Florida teen strangles newborn baby, hides his body in shoe box

A pregnant fourteen-year-old girl secretly delivered her baby with a pair of scissors in the family bathroom before throttling the boy to death and hiding the body in a shoe box. Cassidy Goodison, 14, has been charged as an adult with first degree murder after police learned how she killed her child following months of fearfully disguising her pregnancy from her mother and father.

Goodison went into labour in her home in Greenbrier Village, Florida on September 19 and instead of calling for help, disguised her screams of pain by running the tap and gripping a towel between her teeth as she sat on the toilet. After prising the 9.5lb boy form her body with a pair of  scissors, she felt for a pulse and then strangled the boy to death and hid his corpse in a shoe box with dirty laundry.

Three days later, as Teresa Goodson cleaned her daughter's room, a foul odour drew her attention to a pile of soiled, wet clothes in which she found the deceased infant hidden in a box.  An autopsy performed determined the victim was a full term infant and that he was alive and breathing prior to death. He died as a result of asphyxia from strangulation and blunt force trauma. This is really disheartening, for a 14 year old.