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<span style="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-style: italic">Friday April 24, 2009</span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">Police say W.Va. woman tried to sell baby</span></span>
<span style="font-size: 8pt">Mother tried to get $5,000-$10,000 for infant boy to pay for a new apartment</span>
by Ashley B. Craig
Daily Mail staff
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A Charleston woman is behind bars after police say she tried to sell her baby to get money for a new apartment.
Rebecca Sue Taylor, 19, of Renaissance Circle, is being held at South Central Regional Jail. Her bond was set at $2,500, property only, or 10 percent cash. She was arrested Wednesday.
In a complaint filed in Kanawha Magistrate Court, Charleston Detective J.F. Taylor, who is of no relation to the defendant, reported that a woman identified as Leigh Burr came to the police station Sunday and told officers that Rebecca Taylor was attempting to sell her 5-month-old son.
Burr told officers that Taylor said she would sell the boy for $10,000, the complaint said. Burr said that Taylor had called her several times on the phone trying to get the money, according to the complaint. She later told Burr she would accept $5,000 in exchange for the infant, the complaint said.
Burr said Taylor told her she'd never bonded with the boy and that she needed the money to get a new apartment, the detective wrote in the complaint.
"There was an arrangement between Taylor and (Burr) regarding a possible surrogacy, but in the middle of that she offered her a baby she already had for a monetary amount," said Sgt. E.L. Hodges, of the police department's criminal investigation division. Hodges said that the surrogacy arrangement between the two women had never been finalized.
Taylor was charged with offering the purchase or sale of a child.
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">If convicted, the woman could face a fine of $100 to no more than $2,000 and one to five years in prison.</span></span>
Police still are investigating. It is not clear who has custody right now of the 5-month-old.
Hodges said it's rare for Charleston officers to face a situation where a parent has been accused of trying to sell a child.
"It does happen," Hodges said. "You hear about it nationally, but not around here so much. It is definitely odd."
In 1993, a Clay County woman was arrested after she sold her 1-month-old son to two undercover State Police officers. Police were investigating then because they said they had reason to believe the woman, Lena L. Peek, who at the time was 26, had sold other children.
Troopers said Peek sold the baby for $1,400 to troopers who were posing as a couple. Troopers said Peek wanted the money to buy a new house-trailer.
Peek was sentenced to a year in jail.
Nine years after she was released she relocated to Charleston's West Side and was convicted of stabbing a 77-year-old blind woman who lived across the street from her, according to court records.
Charleston police said then that the motive was robbery. They said Peek had fallen into financial hardship and she had a methamphetamine addiction. Peek, now 42, is serving a life sentence.
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