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Stuffed her newborn twin boys in an alley garbage cart
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By Tim Hadac
The books closed this month on a double murder that shocked and sickened many in the Garfield Ridge area more than 20 years ago.
Antoinette Briley, 44, pled guilty on May 7 to murdering her twin baby boys 21 years ago. At the Bridgeview Courthouse, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Briley
On June 6, 2003, the bodies of the newborns were discovered by a Waste Management employee who was emptying trash bins in an alley in the 4800 block of South Latrobe, in unincorporated Central Stickney, just two blocks away from Garfield Ridge.
A subsequent autopsy determined the infants had been born alive but died of suffocation, and the deaths were ruled homicides. Sheriff’s Police conducted an investigation at the time, but the case remained unsolved.
In 2018, Sheriff’s Police reopened the case and utilized DNA from evidence recovered from the scene in an effort to identify the birth mother using the latest developments in genetic genealogy.
A breakthrough from that research and subsequent investigations allowed detectives to eventually identify Antoinette Briley as the victims’ potential birth mother.
As part of the investigation, Sheriff’s Police detectives travelled to Holland, Mich. in 2018 and obtained a discarded cigarette containing Briley’s DNA, which was matched to the DNA from the victims.
In 2020, Sheriff’s Police learned that Briley was in Cook County and took her into custody after a traffic stop in Oak Lawn.
In this photo from June 2003, crime-scene tape cordons off a section of the alley in the 4800 block of South Latrobe. –Photo courtesy of the Cook County Sheriff’s Office
Sheriff’s Police said Briley admitted to bearing the children in a bathtub at her grandparents’ house and putting them in a duffel bag. She reportedly said she then carried the bag to her car and planned to take them to a hospital—but changed her mind, took them out of the bag and stuffed them in a garbage cart in an alley. She reportedly said she believed she could get away with it because no one had been aware that she had given birth.
According to published reports, Briley told investigators she “wishes she could take the whole day back” and that she’d kept driving to the hospital instead.
Reaction outside Shop & Save Market in nearby Garfield Ridge was mixed.
“I don’t recall that case at all,” said Agnieszka Wilkosz. “The woman did what to her babies? That’s terrible.”
Barbara Tomisec did recall, and expressed contempt for Briley.
“A mother who does that to her own babies, I don’t know,” she said. “Is there any punishment that can meet that crime? Those babies were alive. She could have dropped them at a hospital or a firehouse. They would have lived. There would have been a line of parents stepping forward to adopt them. What she did was despicable. It’s good that she feels remorse, but remorse won’t bring them back.”
Jorge Valdez reserved judgement “because it seems to me she wasn’t in her right mind. Maybe she had postpartum depression or some other kind of mental illness. I’m not excusing what she did. That was murder, plain and simple. But I hope everyone would tro to understand. We need to be a more compassionate people, I think.”