Florida Student Charged With Murder After Newborn Found in Backyard Grave

A Flagler County grand jury indicted Anne Mae Demegillo, a 20-year-old Palm Coast college student, on first-degree premeditated murder on April 6, 2026, one month after her initial arrest on the lesser charge of aggravated manslaughter of a child. The case has refocused urgent attention on Florida's Safe Haven Law and the pregnancy support resources available to young women in crisis.

Demegillo now faces additional counts of aggravated child abuse and failure to report a death with intent to conceal evidence, and is being held without bond at the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility. Her defense attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

According to the Flagler County Sheriff's Office, Demegillo gave birth in the early hours of March 5 at her home on Florida Park Drive. A medical examiner estimated the baby girl's gestational age between 30 and 36 weeks. Demegillo told police that after the infant stopped moving, she removed the baby from the toilet, wrapped her in a blanket, placed her in a duffel bag and stored it in her bedroom closet before leaving for class and a campus theatrical performance in New Smyrna Beach. She returned home around 10 p.m. and buried the infant in a grave roughly four to five inches deep in her backyard.

Authorities were not alerted through any institutional channel but through a personal one. Demegillo had sent social media messages to a friend disclosing the secret pregnancy, the birth, and that the baby had been born alive and crying. The friend reported the messages, prompting a welfare check around 4 a.m. on March 6. Demegillo told police she had not known she was pregnant until the moment of delivery.

A month-long investigation by the Flagler County Sheriff's Office Major Case Unit and its digital forensics team uncovered phone searches for "newborn premature babies," "Palm Coast OBGYN," and "foods to decrease fertility." Investigators also found images on her phone that, they said, "suggest searches on the death of a child and subsequent investigation," including images referencing the Casey Anthony case, the 2011 Florida acquittal that became one of the most-watched trials in American courtroom history.

Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly addressed the case directly: "This is one of those tragic cases that shock you to your core that a mother would allow a newborn to die because the newborn was a distraction to her life. It's hard to comprehend how a mother would choose to watch their infant drown instead of lifting the baby out of the toilet." Staly also used the moment to highlight a legal option that was available throughout: under Florida's Safe Haven Law, any parent who cannot care for a newborn may surrender the child at any fire station, hospital, or police station without fear of prosecution.

Florida enacted its Safe Haven Law in 2000, initially covering newborns up to three days old. That window has since been extended to 30 days. Since the law's passage, 457 infants have been surrendered across the state, 392 of them at designated safe haven sites, according to the nonprofit A Safe Haven for Newborns. The numbers underscore both the law's reach and the continued need to ensure young parents in distress actually know it exists.

The case is being prosecuted by State Attorney R.J. Larizza of Florida's 7th Circuit. Demegillo's initial $250,000 bail, secured by her parents pledging the family home as collateral, was revoked following the murder indictment. The broader question the case raises, of whether a 20-year-old concealing a pregnancy through its final weeks had any meaningful access to confidential counseling, campus health services, or knowledge of safe surrender, is one that university systems and public health advocates will have to answer alongside the courts.