She texted him while her seven-month-old son was crying. It was just before five in the afternoon, and Espironza Harding wanted a bath, but Matteo’s crying was ruining her quiet. She told her boyfriend, Edwin, “He’s doing too much right now. I can’t sleep.
I’m about to do something bad. ”
Edwin’s reply was short: “Okay, that’s okay. ”
Espironza and Edwin had only been together for a short time, but he had made his feelings about baby Matteo very clear. He wanted her to give him up for adoption.
He wanted proof that she chose him, Edwin, over her own son. A few minutes after that first text, she wrote to him again. The baby was dead. She was sorry.
Edwin wrote back, “Don’t be. ”
Espironza was only twenty years old. She’d graduated high school just a month before Matteo was born in July 2023. His father, Jesus Kazarez, described his son as a happy boy who was always laughing.
But Espironza and Jesus had separated, and she’d moved with Matteo into a hotel in Bloomington, Minnesota, with Edwin, an eighteen-year-old who resented the child. That night, February 28th, 2024, Edwin arrived at the hotel to find baby Matteo dead on the bathroom floor. He told Espironza to stop trying to revive him. “We are a team.
We do this,” he said. He never called for help. Instead, the couple had sex in the hotel room while the baby’s body lay in the next room. Edwin told her to keep her mouth shut.
He promised they were like Bonnie and Clyde. “If you go down, I go down, no matter what. ” He told her to pretend she was taking out the trash and throw Matteo into the dumpster. She did exactly that.
For a week, it appeared she might get away with it. But then she walked into Children’s Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis, empty-handed, and told officers her son had died of natural causes there the week before. The hospital had no record of Matteo ever being admitted. The medical examiner had no record of his body.
She told so many lies that the officers sat her down for an interview. Finally, she confessed. She had drowned Matteo in the hotel bathtub because she couldn’t enjoy her bath while he cried. She took a picture of his body floating face down in the water and sent it to Edwin.
She only took him out of the water after he was “done moving, done twitching. ” Then she wrapped him up, stuffed him in a backpack, and threw him in the dumpster. Espironza was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Edwin was charged with aiding an offender.
Matteo’s father and his family held a vigil outside the Bloomington hotel. “He was a sweet baby, always smiling,” Jesus said. “I don’t want anything else other than to find my son and give him the peace he needs. ”
The baby’s body was never found.
In December 2024, Espironza pleaded guilty to second-degree intentional murder. In March 2025, she was sentenced to 384 months in prison. Her sentencing hearing was heartbreaking for the family. In May 2025, Edwin pleaded guilty to helping conceal the murder and was sentenced to 74 months in prison.
The other case took place over 1,700 miles away, in Boca Raton, Florida. On May 9th, 2019, two maintenance workers at the Boca Andrada apartment complex heard a faint cry coming from a dumpster. They thought it was a trapped kitten. Instead, they found a newborn baby girl wrapped in a plastic garbage bag, mixed in with trash and coffee grounds.
Her umbilical cord was still attached. One of the men called 911, shaking. “There’s a baby in the garbage. ”
The six-pound, eight-ounce baby girl was taken to the hospital.
Doctors said she made a full recovery. She was placed in the care of Florida’s Department of Children and Families. Police searched the dumpster and found another trash bag similar to the one the baby was wrapped in. Inside, they found a bundle of napkins soaked in blood and a receipt from a local beauty supply store.
That receipt led them to a name and address. The customer was thirty-five-year-old Raphaela Alves Carneiro Sousa, a Brazilian nail technician who lived in that same apartment complex. When questioned, Raphaela admitted she had given birth to the baby in her bathroom. She claimed the baby was unresponsive and not breathing, so instead of calling 911, she waited three hours and then disposed of the child in the dumpster.
She said she returned to the dumpster twice to check if the baby was dead but never approached the bag because people were nearby. Her story didn’t make sense. The baby was found crying the following morning. Raphaela was arrested for attempted felony murder.
Her boyfriend, Carlos Jimenez Martinez, said he had no idea she was even pregnant. He came home from work that day and she told him, “I did it. This is my problem, not yours. ” He went straight to the police.
“I feel two ways about her right now,” Carlos said. “I feel terribly sorry for her, and I feel furious at her. Why didn’t she tell me? I never would have let this happen.
That little baby is my daughter. I never would have allowed her to be thrown away. ”
Carlos wanted custody of both of his children. He wanted to name the baby girl Sarah, saying, “It’s a beautiful name.
It’s gentle and normal. ”
Raphaela pleaded not guilty at first, but in July 2022, she changed her plea. She was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail, with credit for more than three years served, followed by five years of probation. It’s unclear whether she’ll be deported back to Brazil after her release.
But there is a happy ending to this story. Carlos regained custody of both of his children. He got his wish.
He named his baby girl Sarah.
