Saturday, July 28, 2007
By ROBERT McCLENDONStaff Reporter
Eighteen-year-old Geretha Lewis killed her newborn daughter and then claimed two women from an adoption agency took the child, Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr. said Friday.
Police charged the Prichard woman with murder Friday, three days after she publicly pleaded for the infant's return.
Tyson said Lewis told police where she left the body of 1-month-old Zarial Lewis Farris, and authorities will search for the remains today in Escambia County.
He said the mother broke down and gave a statement to police Friday evening, just a couple of hours after authorities renewed their pleas for help from the community in their search.
Tyson said investigators were preparing to administer a lie detector test when she confessed to killing the child.
Before her alleged confession, Lewis told authorities that she handed over Zarial to an adoption agency, which would not return the infant when Lewis said she canged her mind.
During the days that followed the news conference where Lewis first told that story, Prichard police and FBI agents were operating under the assumption that it was true, said
Prichard Police Chief Lawrence Battiste.
"We have to investigate every lead seriously," he said. "Some are good. Some are bad."
Tyson, at a Friday night news conference announcing Lewis' arrest, said "the chief played this exactly right" by investigating the adoption angle, but "there is no credible information" that she ever contacted Agape, a Daphne faith-based agency she initially accused of stealing her baby.
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