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Last week I had the chance to sit down with Cheyenne Corbett, who became well known throughout the Grand Valley after she gave birth to a daughter and wrapped her body in a towel. Cheyenne’s daughter suffocated to death because of what Cheyenne did, but Cheyenne says she thought her daughter was dead when she wrapped her. You can see her entire story here.

To do this story for our broadcast, I had to take her 40 minute interview, and the nearly 60 minutes of interviews I had with others involved in her case, on both sides, and synthesize it into three different stories. The first part is about Cheyenne and what she went through – what her life was like growing up, and what her life was like when she got pregnant. This was to help set the stage for why she made decisions she did – namely, hiding her pregnancy from her parents, and not seeking help from an adult when she was pregnant.

The second part of the report deals with the criminal charges that 17-year-old Cheyenne faced as a result of her actions. She was charged as an adult in the murder of her baby, and she ultimately pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, child abuse resulting in death. She was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

I then took my interview with Cheyenne and the psychologist who evaluated her shortly after she was arrested, and did a broader story about the issue of neonaticide, the term used to describe the killing of a baby within 24 hours of birth. You can see that story here.

One of the reasons why Cheyenne granted me the interview in the first place is because she hopes her story might help other teenagers and their families prevent something similar happening to them, and that if a teen mother finds herself in a similar situation that she’ll make different decisions than Cheyenne did, namely telling someone in a position of authority, instead of keeping it a secret.

Through my reporting, I also found other suggestions for helping to prevent neonaticide, and discarded infants, which is described as a significant social problem by the National Abandoned Infants Assistance Resource Center at the University of California at Berkeley. Some of those suggestions include communicating with teens early on, and helping to give them guidance as they navigate their independence. The paper also concludes that one of the most important steps to preventing neonaticide requires society to “somehow reduce the vulnerability that is felt by women who commit this act of desperation.”