A Mother by Invention

By Julie Grace/Ravenna

Michelle Bica, 39, prepared methodically for her baby. She decorated a room in her home in Ravenna, Ohio, readied lots of baby bottles and set up the monitor in the kitchen. She had miscarried last year but soon announced happily that she was pregnant again. As her due date approached, however, she kept bumping it later and later. Then, on Sept. 27, she presented her husband Thomas with a healthy boy. The birth, she explained, happened quickly and dramatically. Her water broke, an ambulance came to take her to a hospital in Akron, and she left the facility almost immediately because of a tuberculosis scare. Thomas Bica was overjoyed. The only problem was, unknown to him and to almost anyone else, Michelle Bica had not been pregnant.

Theresa Andrews, 23, was pregnant and was last seen on Sept. 27, when her husband Jon left their Ravenna home to go to his job as a sheet-metal worker. He spoke to his wife at about 9 that morning. She had just received a call from a woman interested in buying their black 1999 Jeep Wrangler after seeing a FOR SALE sign in its window. He never heard back from Theresa, and by the time he returned home, the Jeep was gone and so was his wife. But her purse and cell phone remained at the house.

Police traced a call that Andrews received at 8:18 a.m. on Sept. 27 and found that it had come from Michelle Bica's phone. They paid the new mother a visit on Oct. 2. She seemed nervous. The FBI called the hospital in Akron and learned that Bica had never had any appointments there, nor had she been admitted, and there had been no tuberculosis scare. Before the police could return for another round of questioning, Michelle went to the nursery to tend to the child and minutes later, in a separate bedroom, put a .22-cal. pistol in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Investigators later dug up the newly paved driveway and garage of her home. There they found a shallow grave and Theresa Andrews.

A foot-long horizontal cut was found across Andrews' abdomen, says Dr. Rogelio Marcial, the coroner. It was a postmortem assault. She had been killed with a gunshot wound to the back that pierced her heart. The baby was removed within the next seven to 10 minutes. "This was a well-planned affair," said Marcial. The information for making the cut is widely available. According to Marcial: "all you have to do is look at books or the Internet, something like Babyzone. It's just like making bombs." Police believe Michelle Bica may have started keeping track of Andrews when they met shopping for maternity clothes at Wal-Mart.

Now two men are left to mourn and ask why. "For all intents and purposes," says detective Greg Francis of the Ravenna police department, Thomas Bica "thought this was his baby boy." Jon Andrews, has finally brought his son Oscar Gavin home. But he will eventually have to answer his child's unavoidable question: "How was I born?"

--By Julie Grace/Ravenna