food via Door Dash, with delivery received at the ice arena.
Eckersley began having stomach pain that afternoon which she believed to be constipation. As the pain intensified, she took ibuprofen and Pepto Bismol which didn’t provide relief.
Twice, she tried to defecate in a bucket in the tent. Around midnight, the pain continuing, blood began running down her legs. She described the pain as having a knife piercing her stomach.
Theberge, she said, seemed aggravated. That day, he left the tent, reentered, turned off the heat and left
again. Eckersley would turn the heater back on because she was always cold.
Around midnight, she thought she had “pooped” but that was when the infant was born. She didn’t hold or touch the baby that cried for just under a minute, she said. She asked Theberge to take the baby’s pulse, because she didn’t know how. He told her the newborn had no pulse.
Eckersley didn’t realize the umbilical cord was still attached and didn’t know how it became unattached. “I had no clue,” she said.
Theberge, she said, threw her a shoe and her pants and the two left the campsite to call 911. Theberge went back to the tent to get her other shoe as she continued on. As she neared the rail trail, she said she “pooped again.” She thought she had given birth to a second child but later learned it was the placenta. “I thought it was another baby,” she said.
At the rail trail, Theberge dialed 911 and handed her his phone. He went back to the tent two other times to get items but on his return the last time – as an ambulance arrived – he left the scene.
In the 911 call, Eckersley did not give the dispatcher the exact location where the child could be found. She said Theberge, who she said she was afraid of and had hit her in the past, told her not to tell them where the camp was or bring them to the tent, but instead to tell them the baby was near the playing fields, about a half-mile in the opposite direction.
Eckersley testified she doesn’t remember a lot of what she told emergency responders that day. She accompanied police, EMTs and firefighters in the search but when she began bleeding through her clothing, she was brought back to the ambulance a second time for treatment. There, speaking to Advanced EMT Lauren Barry, she said something “clicked in my head” and she led rescuers to the tent.
Barry wrapped the baby in a blanket, walked quickly to a fire truck which they transported the baby to Catholic Medical Center. The baby’s skin temperature was 82.7 degrees. An internal temperature couldn’t be taken because of the baby’s size, the baby boy weighed a little over four pounds. An internal temperature would be about two to three degrees higher.
Officer William Collins testified last week that he only got a glimpse of the infant before it was whisked away. The newborn was blue, he said, and he thought it was dead. He told Eckersley, who was hysterical, that the baby was dead.
She said she learned he was alive later at the police station where she was taken to speak with detectives.
“It made me feel happy,” she said. She named him Edward Ruth after her great grandparents. Now 19 months old, the baby, who she calls “Teddy,” lives with her and her mother in Massachusetts.
Under cross-examination by Assistant Hillsborough County Attorney Alex Gatzoulis, she said she did not know the baby was breathing, but agreed with the prosecutor that she heard the baby crying when he was born.
Eckersley also agreed with the prosecutor that what she did was wrong.
Under redirect examination by Kossick, however, she clarified that at the time her son was born she did not know that what she did was wrong.
“Now I know what I did was wrong because he’s alive and living with me,” she said.
Under cross-examination, Eckersley also agreed with the prosecutor that she was safe in the ambulance and had no reason to fear Theberge.
Under redirect examination, she was asked if she remembers feeling safe in the ambulance.
“I didn’t feel it but for all intents and purposes I should have felt safe,” she said.”
She was afraid of Theberge not only because he yelled at her but because he had hit her in the past, she said.
The defense’s first witness was Dr. Matilde Pelaprat, a forensic psychologist, who examined all of Eckersley’s medical records, as well as police reports and videos from officers’ body warn cameras. She also interviewed Eckersley four times, met with family members and talked with medical providers.
She said Eckersley was one of the most complex mental health cases she had ever seen. At age 2, Eckersley was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. She had been placed in psychiatric hospitals four times, the last after giving birth in 2022.
As a child, she was in long-term residential placements where she was treated for chronic, severe mental health and behavioral issues. At the age of 13, she was sexually assaulted by boys at one of the facilities.
In all, Pelaprat said Eckersley has had more than a dozen psychological evaluations. At the age of 20, she said, Eckersley was in a residential placement program for about three to four months when she met an older man online and left to go live with him in New Hampshire. From that time until Dec. 26, 2022, she was homeless, receiving no medical care, including for her mental health.
While homeless, Eckersley also began using methamphetamines, Pelaprat said.
She said Eckersley’s maturity level at the age of 20 was more like that of a 12- or 13-year-old and there was concern that she could be sexually exploited. She said while medications had improved her condition, being homeless, having no medical care and using methamphetamines led to more regression.
It was her opinion that her mental health condition contributed to the decisions she made after she gave birth.
“Giving birth while homeless is not a crime,” Kossick told the jurors in her closing argument. She said it was Theberge who should be sitting at the defense table because he returned to the tent three times and if the heat was turned off in it, he was the one who did it.
First Assistant Hillsborough County Attorney Shawn Sweeney, in his closing argument, said if Eckersley had told emergency responders that the baby was in a tent and the baby was found, there would be “no reason for any of this.”
Once it is learned “a baby is lost in the woods” then, Sweeney said, police needed to be brought it for the search.