Four people have been arrested in connection with the kidnapping and murder of a 3-week-old little girl in Long Beach earlier this year, police said Wednesday.
Little Eliza Delacruz was taken from her home Jan. 3, after assailants broke into her family’s home and shot her mother, father and uncle.
The infant’s body was found the following afternoon in a trash bin behind a strip mall in Imperial Beach.
Police said the suspects were part of an elaborate plot that began with a woman who told her boyfriend she had given birth and went looking for a newborn to present as her own.
Giseleangelique D'Millan, 47, of Thousand Oaks, allegedly told a boyfriend that she had given birth to two children by him, and then went on a search to find two babies that she could represent as her own.
She convinced Anthony McCall, 29, of Oceanside, to help her in her attempts to find a child that she could present to her boyfriend as her own.
Both have been charged with murder, kidnapping, attempted murder and conspiracy.
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Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna said D'Millian stalked baby Eliza's mother before the kidnapping.
"Based on our investigation, D'Millan never gave birth to any children last year and in order to continue with this deception, she needed to produce two children who matched the ages of her fabricated twins," he said.
The investigation stalled after the kidnapping until early February, when a man went into an apartment complex in El Segundo and beat a woman with a baseball bat and tried to steal her 3-month-old child.
Detectives linked the two cases and last week, officials released sketches of the suspected assailants.
Chief Luna also said the two had told people they were heading up a nonprofit to help young mothers with children under the age of one, in an apparent attempt to gain access to babies.
The boyfriend that D'Millian told about the twins was not part of the plot and lives elsewhere with his own children and family, Luna said.
Two others, Todd Boudreaux, 44, of Fontana, and Charisse Shelton, 30, of Corona, were also arrested for allegedly assisting in the scheme after the fact. Shelton is the adult daughter of D'Millan.
