A Kansas man is accused of murdering his girlfriend’s unborn fetus by tricking her into eating pancakes laced with crushed abortion pills.
30-year-old Scott Bollig, of WaKeeney, is expected to be arraigned on Sept. 9 after prosecutors provided plenty of evidence to support their theory that Bollig sprinkled a drug on his girlfriend’s food to make her lose her unborn baby, according to The Salina Journal.
Trego County District Judge Glenn Braun said a hearing will take place on a motion to suppress statements Bollig made to authorities. The motion claims that the statements were made before Bollig was properly advised of his rights.
WaKeeney Police Chief Terry Eberle testified Thursday that Bollig confessed to investigators, claiming he did lace abortion-inducing pills over Naomi Abbott’s pancakes on Jan. 26 or 27, adding that she ate about three-fourths of the tainted pancake.
Abbott, 36, miscarried on Jan. 31, which doctors felt was strange given her health and earlier development of the fetus.
Bollig allegedly told investigators that he bought five pills online on Jan. 14 for $60 and picked them up at the post office on Jan. 22.
Eberle added that Bollig only used one of the pills and threw the other four away after Abbott lost the 8-to-10-week-old fetus.
The investigation into the death of the fetus began immediately, Eberle said, because Abbott—a Trego County jailer—confided in another officer that she thought her boyfriend might be trying to terminate her pregnancy.
Hays pathologist Dr. Lyle Noordhoek, who performed an autopsy on the fetus, testified Friday that it had been developing normally, “which led me to believe some sort of process was interfering with the loss to oxygenation” to the placenta.
Noordhoek said a sample of blood serum taken from Abbott had tested positive for mifepristone, which should only be administered under a doctor’s supervision.
He also said he reviewed a copy of instructions he was told came with the pills Abbott consumed, and they didn’t seem to be written by somebody whose first language is English. They also did not meet the Food and Drug Administration requirements.
Daniel Walter, Bollig’s attorney, spent much of the two-day hearing questioning investigators about the tactics they used while interrogating Bollig.
Walter argued that the investigators failed to read Bollig his rights before coercing him into making incriminating statements.
He also asked why there had been no recording of an interview that took place on Feb. 20 by Eberle and Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent Kevin Campbell.
"I guess I'm from the old school," Campbell said. "If there's two cops in a room interviewing a person, you don't need a recording."
Bollig is charged with aggravated assault and first-degree murder in the death of a child.
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