Dec. 3, 2025
Mother and Stepfather Charged With Cutting Out Unborn Baby From Daughter, Killing Both
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RSS Feed 22-year-old Rebecca Park was 38 weeks pregnant when she went missing in early November. 3 weeks later her body was found by her father with her unborn child cut out of her womb. This week, police charged her biological mother and stepfather with murdering Park and her baby, but right now, investigators still haven’t found the baby’s remains. Further complicating this disturbing story, police have also arrested Park’s 21-year-old sister and her own fiancé and father of her child. Police aren’t saying if those charges are related in any way to the death of Rebecca and her baby, but they were both arrested within hours of finding her body.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, there're folks. It is Wednesday, December third, and it is an unthinkable crime. A twenty two year old woman, eight month pregnant, dead, her baby cut out, and as we speak, four of her own family members are in jail. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ.
00:00:26
Speaker 2: Robes.
00:00:27
Speaker 1: The crime itself is just unimaginable, but some of the details now about family that dynamics, who's in jail and why. This is just a mess of a tragedy.
00:00:39
Speaker 2: And this is a story that folks in Michigan had been following intently for the past month. This woman, she was twenty two years old, thirty eight weeks pregnant. Her name Rebecca Park and she went missing in early November twenty one days. Police were searching for her, her family was searching for her, the community, hundreds of folks volunteers trying to find this young woman, and unfortunately her father, her adopted father, found her on day twenty one with her baby cut out of her womb. That is unimaginable.
00:01:20
Speaker 1: So this is now the headlines because her family members have been charged in this crime. Her family members and there are a lot of places I was reading and everything said biological mother, her biological mother, which is true. Her biological mother and her stepfather are now in jail, are being charged with first degree murder and another charge with the murder of the unborn child. But the child was cut out And the big question right now, ropes, I thought it was they just assumed or they knew the child was dead, but that's not what they're saying.
00:01:53
Speaker 2: Well, they've said, they've said that the child is dead. However, they don't know where the baby's body is. This was a viable fetus. She was actually found after her due date, so she went missing. I believe it was November three. She was due on November nineteenth, according to her fiance, and she was found on November twenty fifth. So it's just so incredibly sad. This was an infant that could have absolutely survived outside of the womb. So it's unclear why police are saying the baby is dead if they don't know where the baby's body is, and the questions.
00:02:31
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's been answered that the did the baby survive that horror and if so, what happened to the baby after that? Is just this is a mess, a mess of a story, and shed point out some of the dynamics here, though, why everyone said biological mother because that is a relevant part of this story.
00:02:49
Speaker 2: Yes, the two people arrested Courtney Bartholomew forty years old, that is Rebecca's biological mother, and Brad Bartholomew forty seven is her stepfather. But she adopted, along with her sister and an older brother by the Park family when she was just one year old, So she has rekindled or at least re established a relationship with her biological mom in recent years, but was raised by another family, and they certainly have been speaking out throughout all of this. But the only way we can perhaps read the tea leaves as to what police belief happened to the child inside of her If you look at the counts. Have you looked at the charges? There are many many charges against the biological mom and the stepdad. So they each are facing account of first degree murder premeditated account of felony murder, account of torture, account of conspiracy to commit torture, an assault on a pregnant individual intentionally causing miscarriage slash still birth, one count of conspiracy to commit assault on a pregnant individual intentionally causing miscarriage or still birth, and there were some other charges, including moving dead body without a medical examiner's position permission. So they clearly believe the infant is dead based on those charges. We just don't know why or how they know that.
00:04:13
Speaker 1: No, I'm I never gave the possibility, right, I never. When I first saw the story, I just assumed the baby immediately died. The idea that I didn't know that there was any question at all. I guess I thought about the idea that the baby survived, yeah, and I didn't consider that initially.
00:04:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that would be such a hopeful part of the story. And I believe that if investigators thought there was any shot or any chance at that, they would be letting the public know, please be on the lookout for a baby who just showed up in your life or whatever. But they have not said that. In fact, they've said quite the opposite. But they did say there is an intense search underway right now to try and find the remains of this baby. But what happened? So Rebecca was last seen on November third, and she was last seen with her biological mother. So when police went to Courtney Bartholomew. After Rebecca was reported missing, Courtney claims, sure, yeah, I was running errands with my daughter earlier, but then she suddenly said she had to go somewhere, and she apologized that she had to leave so abruptly, and she described her daughter getting into a black vehicle with an unknown driver. And so in the days that followed and the weeks that followed, police spent a lot of time looking for who this driver might be, where it might be, who may have picked her up. Of course, all of that was a false story. She was found pretty close to her biological mother's home in the woods.
00:05:53
Speaker 1: This is a big deal, in a big time story. You have a woman eight months pregnant going missing. I just I say it doesn't happen. But the times it happens, then there's usually something afoot and oftentimes it's what somebody very very close to that woman. Almost always, do you know that the I remember, oh yeah, this is this is such a scary statistic.
00:06:14
Speaker 2: But the leading cause of death for a pregnant woman is homicide, and those murders almost always take place at the hands of someone who purports to love that woman or that child.
00:06:28
Speaker 1: Just to give if you hadn't heard of this story, folks. This was a big, big deal when you have an eight months pregnant woman, the concern for this woman, and to think this whole time, Mama is the one lying to authorities and is responsible for it the whole time.
00:06:44
Speaker 2: Yes, there's an added urgency.
00:06:46
Speaker 1: Possibly, yes he's not.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: Accused of but there is an added urgency when there's another life at stake, And certainly when you're pregnant, you're you're supremely vulnerable to so many sorts of complications. So, yes, her due date happened, and it it came and went while she was still missing. So of course the urgency was there. This area, by the way, in northern Michigan, just to give you a perspective, it's called Wexford County, but it's about one hundred miles north of Grand Rapids. This is a rural community and certainly it galvanized, I mean the whole community. Everyone was looking for Rebecca Park, a twenty two year old young woman, and so this was just such a tragic ending and the ending that no one wanted. The search lasted for three weeks, but her adoptive mother, Stephanie Park, they had been quiet for some time. They were letting police do the work, but she did eventually speak out once they found Rebecca and they found her remains, and she said, I never suspected my daughter of running away with a baby, because a lot of people that was one of the operating theories that maybe she just took off and left. And she said, so we had been preparing ourselves for this outcome. I don't know how you do that, but that is what she said, and recognized. She said that Rebecca had some troubles. She was actually raising Rebecca's other two children. She has a three year old and a two year old who Rebecca's mom was taken care of. But she said she deserves to be remembered as the sweet girl that she was when she was younger. And so she said that she was deeply loved by her parents and by her siblings. And I just can't imagine the tragedy of losing a child, losing a grandchild, and then come to find out that police are saying her biological mother and stepfather are the ones who took both of those lives from the world.
00:08:39
Speaker 1: Why as any motive?
00:08:41
Speaker 2: They have a zero motive? Police have not offered a motive. They have been quiet as far as a lot of these details, they've been tight lipped, is what a lot of the local reporters are describing it as, because they say they are working on their investigation. And this story is incredibly complicated, because, yes, it was shocking to hear that her mother and stepfather were being arraigned yesterday in court in Michigan, but perhaps it's even more shocking to hear that her fiance and her sister are also behind bars, and they're all being housed right now, mother, stepfather, fiance and sister in this same facility.
00:09:28
Speaker 1: It's big old family reunion down to the mess hall. Yeah, and the other two. Though this is he said complicated. Her sister and her fiance are also behind bars now. They are not charged in her death right now, Romes, but it's awfully peculiar when they got picked up. It doesn't it couldn't make sense.
00:09:53
Speaker 2: To that, it makes zero sense. But when we come back, we will tell you what Rebecca's fiance is being charged with, what her sister is being charged with, and how some people are connecting those dots and continuing our conversation on a tragic and bizarre and truly unthinkable crime that has taken place in northern Michigan. The prosecutor in this case said, this is frankly evil personified. A missing Michigan woman who was thirty eight weeks pregnant was found dead in the woods behind her own mother's home. Police have now charged her mother, this is her biological mother, and her stepfather with first degree murder premeditated murder. There are a litany of charges, but they claim that her own mother and stepfather cut her infant out of her womb, and they believe that baby is dead, but they have not found the remains of that child. And so this has taken a tragicuist that I don't think a lot of people saw coming. But what's even perhaps more bizarre is in the hours after police found and I should say her own father found her mutilated body in the woods, her own sister, her twenty one year old sister, and her forty two year old fiance were both arrested. So Kimberly Park, that is, Rebecca's twenty one year old sister was arrested and booked in the early morning hours following the discovery of her sister's body, and she's been charged with tampering with evidence, lying to a police officer, and filing a false police report. We don't know specifically what those charges, what case they're connected to, but a lot of people are saying it can't just be a coincidence that her sister being charged with these crimes hours after her sister's body was found.
00:12:05
Speaker 1: I just wondered, maybe they in investigating this, they came upon something else in the house that implicated them in a different crime. I'm was thinking, maybe that's possible, or this is just the biggest quinkidink.
00:12:17
Speaker 2: Ever well add to it. Then a few hours later, police arrested Richard Fowler, that is Rebecca's forty three year old fiance and the father of her child. He talked about he talked to local reporters when his fiance was missing, saying, I just want to find my son. I want to find my fiance. I want to find my son alive. So he seemed to be concerned and helping police, but he was taken into custody later that evening and arraigned the following day on two counts of delivering metha amphetamy. So, look, if you've followed enough crime stories and are a crime junkie like we are. You could possibly say they were just trying to get him behind bars. They think he may have had something to do with it, so they found something to arrest him on and got him behind bars. And all of these folks had really high bails. The mom and stepdad had no bond, no bail. I believe the sister is Bailble said it's seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So all four of Rebecca Park's family members are now behind bars at the Wexford County Jail in a massive twist of events after finding her in the stage she was in. It's really a surreal story.
00:13:32
Speaker 1: It was a tragedy. Obviously this family is I mean, as a family recover from something like this, people are going to be impacted for their entire lives, maybe generations, because of something like this, and it's awful and it affects that community as well. But this is not just the death. This is not just a death. This is not just the death of a child. Even this is as bad as it can get.
00:13:53
Speaker 2: It really is and it to be. And we want to point out too that right now the Wexford County Sheriff's office is asking for help. They're asking for information, they're asking for tips because they're trying to find this baby. And the way they put it, as much as they have already charged the mom and the stepdad with being responsible for this infant's death. This is the quote I got from the Wexford County Sheriff's office. They say that that office, along with multiple law enforcement agencies, are working diligently to determine the condition and potential whereabouts of the baby, and because this is an active and ongoing investigation, the information that can be released is extremely limited at this time.
00:14:34
Speaker 1: Condition. Like you said, they believe the baby's dead, but what condition the body is in is maybe what they're referring to.
00:14:42
Speaker 2: Well, we will certainly keep our eye on this developing story, and just man, I makes some want to go hug my family and just be grateful for the love that is out there, because these are the kind of stories that really will chip away at your belief in where we are as a society. But certain we will keep our eye on this story, and we thank you as always for listening to us, every one. I'm Amy Roeboch alongside TJ. Holmes we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey, there're folks. It is Wednesday, December third, and it is an unthinkable crime. A twenty two year old woman, eight month pregnant, dead, her baby cut out, and as we speak, four of her own family members are in jail. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ.
00:00:26
Speaker 2: Robes.
00:00:27
Speaker 1: The crime itself is just unimaginable, but some of the details now about family that dynamics, who's in jail and why. This is just a mess of a tragedy.
00:00:39
Speaker 2: And this is a story that folks in Michigan had been following intently for the past month. This woman, she was twenty two years old, thirty eight weeks pregnant. Her name Rebecca Park and she went missing in early November twenty one days. Police were searching for her, her family was searching for her, the community, hundreds of folks volunteers trying to find this young woman, and unfortunately her father, her adopted father, found her on day twenty one with her baby cut out of her womb. That is unimaginable.
00:01:20
Speaker 1: So this is now the headlines because her family members have been charged in this crime. Her family members and there are a lot of places I was reading and everything said biological mother, her biological mother, which is true. Her biological mother and her stepfather are now in jail, are being charged with first degree murder and another charge with the murder of the unborn child. But the child was cut out And the big question right now, ropes, I thought it was they just assumed or they knew the child was dead, but that's not what they're saying.
00:01:53
Speaker 2: Well, they've said, they've said that the child is dead. However, they don't know where the baby's body is. This was a viable fetus. She was actually found after her due date, so she went missing. I believe it was November three. She was due on November nineteenth, according to her fiance, and she was found on November twenty fifth. So it's just so incredibly sad. This was an infant that could have absolutely survived outside of the womb. So it's unclear why police are saying the baby is dead if they don't know where the baby's body is, and the questions.
00:02:31
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's been answered that the did the baby survive that horror and if so, what happened to the baby after that? Is just this is a mess, a mess of a story, and shed point out some of the dynamics here, though, why everyone said biological mother because that is a relevant part of this story.
00:02:49
Speaker 2: Yes, the two people arrested Courtney Bartholomew forty years old, that is Rebecca's biological mother, and Brad Bartholomew forty seven is her stepfather. But she adopted, along with her sister and an older brother by the Park family when she was just one year old, So she has rekindled or at least re established a relationship with her biological mom in recent years, but was raised by another family, and they certainly have been speaking out throughout all of this. But the only way we can perhaps read the tea leaves as to what police belief happened to the child inside of her If you look at the counts. Have you looked at the charges? There are many many charges against the biological mom and the stepdad. So they each are facing account of first degree murder premeditated account of felony murder, account of torture, account of conspiracy to commit torture, an assault on a pregnant individual intentionally causing miscarriage slash still birth, one count of conspiracy to commit assault on a pregnant individual intentionally causing miscarriage or still birth, and there were some other charges, including moving dead body without a medical examiner's position permission. So they clearly believe the infant is dead based on those charges. We just don't know why or how they know that.
00:04:13
Speaker 1: No, I'm I never gave the possibility, right, I never. When I first saw the story, I just assumed the baby immediately died. The idea that I didn't know that there was any question at all. I guess I thought about the idea that the baby survived, yeah, and I didn't consider that initially.
00:04:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that would be such a hopeful part of the story. And I believe that if investigators thought there was any shot or any chance at that, they would be letting the public know, please be on the lookout for a baby who just showed up in your life or whatever. But they have not said that. In fact, they've said quite the opposite. But they did say there is an intense search underway right now to try and find the remains of this baby. But what happened? So Rebecca was last seen on November third, and she was last seen with her biological mother. So when police went to Courtney Bartholomew. After Rebecca was reported missing, Courtney claims, sure, yeah, I was running errands with my daughter earlier, but then she suddenly said she had to go somewhere, and she apologized that she had to leave so abruptly, and she described her daughter getting into a black vehicle with an unknown driver. And so in the days that followed and the weeks that followed, police spent a lot of time looking for who this driver might be, where it might be, who may have picked her up. Of course, all of that was a false story. She was found pretty close to her biological mother's home in the woods.
00:05:53
Speaker 1: This is a big deal, in a big time story. You have a woman eight months pregnant going missing. I just I say it doesn't happen. But the times it happens, then there's usually something afoot and oftentimes it's what somebody very very close to that woman. Almost always, do you know that the I remember, oh yeah, this is this is such a scary statistic.
00:06:14
Speaker 2: But the leading cause of death for a pregnant woman is homicide, and those murders almost always take place at the hands of someone who purports to love that woman or that child.
00:06:28
Speaker 1: Just to give if you hadn't heard of this story, folks. This was a big, big deal when you have an eight months pregnant woman, the concern for this woman, and to think this whole time, Mama is the one lying to authorities and is responsible for it the whole time.
00:06:44
Speaker 2: Yes, there's an added urgency.
00:06:46
Speaker 1: Possibly, yes he's not.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: Accused of but there is an added urgency when there's another life at stake, And certainly when you're pregnant, you're you're supremely vulnerable to so many sorts of complications. So, yes, her due date happened, and it it came and went while she was still missing. So of course the urgency was there. This area, by the way, in northern Michigan, just to give you a perspective, it's called Wexford County, but it's about one hundred miles north of Grand Rapids. This is a rural community and certainly it galvanized, I mean the whole community. Everyone was looking for Rebecca Park, a twenty two year old young woman, and so this was just such a tragic ending and the ending that no one wanted. The search lasted for three weeks, but her adoptive mother, Stephanie Park, they had been quiet for some time. They were letting police do the work, but she did eventually speak out once they found Rebecca and they found her remains, and she said, I never suspected my daughter of running away with a baby, because a lot of people that was one of the operating theories that maybe she just took off and left. And she said, so we had been preparing ourselves for this outcome. I don't know how you do that, but that is what she said, and recognized. She said that Rebecca had some troubles. She was actually raising Rebecca's other two children. She has a three year old and a two year old who Rebecca's mom was taken care of. But she said she deserves to be remembered as the sweet girl that she was when she was younger. And so she said that she was deeply loved by her parents and by her siblings. And I just can't imagine the tragedy of losing a child, losing a grandchild, and then come to find out that police are saying her biological mother and stepfather are the ones who took both of those lives from the world.
00:08:39
Speaker 1: Why as any motive?
00:08:41
Speaker 2: They have a zero motive? Police have not offered a motive. They have been quiet as far as a lot of these details, they've been tight lipped, is what a lot of the local reporters are describing it as, because they say they are working on their investigation. And this story is incredibly complicated, because, yes, it was shocking to hear that her mother and stepfather were being arraigned yesterday in court in Michigan, but perhaps it's even more shocking to hear that her fiance and her sister are also behind bars, and they're all being housed right now, mother, stepfather, fiance and sister in this same facility.
00:09:28
Speaker 1: It's big old family reunion down to the mess hall. Yeah, and the other two. Though this is he said complicated. Her sister and her fiance are also behind bars now. They are not charged in her death right now, Romes, but it's awfully peculiar when they got picked up. It doesn't it couldn't make sense.
00:09:53
Speaker 2: To that, it makes zero sense. But when we come back, we will tell you what Rebecca's fiance is being charged with, what her sister is being charged with, and how some people are connecting those dots and continuing our conversation on a tragic and bizarre and truly unthinkable crime that has taken place in northern Michigan. The prosecutor in this case said, this is frankly evil personified. A missing Michigan woman who was thirty eight weeks pregnant was found dead in the woods behind her own mother's home. Police have now charged her mother, this is her biological mother, and her stepfather with first degree murder premeditated murder. There are a litany of charges, but they claim that her own mother and stepfather cut her infant out of her womb, and they believe that baby is dead, but they have not found the remains of that child. And so this has taken a tragicuist that I don't think a lot of people saw coming. But what's even perhaps more bizarre is in the hours after police found and I should say her own father found her mutilated body in the woods, her own sister, her twenty one year old sister, and her forty two year old fiance were both arrested. So Kimberly Park, that is, Rebecca's twenty one year old sister was arrested and booked in the early morning hours following the discovery of her sister's body, and she's been charged with tampering with evidence, lying to a police officer, and filing a false police report. We don't know specifically what those charges, what case they're connected to, but a lot of people are saying it can't just be a coincidence that her sister being charged with these crimes hours after her sister's body was found.
00:12:05
Speaker 1: I just wondered, maybe they in investigating this, they came upon something else in the house that implicated them in a different crime. I'm was thinking, maybe that's possible, or this is just the biggest quinkidink.
00:12:17
Speaker 2: Ever well add to it. Then a few hours later, police arrested Richard Fowler, that is Rebecca's forty three year old fiance and the father of her child. He talked about he talked to local reporters when his fiance was missing, saying, I just want to find my son. I want to find my fiance. I want to find my son alive. So he seemed to be concerned and helping police, but he was taken into custody later that evening and arraigned the following day on two counts of delivering metha amphetamy. So, look, if you've followed enough crime stories and are a crime junkie like we are. You could possibly say they were just trying to get him behind bars. They think he may have had something to do with it, so they found something to arrest him on and got him behind bars. And all of these folks had really high bails. The mom and stepdad had no bond, no bail. I believe the sister is Bailble said it's seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So all four of Rebecca Park's family members are now behind bars at the Wexford County Jail in a massive twist of events after finding her in the stage she was in. It's really a surreal story.
00:13:32
Speaker 1: It was a tragedy. Obviously this family is I mean, as a family recover from something like this, people are going to be impacted for their entire lives, maybe generations, because of something like this, and it's awful and it affects that community as well. But this is not just the death. This is not just a death. This is not just the death of a child. Even this is as bad as it can get.
00:13:53
Speaker 2: It really is and it to be. And we want to point out too that right now the Wexford County Sheriff's office is asking for help. They're asking for information, they're asking for tips because they're trying to find this baby. And the way they put it, as much as they have already charged the mom and the stepdad with being responsible for this infant's death. This is the quote I got from the Wexford County Sheriff's office. They say that that office, along with multiple law enforcement agencies, are working diligently to determine the condition and potential whereabouts of the baby, and because this is an active and ongoing investigation, the information that can be released is extremely limited at this time.
00:14:34
Speaker 1: Condition. Like you said, they believe the baby's dead, but what condition the body is in is maybe what they're referring to.
00:14:42
Speaker 2: Well, we will certainly keep our eye on this developing story, and just man, I makes some want to go hug my family and just be grateful for the love that is out there, because these are the kind of stories that really will chip away at your belief in where we are as a society. But certain we will keep our eye on this story, and we thank you as always for listening to us, every one. I'm Amy Roeboch alongside TJ. Holmes we'll talk to you soon.