RIPPED FROM THE WOMB

MANY OF THE NAMES WERE BIBLICAL: Elijah, Jordan, Joshua. But the horror story that riveted America last week had the bloody pathos of Greek tragedy: a mother and two of her children slaughtered; one child ripped from her womb; another spared, murmuring, “Mommy hurt.”

At 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 16, a Thursday, Laverne Ward, 24, rang up his old girlfriend Deborah Evans, 28. Evans, a welfare mother with three children and another on the way, had moved away from Hanover Park, a drug-infested Chicago suburb frequented by Ward, to try to rebuild her life in middle-class Addison. A few hours later, Ward, along with his cousin, Jacqueline Williams, 28, and her boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, 22, turned up at Evans’ apartment at 675 Swift St. According to relatives, Ward was high on crack. Evans let them in, and a brief argument ensued. Prosecutors charge that Caffey then shot Evans in the head with a small-caliber handgun and stabbed her repeatedly with a knife. Next, Ward and Caffey went into the bedroom of Evans’ daughter Samantha, and stabbed the 10-year-old to death. The wounds on Samantha’s forearms suggest that she died trying to defend herself.

The three then got down to their purported business: taking Evans’ unborn baby boy, whom she’d planned to name Elijah. Police say that Caffey and Williams were going to claim the child as their own. (Williams’ tubes, one of Ward’s friends explained, had been tied after having given birth to three children.) Others say that Ward wanted the boy for himself, and boasted shortly after the murder that he had just had a baby boy. Either way, prosecutors believe the three acted in unison inside Evans’ apartment, with Caffey allegedly using scissors and a knife to perform a C-section on Evans. Then Williams, who has some training as a nurse’s aide, extracted the 38-week-old, 6-lb. 8-oz. baby. After reviving Elijah with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Williams inexpertly cut the umbilical cord, then cleaned and dressed him.

Leaving behind Evans’ 19-month-old son Jordan, who police believe is Ward’s biological son, the threesome fled with the newborn and his brother Joshua, 8. Police later learned that Joshua reached out for help, telling an adult about the murders and charging that Ward had been involved. His captors then allegedly tried poisoning and strangling Joshua before stabbing him to death. Police found his body in an alley in the suburb of Maywood.

Around 2 a.m. on the night of the murders, Evans’ live-in boyfriend, James Edwards, returned home from his factory job to be greeted at the front door by a crying, blood-splattered but unharmed Jordan. Inside, he found Evans’ body beneath a blanket and Samantha in a rear bedroom. Late Friday night, police tracked down Williams and Caffey, who had Elijah with them. Since July, say prosecutors, Williams had been feigning pregnancy and a delivery date that coincided with Evans’. “[Williams’ family] had a baby shower for her, and she never was pregnant,” recalls Ward’s friend. Williams told prosecutors she and Caffey longed for a lightskinned baby boy–presumably the sort of mixed-race infant that was about to be born to the white Evans. Though police believe that Ward sired Elijah, as well as Jordan, Evans’ boyfriend Edwards, who like Ward is African-American, says he is the father of Elijah and may be Jordan’s as well.

Before police arrested Ward, his friend says, Ward phoned several former girlfriends and warned one that she had better sever a relationship with another man “if you don’t want the same thing that happened to Debbie to happen to you.” Another friend, Claudio Cabreja, says, “Vern was one of those guys, he’d be with a girl and think she shouldn’t go out with anyone else.” Evans’ relatives allege that Ward, who has served time for domestic battery and drug dealing, beat Evans during their three-year relationship.

Attempting to capitalize on the horror, House Speaker Newt Gingrich said last week that the tragedy was the result of “the welfare state,” which had produced “a drug-addicted underclass with no sense of humanity, no sense of civilization and no sense of the rules of life.” But real life is more complex. Deborah Evans “was dying to have somebody to love her,” recalls her cousin Carolyn Milani. Evans ran away from home after fighting constantly with her mother, acting out to gain the attention of her often absentee father Sam.

“She wanted a baby more than anything,” says Milani. During her teen years, Evans marked her calendar with the notation “IC” to remind herself of the most fertile days to have intercourse; meanwhile, her detractors spray painted DEBBIE IS A SLUT on the sidewalk outside the church she attended. Although Evans’ father embraced Samantha, who is white, as his granddaughter, he disowned Evans after she gave birth to Joshua. Last week, as Sam grieved publicly, telling reporters, “I was concerned that her rebellion would cost her life,” friends of Evans’ fumed that Sam was a “prejudiced pig.” Meanwhile, the three suspects are being held without bail, facing charges that could draw the death penalty.

–Reported by Julie Grace/Addison