Death in a Dumpster

MY GROSSBERG WENT INTO labor just after midnight. She was in her freshman dorm room at the University of Delaware, in pain and terrified. She couldn't go to the hospital. Only 18, she had spent the last nine months hiding her pregnancy from her well-to-do parents, perhaps afraid to shatter their suburb- perfect image of their lovely, artistic daughter. So she called the baby's father, Brian Peterson Jr., also 18, at his college in Gettysburg, Pa. He arrived three hours later in his black Toyota Celica, took her to a nearby Comfort Inn motel and paid $52 for Room 220. What happened next is equal parts mystery and tragedy. Police say a healthy baby boy--20 inches long; 6 pounds, 2 ounces--was born toward morning. Brian told the authorities that he put the child in a plastic bag and deposited him in the motel Dumpster. The students returned to their colleges--stopping at a carwash, perhaps to clean up the Celica's interior--and hoped that their gilded, carefree lives would go on as if nothing had happened. But something had. The next day, police say, they found the infant--shaken to death and with his skull and brain crushed. Amy and Brian were charged with murder. If they're convicted, the Delaware attorney general says she will ask for the death penalty.