BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Prosecutors have dropped charges against a woman who was accused of murdering her newborn baby in Mountain View.
A defense attorney for Jenifer Marie Tupper, 36, hired a medical examiner, obstetrician and perinatal pathologist, who all disagreed with the official cause of the baby’s death.
“Based on those experts’ opinions, we no longer believed we could prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the cause of death was homicide,” said Deputy District Attorney Carolyn Malinsky.
The case looked back to Aug. 2, 2021, when Tupper gave birth in a backyard cottage owned by her boyfriend’s family on Leghorn Street.
Tupper called her friend and said the baby was stillborn, and the friend called police.
“It’s in a bag,” Tupper told doctors at El Camino Hospital, according to the police report.
Detectives found entries in Tupper’s journal that talked about “resolving pregnancy, legally or illegally.”
“If there is any way to do all of this without anyone finding out, I’d be extremely excited,” she wrote. Officers read Tupper her journal entry at the police station, and she laughed to herself and said, “I would’ve been,” according to the police report.
The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner found the unnamed baby suffered extensive trauma to his face and neck, brain bleeding and a broken left arm.
Tupper claimed that while walking to the sink to get scissors to cut the umbilical cord, she fell on her baby and struck him with her elbow.
The baby was born face down and wasn’t breathing, and she refused to look at his face and used a jacket to cover him, she said.
Tupper hired a medical examiner who said the cause of death was “undetermined” because the injuries could’ve been from as a “breached delivery,” Malinsky said.
The journal entries could be interpreted as Tupper writing about an abortion, Malinsky said.
“It became a tough case to prove,” Malinsky said.
Tupper was released from the Elmwood Jail in Milpitas to an addiction treatment center in San Jose on April 14, 2025. Judge Benjamin Williams allowed her to remove her ankle monitor a year later, court records show.
Malinksy agreed to drop the charges for murder and child abuse on Wednesday, court records show.
Be the first to comment