Story highlights
Three of Erica Murray's seven children were found dead in her home in September
She was charged with the murder of two of the infants
Police wore hazmat suits as they cleaned squalor from home
A mother whose infants were found dead amid squalid conditions in her Massachusetts home pleaded not guilty Monday to two counts of murder and other charges.
Erika Murray, 31 showed no emotion as she quietly answered “not guilty” nine times in Worcester County District court as the charges were read out loud.
Besides murder she is charged with neglect, abuse, reckless endangerment, concealing a fetal death and even animal cruelty.
It was a shocking and gruesome scene: Police officers in hazmat suits retrieving dead infants among “mounds of used diapers and feces” from a Massachusetts home back in September.
Four other children belonging to Murray also lived in the home and were removed by the state in September.
Her boyfriend, who also lived at 23 St. Paul, was also indicted Tuesday, but not on charges of murder. Ray Rivera, 38, was indicted on two counts of assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury, two counts of reckless endangerment of a child, two counts of cruelty to animals and one count of cultivating marijuana. He is being held on $100,000 bail.
Ray Rivera, 38, was indicted on two counts of assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury, two counts of reckless endangerment of a child, two counts of cruelty to animals and one count of cultivating marijuana.
His attorney has said that he absolutely denies the allegations.
Father says he was unaware of the children
Both Rivera and Murray maintain that he not only never knew about the three infants he fathered that died in his home, he also was somehow unaware of two of the four living ones that the state removed from his 1,150-square-foot home.
DNA tests determined that Rivera was the father of all seven, according to WHDH.