The mysterious circumstances surrounding the killing of a 3-week-old baby girl who disappeared from her Long Beach, California, home back in January and was later found buried in an Imperial Beach dumpster gained some clarity Wednesday when four suspects were arrested, including a local man.
Oceanside resident Anthony McCall, 29, was among the arrestees, Long Beach police announced as they revealed details of a bizarre plot almost too far-fetched to believe.
McCall is accused of helping a friend – Giseleangelique Rene D’Millan, 47, of Thousand Oaks, California – carry out a plan to win her boyfriend back that resulted in the kidnapping and murder of baby Eliza Delacruz and the shootings of three of the newborn’s relatives.
Police said D’Millan fabricated a story to her boyfriend last year, telling him she was pregnant with his twins. Detectives believe the lie soon morphed into a desperate criminal quest of finding babies around the same age to kidnap and keep and represent as her own.
“We’ve never seen anything like this where somebody goes out looking for babies to kidnap and they kill or attempt to kill the mothers,” said Robert Luna, Long Beach Chief of Police, at a media briefing announcing the arrests Wednesday.
“I had the word ‘evil’ in my notes [on this case] and my staff told me to take it out. I can’t summarize this any other way. The people alleged to commit these crimes are just evil in nature,” Luna added.
Long Beach police said surveillance video shows D’Millan and McCall following baby Eliza’s mother as she carried her newborn from a bus stop on Jan. 3, 2015.
Hours later a man – identified by police as McCall – barged into the home of the baby’s family, shot her parents and uncle, and abducted the newborn.
Baby Eliza’s body was discovered the following day near San Diego by a homeless man, Harold Green, as he searched through a dumpster behind an Imperial Beach strip mall.
Local
NBC 7 spoke to Green, also known as Harold Sherman, right after he heard the news of the arrests Wednesday. He was relieved there had been a break in the case and praised police for their work.
“Now I can go to sleep. I’m proud of law enforcement and how they handled this,” said Green, adding that this case has changed the way he feels about law enforcement.
“They’re the real heroes. They went out there and got these people,” he added. “I just did what was right. I’m not a hero.”
Green said he has been nervous and mad ever since he made the grim discovery of baby Eliza’s body in that dumpster. He couldn’t help thinking in the back of his head that the suspects may have been after him, upset that he found the baby.
“I was looking over my shoulder,” Green told NBC 7. “I know now that I can breathe easy. They got him. They got him.”
Green said simply can’t make sense of the horrific crime.
“[It’s] crazy. I mean, what’s the mindset [of the suspects]? They’re evil in incarnate on the world and we don’t need them out here. I’m glad they got them,” he said.
Both McCall and D’Millan have been charged with murder, kidnapping, attempted murder and conspiracy.
Two others, Todd Boudreaux, 44, of Fontana, California, and Charisse Shelton, 30, of Corona, California, were also arrested for allegedly assisting in the scheme. Shelton is the adult daughter of D'Millan, police said.
