A former American cheerleader cleared of murdering her baby after her school formal has successfully won her bid to have the records of her conviction sealed.
Brooke Skylar Richardson was acquitted of aggravated murder, involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment after a widely publicised murder trial in 2019.
Jurors did however find her guilty of the gross abuse of a corpse.
Prosecutors claimed Richardson, who was 18 when she gave birth to a little girl she named Annabelle in May 2017, killed her baby by crushing the little girl’s skull and then setting her on fire because she didn’t want to be a single mum.
Richardson always protested her innocence.
A US court eventually ruled Annabelle was stillborn when Richardson gave birth to her in secret in the bathroom of her parents’ home and buried her in her backyard.
Now Richardson – who served just 14 months of her three year probation – has won a recent bid to stop the general public viewing records of the sensational court case.
The ruling means everything, including the conviction, no longer exists in the criminal justice system, FOX19 NOW reported.
There are some exceptions, with law enforcement still able to see the case should Richardson ever be changed again with a criminal offence.
But as a lawyer explained, “it doesn’t make much difference, you can’t expunge things from the internet”.
Details of the case shocked the world after the efforts Richardson took to conceal her pregnancy were revealed in court.
Richardson always had irregular periods and said she was horrified to learn she was pregnant when she went to Dr William Andrew for birth control pills in April 2017.
On May 5, 2017, Richardson attended her school formal with her boyfriend Brandon – who wasn’t Annabelle’s father – and left the festivities because she felt unwell.
The following day, the cramps intensified and Richardson felt “that something needed to come out” when she went to the toilet.
A baby girl, deathly white and without the umbilical cord attached, came out with no heartbeat, Richardson said, which led to her decision to bury the child and tell no one.
When she tried to get birth control a few months after burying her daughter, the doctor questioned her about the pregnancy.
Although Richardson thought she would not get in trouble because the baby was stillborn, the GP alerted the authorities.
Two days later, Richardson was being questioned by police without her parents or a lawyer present.
Police found the baby’s remains about two months after she gave birth.
The now 23-year-old said she was “plagued by guilt” over her decision to keep her pregnancy a secret and wished she could have died in Annabelle’s place.
“I spent a lot of my time depressed,” Richardson told Cosmopolitan after the case concluded.
“Every night, I would lie down and wish that I could have died in place of Annabelle.
“I wish I would have done it differently. I’m plagued by guilt every day for not telling someone.”
The judge berated her “grotesque disregard for life” at sentencing, but her lawyers always stated she was “an 18-year-old high school girl who was frightened and saddened because of giving birth to a stillborn baby”.
Richardson told Cosmopolitan she was a grieving mother, not a monster, who visited her daughter’s memorial “every week”.
“It was so hard to live knowing the truth but to have the whole world think otherwise,” she said.
“The people out there who hate me so much and wish horrible things upon me also do not know me.”
Despite the case closing more than three years ago, with Richardson being found not guilty of the aggravated murder, involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment charges, the story is as widely discussed as ever.
Multiple documentaries have aired covering the bombshell case, including Killer Cases: Cheerleader on Trial, snippets of which have recently been recirculating on TikTok.
One clip from an episode of 48 Hours shows her court appearance when she was released from probation early in which she states she “suffers in silence” and has “remorse”.
Richardson is now working for her lawyers, father-son team Charlie H. and Charlie M. Rittgers, and local reports state she intends to study law.