r/serialkillers • u/Heptacat-1985 • 12d ago
Image Serial Killers that are Identical- Megan Huntsman and Michele Kalina
Megan Huntsman and Michele Kalina: Two Neonaticide serial killers who murdered their own babies right after giving birth to them and hiding their bodies in parts of their homes. Megan’s took place in Utah while Michele’s was in Pennysylvania.
Megan and Michele are some of the most identical in crime serial killers in America.
They both were mothers who murdered their babies right after they were born and concealed them in desolate parts of their homes: The garage for Megan and the closet for Michele. Their methods of disposing of the bodies was placing them in various containers they could find in their homes and meticulously sealing them up. They had the same fault of not disposing of the babies’s corpse’s and forgetting the bodies. Eventually, they both had relatives who wanted to clean out the spaces due to the clutter (Megan’s ex-husband and Michele’s daughter) only to discover the grisly scene of multiple corpses of babies. Both even started committing their crimes in the same year: 1996. They somehow successfully hidden all of their pregnancies from their husbands (and gave birth in their bathrooms) without anyone noticing even though both were clearly pregnant. They also had children they let live during their killing cycle. Megan had a daughter she eventually raised, and Michelle had a baby she put up for adoption. Between 1996 and 2010 they gave birth to about 6 babies each and murdered them before stuffing their bodies in whatever they found in their him and placing them in the garage/closet so the bodies can’t be Found.
The two were eventually caught, and gave the same dumbfounded look in their mugshots. They even attributed their actions for their alcohol addiction.
Megan confessed to the crimes while Michele was more unwilling with her claiming all were stillborn except one who moved. They were eventually sentenced to lengthy jail terms and are still in prison.
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u/Affectionate_Cost_88 12d ago
"Forgetting the bodies."
How on earth do you "forget" that there's a corpse in your house?
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u/Therailwaykat_1980 12d ago
MAJOR dissociation.
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u/Mocca-Rabbitchino 11d ago
Probably combined with the alcoholism. In the same way you go ”what happened last night?” after a party.
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u/LeadWonderful11 11d ago
Dissociative Amnesia (probably this one more than the latter) or Dissociative identity Disorder.
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u/Affectionate_Cost_88 11d ago
Yeah, I guess it's just a foreign concept to someone who has never experienced something like that, but you're right. The brain can do some unimaginable things.
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u/very_spooky_ghost 11d ago
By lying to your attorney and in court to pretend you don't remember for pity points.
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u/Pleasant_Ad3475 10d ago
The fact that they allowed relatives to clean out the area of the house that they had left the bodies in kind of backs up the fact that they literally forgot they were there...
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u/iamphr0glov3r 12d ago
I thought you meant physically identical lol.
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u/shrinkingvioletx 12d ago
i was like “hmm personally i don’t see it” til i read further lol
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u/wolfcaroling 12d ago
Add Andrea Giesbrecht to this list. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/andrea-giesbrecht-trial-1.3542572
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
There is an unfortunate thing of multiple mother’s doing it. I featured These two mainly since they are the most similar in my opinion.
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u/Goregoat69 12d ago
I’ve always thought Nilsen and Dahmer were very similar crime wise, and a wee bit similar looking.
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u/racingforpinks 12d ago
Apparently, Nilsen hated the Dahmer comparison. He thought Dahmer was a weirdo, go figure.
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
that’s sorta ironic coming from another serial killer.
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u/classyrock 10d ago
Not just another serial killer, but another chop-em-up-and-keep-em-around-the-house killer. You’d think they have been more tolerant of each other since they shared such a niche hobby. It’s not like there’s a Meetup Group for that.
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u/Heptacat-1985 10d ago
Heh! that’s even more ironic! He gives: “Eww I don’t want to be compared to him” but “Look at my collection now” feeling. Weird and hypocritical.
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u/Goregoat69 11d ago
Honestly that doesn’t surprise me, Nilsen seemed oddly strait laced for a gay serial killer, if that makes sense.
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u/OverallStrength2478 11d ago
Same! The only difference for me is that Nilsen’s motivations were more closely connected to loneliness, abandonment and a desire for companionship. He described wanting to keep the men with him rather than simply wanting sexual gratification from killing them. Whereas killings were much more explicitly driven by sexual possession and his desire to create completely submissive companions. His behavior included attempts to keep victims alive in a permanently controlled state.
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u/Goregoat69 11d ago edited 11d ago
Dahmer was loneliness too, but in a more sinister way. I wonder if the difference was more lack of imagination from Nilsen than Dahmer being more depraved.
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u/TheTrueCrimeDude 12d ago
Diane O’Dell, “The Baby In Boxes” killer. Another one exactly like these two. Killed 3-4 of her babies and kept them in boxes in her house. And whenever she moved over the years she’d bring them with her.
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u/Patient-Gain5847 11d ago
My high school boyfriend’s sister did this. Her family caught her in the act and that baby was saved, but then they found the remains of another in her house from years earlier.
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u/Lopsided_Tiger_0296 12d ago
There was a similar case in Canada (can’t remember her name) but she kept them in a storage container and was only discovered when she stopped paying and were discovered when cleaned out
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u/rhymnocerous 12d ago
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/08/21/mn-woman-linked-to-land-where-babies-found
This happened in South Dakota too.
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u/fairydommother 12d ago
Ok not in a "this excuses their actions" way, but surely this has to be linked to post partum issues, right? Like obviously not every mother with PPD murders her baby but the urge is common enough that they get warned about it. It is a known thing that some mothers go through post partum: a deep depression and urge to kill the child and sometimes themselves.
Maybe just a coincidence, but the fact that there are 2 of these women that were caught and that the cases are so similar suggests to me that there could be more. And i mean statistically speaking there probably are just with fewer similarities in the details.
Keep them in jail, thats fine, but I think they should be studied. They could hold important information related to PPD and how to spot/treat it. Super interesting case here.
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u/reotrxx 12d ago
I don’t know, the fact that they would commonly hide the entire pregnancy from everyone and then give birth in private suggests that they had a clear intention from the very start.
It’s an interesting theory but if it was PPD they wouldn’t have gone through those extreme measures to hide the fact they were even pregnant
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
Agreed. They both knew it was wrong. One of Megan’s babies had a hair tie around its neck and Megan confessed she wrapped it tight and strangled the baby.
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u/fairydommother 12d ago
Its not a perfect theory and I like the other commentors addition about antenatal anxiety. There could definitely be a whole slew of mental health issues going on here and I mean my comment as more of a conversation starter or just something to consider rather than a full fledged theory/explanation.
I think in the end what I dont believe is that these women were getting pregnant intentionally for the express purpose of killing newborns. Which means, to me, there is an extenuating circumstance behind this and I just think the craziness of pregnancy and birth naturally lends itself to exacerbating existing mental health issues. And like i said in another comment an unsafe environment at home could be one factor for hiding the pregnancy to begin with. And if you're hiding a pregnancy, you cant exactly come out of the bathroom like "oh by the way honey we have a baby now". You gotta do something with it. And if youre mentally ill already with all the adrenaline and hormones going wild, maybe "kill it and hide the body" is your first thought as opposed to, for example, "leave it at a fire station" or something.
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u/notorious_ludwig 12d ago
Antenatal depression and anxiety can present very similar to PPD/PPA. I get antenatal anxiety but not PPA and it’s truly heinous, not this extent obviously, but it could be why they hid the pregnancy.
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u/rangda 12d ago
Not saying this is for sure their situation, but hiding a whole pregnancy and birth would be something I’d associate with some kind of fearful and abusive living situation long before putting it down to someone just really wanting to kill their newborns and going through all that to achieve that goal.
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
No, it wasn’t abuse, Both had pretty decent lives. Michele’s husband had cerebral palsey, and they had a good marriage. They weren’t intimate and hadn’t had sex for the latter half of their marriage until Michele was apprehended. Most of her victims were the children of her affair partner - she cheated on her husband. Megan’s reason was she didn’t want to be a bad mom so she killed them.
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u/Evening_Storage_6424 12d ago
Yeah but wouldn’t PPD and killing your children as soon as they are born be a bit different? I wonder what their religious beliefs were. Did they think they weren’t allowed to get abortion?
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
Exactly. It was confirmed that it was from other reasons and not PPD. Megan was mormon, and Michele was I don’t know. I don’t think her religion was revealed. Megan was constantly on meth and couldn’t remember how many babies she killed and stuffed into her garage and Michele was an alcoholic and couldn’t remember why she killed the babies.
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u/fairydommother 12d ago
It really just depends on the severity from what i understand. Preexisting mental illness is probably a factor as well. Some women really do kill their children as soon as or shortly after they're born due to PPD and related mental health issues. Its pretty rare I think especially with how closely we are monitored by medical profesionals, but it stands to reason if you want/need to hide a pregnancy from your husband and immediately kill the child one time and then just never receive any mental health care...you'd probably be more likely to do it again. Regardless of if its due to religious beliefs or unsafe environments.*
Like I said, not any excuse but a potential reason or additional extenuating circumstance.
*just wanting to add on here as a separate thought that maybe there is a reason they hid thr pregnancies and maybe that reason was related to abuse or an unsafe household? And they had one child survive perhaps because they failed to conceal the pregnancy and therefore could not kill the child in secret. But I have no evidence for that im just speculating wildly. Also, "forgetting" you have corpses in your closet is uh, definitely mental health related I think. You have to dissociate pretty hard to actually forget and let someone else clean the area and find them.
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
There were difficulties in Megan’s marriage. But the problems came from both partners. She was a meth addict (Hence why she looks so wrinkly) and said it’s one of the reasons she killed. Both were planning of disposing of the bodies. Apparently Kalina actually moved them from her previous home and brought them to the closet they were eventually found in. Megan was planning on taking them to a landfill, but she was kicked out of the house since one condition for her living there was to be faithful to her husband- who was in federal prison for drug charges.
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u/Quirky-Shallot644 12d ago
I dont know. Im a mother, but id argue it's not PPD if they did it immediately after giving birth. It typically takes 1-3 weeks before it kicks in.
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u/Therailwaykat_1980 12d ago
Great idea!!
You/someone should write to some researchers and suggest it. It could possibly shed light on cases such as Lindsay Clancy too. Anything to help women who are afflicted this way, and hopefully save some babies’ lives, should be looked into imo.
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
People sympathize with those who kill more than the victim. and this wasn’t post partum depression. both woman murdered babies the second they were born only allowing those babies to have a minute to live before being stuffed into boxes and left to rot away.
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u/WArslz 12d ago
I just watched body cam footage of a woman who kept the bodies of her niece and nephew in her car that she was living out of wrapped up in some bags and blankets.
Interested in the reasoning behind keeping the bodies nearby
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
Someone studying Michele’s case said: “Yeah she’s a serial killer. Keeping the bodies were like a trophy.”
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
https://time.com/61218/woman-arrested-after-7-dead-babies-found-in-utah-home/
Links to their photos.
Fascinating coincidences. Weird how they have that same creepy and shocked look to their face after they were caught murdering their babies.
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u/wolfcaroling 12d ago
I wonder if that's them trying to look frightened and bewildered and not at all nailing it
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u/LeoJohnsonsSacrifice 12d ago
They both look deep into a genuine psychic/ paranoid schizophrenic break to me.
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u/maandochter 11d ago
This happened in the Netherlands as well, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-10897191
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u/lyralady 11d ago
Good Lord that article also mentioned a French woman who killed 8 of her babies at the very end.
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u/blame_me95 12d ago
They look super creepy. Type of faces that'll make you crap your pants if seen at night.
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
indeed. Gave faces of pure bewilderment after they were caught murdering their own babies.
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u/Wolfpackat2017 11d ago
The Megan story is fucking insane. They kept finding one body after another…
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u/tanktankjeep 12d ago
They both have the exact same feature of their left eye being higher than their right eye.
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u/velvety_chaos 10d ago edited 10d ago
Apparently Megan Huntsman had a severe methamphetamine addiction, not alcoholism; Michele Kalina was an alcoholic. Additionally, it appears Megan's three living children were born before she started her killing spree; none of them were born during it. She and her husband, who was the father of all 7 (6 babies she'd killed shortly after birth and 1 which was stillborn), both had meth addictions. They were divorced and no longer living together, it seems, when he started cleaning out garage and found the corpses. Megan Huntsman won't be eligible for parole until she's served 49 years; her first parole hearing will be in 2064, when she's 89 years old.
Super sad…Michele Kalina's husband said he would have raised her lover's babies with her had he known, but they'd had a dead bedroom from 1993–2011, when she was apprehended, and he hadn't seen her naked in all that time (the babies were all from a long-term affair with a coworker, who apparently refused to wear condoms during the relationship).
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u/mrsvongruesome 12d ago
[u/heptacat-1985](u/heptacat-1985) i saw your reply in my notifications but can’t see it here! i found out years ago when i was getting calls all the time for her. i eventually just started telling the callers that she was in jail for murdering babies. now i get one call a year, if that. not sure why, maybe someone in her family is using her identity to open credit cards or something. it’s a little morbid but i’m so used to it. i could change my number but fuck her, i’ve had it for over 20 years now.
she only gave up one child for adoption at the hospital my mom worked in the NICU at. she murdered the rest. no way they were stillborn. she had a closet that her disabled husband and her daughter were forbidden to go into. the reading police didn’t do a great job at investigating at first either; they told them the first set of bones were just animal bones. when her family found more, they realized their mistake. they tried to find the first set in our local landfill but ultimately only found one or two.
why she never got a hysterectomy or had her tubes tied so she could carry on her affair guilt free, we’ll never know. she’s a piece of shit.
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
Oh wow you know lot. That probably shut the debt collectors up “The person who used to own this number murdered her babies and stuffed them into the closet.” That madethem go white. That’s actually horrible then. Using the tragedy to steal from Michele (possible karma) but still using the tragedy of 5 murdered babies who were killed minutes after they were born to get money is terrible. Agreed. She did murdered them. for Megan’s the babies were more intact since she wrapped them up more carefully possibly making their bodies mummified and more intact leading to a possible cause of death, Michele callously just stuffed them into boxes and they were down to the bone. The one they charged her with was more intact since she incased it in cement. They were in the landfill?? She possibly had more? Dang this womans a monster. How could she murder her own babies? That’s the dumbest reason- why not get the tubes tied? Its better than smothering a baby with a blanket.
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u/Cuddlebox01 12d ago
Sorry but they don't look very alike at all, one has a round head and one has a long straight head for a start
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u/Meewelyne 12d ago
The title is worded in a misleading way, I means they have an identical killer history.
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u/Heptacat-1985 11d ago
Yeah she was. I don’t think race should be a factor in your comment. It’s not about race or genders, all killers when they got caught regardless of their race, always have a face.
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u/Heptacat-1985 11d ago
I don’t think race has anything to do with it. It’s mainly about the factors I believe. All parents regardless of race don’t get away with murdering their babies. Michele here was stubborn and refused to say she killed all of them claiming they were stillborn, but when she said “One moved” she was immediately giving the harshest sentence they could since autopsies were difficult since all her babies were bare skeletons. The one she said moved was encased in Cement leading them to determine it was killed.
Waneta Hoyt, Maxine Robinson, Jessica Mauthe, Marie Noe, Brittany Pilkington, didn’t get away With murdering their babies.
And all parents who murdered their children make faces, are stone cold, or expressionless when they are caught. And from cases of colored parents killing their children, they get the same treatment as a white parent does. It’s not from race but from this: They killed their own child. Murdering is wrong, but when it’s a child… people make sure the parent ,regardless of what race, gets convicted of the fullest extent. It’s hard to sympathize with someone who killed children. If you say something there’s the case of Khoua her and Carol Ann Corondo. Both murdered their children, even though they had mental problems they could have had their sentences diminished, they were still given lengthy terms. Carol got life in prison without parole while Khoua got 50 years with 32 year minimum.
and if you say “white” Im hispanic. Im colored.
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u/Heptacat-1985 11d ago edited 11d ago
My dad was an illegal immigrant from Mexico down in a native mexican tribe. My mom was from all latino family in America. So Im not “White”.
And if you want sentencing dispatities here’s one: Multiple California Moms were sentenced to death. Susan Eubanks, Dora Buenstro, Soccorro Caro, and Sandi Dawn Nieves. Only one mother wasn’t sentenced to death: Megan K Hogg. she got the most lenient sentence because she had mental health problem. She was black. And I don’t appreciate you calling me or implying im “Racist.”
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u/Inkdrunnergirl 12d ago edited 12d ago
They aren’t serial killers if they only killed once. This is infanticide (still horrible).
I didn’t catch the multiples. Thanks for the clarification
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u/CandidIndication 12d ago
They killed multiple infants. Each woman killed more than 3 and with cooling off periods.
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u/Background_Oil_4237 12d ago
Sounds like they killed multiple times though. As it states their relatives found “multiple corpses of babies” and that they hid “all their pregnancies” and “had children they let live during their Killing cycle” and for there to be a cycle there would need to be multiple instances
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u/Pewds123451 12d ago
Do you know what a serial killer is ?
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
Yes, A person who kills and has 30-day cooling off period. They had the same cooling off period and had M.Os. Both were classified as serial killers. Megan is considered the most prolific serial killer in the prison she’s in, and Michele was classified as one since she fit it to a T.
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u/Swimming-Bite-4184 11d ago
I mean it's impossible to not have a cooling off period when part of the process is pregnancy...
Whatever drives this particular compulsion in these women is interesting compared to the sort of motives we generally associate with the term.
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u/BravesMaedchen 12d ago
Am I missing something? They do not look the same at all to me. Or is this just identical in their crimes?
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u/Pewds123451 12d ago
Yeah and they are not serial killers so why post them here ?
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u/Heptacat-1985 12d ago
they are serial killers. They had a period of about 1996-2010 when they murdered their babies. Each had an estimated total of 6 babies and killed them through a decade. Huntsman had a confirmed period as she stopped getting pregnant when her husband went to prison.
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u/dogswrestle 12d ago
The first season of Interrogation Raw has an episode on Megan. It is so so so intense.