Pennsylvania- A Pennsylvania nurse was charged yesterday with bashing a pregnant neighbor on the head with a baseball bat and then slashing her belly in a ghastly attempt to steal her unborn baby.
Authorities said Peggy Jo Conner, [pictured] 38, hit Valerie Oskin, who was eight months pregnant, with the bat early Wednesday, drove her to a secluded woods northeast of Pittsburgh and used a razor knife to cut along an old Caesarean section scar. The horrifying ordeal went on for six hours before a 17-year-old boy on an all-terrain vehicle stumbled on the bloody scene and foiled the gruesome plot.
The baby was delivered by emergency C-section at Allegheny General Hospital, where Oskin, 30, remained in the trauma ward late yesterday. Authorities said the baby was in stable condition but would not release any further information.
“We believe [Conner] wanted the child, and was going to murder [Oskin] and take the child out,” said Pennsylvania State Trooper Jonathan Bayer. “She probably would have bled to death had the teenager not found her when he did.”
Cops said Conner had been telling people – including her husband of 18 months – she was 71/2 months pregnant.
“She told me that, yes,” Thomas Wilks, 34, told the Daily News. “But my wife is innocent. . . . She is a loving person. She has three kids. She’s a loving wife. She takes care of all of us.”
Wilks, a roofer, said Oskin lived in a trailer next-door to them in Ford City, Pa., and often visited with his wife.
“They were friends. They would sit around talking all the time,” he said, adding that Conner already has two daughters, ages 16 and 11, and a 15-year-old son. “It’s my understanding she was driving [Oskin] to the hospital.”
Cops said Conner did tell a neighbor she was driving Oskin to the hospital but only after the neighbor watched Conner lead a blood-covered Oskin out of her trailer and to a waiting car around 11 a.m Wednesday.
Conner, who was arraigned yesterday on charges of attempted homicide, even dropped Oskin’s 7-year-old son off at a friend’s house before driving her to the woods and slicing her abdomen, cops said.
When the teenager encountered Conner kneeling over a bleeding Oskin around 5 p.m. Wednesday, Conner assured him everything was “fine,” Trooper Bayer said. But the youth was concerned enough to call his dad, who contacted police.
When state police arrived on the scene, Conner at first told them she had been “looking for a place to hunt deer” when she saw the victim lying on the road, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported, citing a probable cause affidavit.