The 26-year-old Allentown woman kept her pregnancy secret from everyone, authorities now believe.
So secret that when Amanda C. Hein began complaining about back pain while sitting in a booth at Starters Pub in Lower Saucon Township, the three men she was with had no idea she was about to give birth, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said Monday.
But that night of Aug. 18, Hein delivered a son after leaving the table — laboring in a bathroom stall of the popular sports bar on Route 378 while she ignored her friends' text messages as they worried why she was gone for so long.
Then she took that "alive and viable" boy of 33 to 36 weeks' gestation and killed him, putting him in a plastic bag and leaving him in the tank of the toilet, Morganelli said in announcing homicide charges for a death he was unable to explain.
"Why, I don't know," Morganelli said at a news conference. "But the criminal justice system does have to protect everyone. … Whether it was one hour or 10 minutes old or a year old, it is a person, and this person's life was taken.
"I cannot get inside this lady's head," Morganelli said. "I have no clue."
After leaving her newborn in the toilet, Hein went back to the table for her purse and smoked a cigarette outside before returning to her friends, Morganelli said. She stayed at the pub, he said, watching the hour-long conclusion of the pay-per-view wrestling tournament for which she had come — even while she bled on the booth. Her newborn's body remained to be discovered by a cleaning crew the next morning.
Hein, of 736 N. Seventh St., Allentown, was sent to Northampton County Prison without bail Monday evening after being arraigned by District Judge David Tidd, according to online court records.
Morganelli said that if prosecutors decide to seek a conviction for first-degree murder, Hein would face the death penalty because the killing of a child is an aggravating factor under Pennsylvania law.
On Aug. 19, cleaners at Starters Pub found the infant's body after the toilet wouldn't flush. Opening the tank, they uncovered the boy wrapped in a plastic bag that had lined a small garbage can in the stall, Morganelli said.
He said Hein admitted to investigators that the baby was alive when she placed him in the bag. According to court records, the 5-foot-2, 160-pound Hein said she had known she was pregnant since May or June but did not disclose it to anyone — including those she was with that night.
On Monday, Hein's stepmother, Louiseann Hein, began sobbing and clasped her hand across her mouth as she learned of the homicide charges. Sitting on the front porch of the North Seventh Street row home, she said she wasn't even aware that her stepdaughter was pregnant.
Louiseann Hein did recall a conversation they had about what might happen if the younger woman had a baby. The discussion was sparked by the arrival of a piece of mail from Planned Parenthood addressed to Amanda Hein.
"I told her she always had a home here," Louiseann Hein said, choking back tears. "We would make room. Would find a way."
She called her stepdaughter a private person who worked at Woof World, a dog day care business in Allentown. Amanda Hein had lived with a boyfriend in Bethlehem for about six months before moving back to the house in Allentown in January, the stepmother said.
Often Amanda Hein would retire to her bedroom to watch movies on her laptop when she came home, Louiseann Hein said. So she didn't pry, she said, when police officers came to the house last week and asked to examine Amanda Hein's cellphone before taking her for questioning.
Louiseann Hein said she hasn't seen her stepdaughter since. Sources said Amanda Hein was in a hospital until her arraignment.
Authorities said none of the three men with Hein that night is believed to be the father. Attempts to identify who he was are ongoing, said county Coroner Zachary Lysek.
Morganelli's announcement of the criminal charges came on a day in which authorities for the first time called the gruesome discovery a "baby" instead of the "fetus" that Lower Saucon Township police labeled it last week.
Lysek said the boy died of suffocation, though the "exact sequence" of whether the bag or the tank caused it was undetermined.
According to court records:
Hein was identified by police through the "large quantity" of blood that was left at her booth. The pub's reservation records were checked and police learned that three men and a woman were at the table that night.
One of the men, Luis Rivera, told investigators that Hein had complained of "some type of discomfort" and "pain in her back and spasms of some sort." She excused herself to go to the bathroom and was gone for what Morganelli said was about 40 minutes.
When Hein returned, Rivera asked her if she was all right. She said she was, though she was in pain.
Rivera was the one who drove Hein home. He told police she was bleeding and that he asked her many times if she needed to go to the hospital. She refused, he said, saying that she didn't have insurance.
On Aug. 20, police interviewed Hein at the Lower Saucon station. She admitted giving birth to the child in the stall, putting him in the plastic bag and into the toilet tank, and returning to the dining area until the event was over.
Morganelli said he saw photos of the newborn and that he looked like a "full-term baby." Even having been a prosecutor for 20 years, Morganelli said, it is "very upsetting."
"I've seen dead people, shot, strangled," Morganelli said. "But when you're dealing with a baby, it is very difficult."
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