She Killed Her Baby And Got Away With It

Nellie Taylor

Des Moines, 1909. Everyone was dying dramatically. Fifteen murders. Twenty-five suicides. Five people flattened by streetcars. Ten by trains. It was like the Grim Reaper had a summer home there.

 And then,  Nellie Taylor came into the mix.

 

She was twenty-three, pretty, well-dressed, and apparently powered by poor decisions and unresolved trauma. Her husband, Glen, got himself killed while working on the railroad. Then she fell for one of his friends, Everett Humble—which is a terrible name for a man who absolutely wasn’t. They planned to get married until she got pregnant and he did what men named Everett Humble apparently do and ghosted her like a coward with a mustache.

 

So, Nellie had a baby. Then she panicked. The children’s homes wouldn’t take it, her parents didn’t know about it, and her mental health was circling the drain. So she decided that murder was her “only course.”

 

She told the police that calmly, like she was reading a weather report. “I undressed it, took the string from its shirt, and tied it tight around its neck.” That’s what she said. Straight face. No tears. No tremble. Just… logistics.

 Des Moines didn’t know what to think. Reporters called her “shallow and weak-willed,” which was Victorian code for “she has emotions and we don’t like that.” Police Chief Johnson said she was “densely ignorant” or “soulless.”

 

After the killing, Nellie sat on a swing near the vault for nearly half an hour. Watching people stroll by, like she was waiting for a parade that would never come. Then she took the streetcar to the train station, hopped a ride to Ottumwa, and thought that was that.

 

Except detectives arrested her within hours.

 

When asked about it, she said, “I suppose I’ll get thirty days.”

 

Thirty days. For murder. She made it sound like they nailed her for jaywalking, or swiping a chocolate at the five-and-dime, not murdering her baby.

 

At Nellie’s trial, her mom said she had been “nervous and morose” since childhood, which, let’s be honest, describes half of Iowa in February. Doctors said she didn’t understand the gravity of her crime. Nellie said she couldn’t remember doing it—like her brain had hit the world’s worst snooze button.

 

And somehow, it worked.

 

The jury found her not guilty. Not “guilty but insane.” Not, “Please keep her away from parks.” Just not guilty.

 

The next day, they tried to take it back—“Oops, we didn’t mean unqualified acquittal!”—but too late. The judge said the paperwork was signed, and Nellie walked free.

 

Everett got six months for “lewdness,” which was 1909’s way of saying, “You’re a scoundrel, but we’re mostly mad you got caught.”

 

Nellie disappeared into history after that. Maybe she lived quietly. Maybe she haunted a swing set somewhere, waiting for the next train to Ottumwa. Either way, Des Moines still remembers the baby in the vault—and how the whole town looked away, because maybe, just maybe—their action or inaction played a part in it, because, you know, it would have been easier to give away a kitten.