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Baby sitter charged in 3 children’s deaths

A baby sitter already accused of killing a pregnant friend was charged Friday with drowning the woman's three children in a bathtub and then hiding the bodies in the family's washing machine and dryer.
Cut From Womb
Tiffany HallAP
/ Source: The Associated Press

A baby sitter already accused of killing a pregnant friend was charged Friday with drowning the woman's three children in a bathtub and then hiding the bodies in the family's washing machine and dryer.

Grand jurors indicted Tiffany Hall, 24, on three counts of first-degree murder in the East St. Louis deaths last September of DeMond Tunstall, 7, Ivan Tunstall-Collins, 2, and Jinela Tunstall, 1.

A county coroner's jury ruled the deaths of the children, their mother, Jimella Tunstall, and her fetus to be homicides.

Hall, already charged in the deaths of Tunstall and her fetus, could face the death penalty if convicted. She has pleaded not guilty in those deaths and remained jailed Friday on $5 million bond.

During the coroner's inquest last week, Illinois State Police investigator David Bivens testified that Hall admitted beating the pregnant Tunstall over the head with a table leg, then cutting her fetus from the womb in a bathtub, where she later drowned Tunstall's three children.

"The senseless taking of the lives of defenseless children must be answered with appropriate punishment," St. Clair County's State's Attorney Robert Haida said Friday.