Massachusetts

‘Like a Horror Movie': Unsettling Interview With Woman Charged in Babies' Deaths Played at Trial

Warning: Some of the details in the story below are graphic and may be disturbing to some readers.

Audio recordings of an unsettling police interview with the woman charged in the Blackstone "House of Horrors" case were played in court on Friday in the fourth day of the trial.

Erika Murray, 35, has been on trial since Tuesday after she was charged with the murder of two of the three dead babies found in the Massachusetts home September 2014.

In the audio recording, Murray lists the birth dates of four of her children. She laughs and says she "just went with it" when she gave birth to the last two children at the home. She said in the interview that she threw away the placentas after giving birth in the home's only bathroom and cut their umbilical cords with a pair of scissors.

The youngest children, ages 3 months and 5 years, were found among the squalor by a neighbor and had no birth records. They had never seen a doctor.

Murray said her older children did not know the younger ones were their siblings.

"Yeah, they just thought that I was babysitting," she said in the recording. "That's what I told them. I was just scared and nervous."

In the audio, she also denied there being anyadditional children in the household.

Massachusetts State Police Detective Felipe Martinez was the first prosecution witness on Friday. He executed a search warrant at Murray's home in 2014.

Martinez said he obtained National Grid records of the defendant's home. In it, Murray acknowledged at least one of her children in an effort to avoid having her power shut off. Records showed she owed more than $8,000.

The detective also said there was a birth certificate that "appeared to be doctored" submitted to National Grid. The birth year was written in pen and was for her 10-year-old son, who Murray claimed was just a year old.

Martinez later said authorities seized Murray's cellphone as well as her mother's. The defendant's cellphone had several notifications addressed to her and to "Michelle," which suggested she was using two accounts.

Prior testimony revealed Murray allegedly used a Facebook alias of "Michelle Ridgeway." That account was allegedly created for the woman Murray told her kids she was babysitting for.

Murray told her 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter she was babysitting the 3-month-old and 3-year-old children found in her house by a neighbor. She was actually the mother of those kids, as well as the three deceased infants.

A Blackstone police official testified Thursday that Murray may have been embarrassed to have had those children. He said he believes she tried to conceal their births since she could not afford to have them.

The living children were removed from the home by authorities.

The second witness to testify on Friday was state police Trooper Christopher Donahue. He said the conditions in the house were so bad that he had to be suited in hazmat gear before entering.

He provided photos in court and described the condition of the home.

Murray has shown some emotion during her trial. She was expressive when photographs of her two older children were shown. She cried Friday when Donahue showed graphic photographs of the infants' remains.

"What you see around the skull of that child is dried maggots... around the decomposed body," Donahue said.

Dr. Robert Welton, a medical examiner who worked on the case, recalled that the infants he examined were in a nearly mummified state.

"The first infant, I believe, was wrapped in what appeared to be what I think were sweatpants," he said. "The infant had an attached umbilical cord and placenta."

He said the second and third infants were found diapered and dressed in newborn clothes.

Graphic photos displayed in court showed skeletal remains sticking out of a pair of baby socks. Other photographs showed the filth surrounding the insect-infested, feces-covered house.

For live updates on the trial, click here for NBC10 Boston reporter Alysha Palumbo's Twitter feed.

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