The “killer nanny” is pregnant.
Louise Woodward, the British caregiver convicted in 1997 of killing an infant in Massachusetts, is about to give birth to her first child, the Sunday Mercury reported. Now 35, Woodward lives quietly in a picture-pretty village near Birmingham, England, where she is married to a local businessman, teaches salsa dancing and goes to bake classes.
The would-be happy homemaker and her husband, Anthony Elkes, 32, are expecting to become new parents within the next couple of months, according to friends. But the once-notorious murder convict, who claimed she never harmed eight-month-old Matthew Eappen of Newtown, Mass., is press-shy nowadays: She refused to tell the Mercury when she’s due and whether it’s a boy or girl.
Woodward was a cherubic teen when a jury convicted her of second-degree murder in a trial that riveted both nations. Jurors agreed with prosecutors, and medical experts, that baby Matthew was shaken so violently he died of head injuries—a lethal form of inflicted trauma that became widely known during the trial as Shaken Baby Syndrome, or SBS.
Woodward was sentenced to 15 years but spent just 279 days in prison after a judge agreed to reduce her conviction to involuntary manslaughter. Arguments over the case have raged ever since.
Nobody was less persuaded of the nanny’s self-proclaimed innocence than the parents of Matthew Eappen.
“There’s a lot to be said for saying you’re sorry,” mother Deborah Eappen told Newsweek in 2007, adding, “I’m not holding my breath. … The really important thing is that we know the truth, and the jury saw it.”
Around the same time, Woodward told the Daily Mail she was trying to rebuild her life. “Of course,” she said, “I know there are some people out there just waiting for me to have a baby so they can say nasty things.
“That upsets me, but that is not going to stop me leading my life. I am innocent. I have done nothing wrong. I am entitled to enjoy my life. I am not going to apologize for being happy.”