Woman Sentenced to Life For Killing Pregnant Friend, Friend's Children

By Margaret Lyons in News on Jun 9, 2008 10:36PM

An Illinois woman was sentenced to life in prison without parole today on four counts of murder and one count of intentional homicide in the death of the fetus. Tiffany Hall, 26, pleaded guilty to killing Jimella Tunstall; Tunstall's fetus, which Hall cut out of Tunstall's womb; and Tunstall's three children, DeMond, 7, Ivan, 2, and Jinella, 1. Hall pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.

On September 15, 2006, Hall beat Jimella Tunstall with a table leg and then used scissors to cut the fetus out of Tunstall's uterus, and Tunstall bled to death. Hall dumped her body in an East St. Louis lot and kept the fetus, which police say she later said was her own still-born child, for whom she arranged a funeral. Days after she killed their mother, Hall picked up the three Tunstall children from their father's house and drowned each of them in the same tub their mother died in, and then hid their bodies in the apartment's washer and drier. Hall's boyfriend came home on leave from the Navy to attend what he thought was his child's funeral, where Hall apparently told him the baby wasn't theirs and that she'd killed a woman to get it; he contacted the police.

Hall and Tunstall had known each other since childhood, and Hall used to babysit Tunstall's kids. [STLToday, AP, photo via an old CBS 2 story]