Based on a true story. A newborn baby is found dead in an Oxnard strawberry field. The 2012 tragedy brings dismay in the community and surprisingly a phone call from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department to a sixth-grade school teacher asking for help to decipher the mystery of such inexplicable demise. The school teacher, author Denis O’Leary, tells how he dived into the search for the perpetrator and the meaning of what caused the newborn to be left to die in the mud. He narrates the riveting story of Alba Walking in the Shadows of Filicide as well as the response and inner workings of the Mixteco indigenous community in the United States. Later, a second Mixteco mother charged with the death of her infant son also seeks O’Leary’s help. The roller-coaster events, relationships, and legal system maneuvers unfolded to surprising conclusions in the California Central Coast. Prejudices, perceptions, truths, and lies all come together in the events that followed the Mixteco women charged in the killing of their babies; lives lost, one freed, and future lives saved.
These women, in contrast with a blond haired, blue eyed, cheerleader in 2017 who is accused of trying to burn her newborn baby’s body and burying it. This woman, in contrast to Alba, received 7 days in jail. Justice in America.
The book was published by Floricanto Press and can be purchase in Amazon $23.95
By Denis O’Leary