Court petition says Minn. woman has acknowledged dead infants found in SD were hers

The Associated Press
August 28, 2013 at 10:10PM

GRANITE FALLS, Minn. — A Minnesota woman interviewed in a South Dakota homicide investigation into the deaths of two newborns has admitted she gave birth to the babies, according to court documents.

A petition to have Kelly Jean Anderson-Person committed said that she told authorities she was pregnant in 2009 and 2011 and that the infant remains found in eastern South Dakota last fall were her babies. The court document does not say how the babies died or why the remains were located in a tree grove near Fish Lake, S.D.

The South Dakota land is owned by a family member of Anderson-Person, according to the search warrant affidavit filed in Yellow Medicine County, Minn.

Anderson-Person, 34, has not been charged in the deaths. A civil commitment hearing is scheduled for Friday in Yellow Medicine County. The county's family services department is seeking to commit her involuntarily for mental illness, according to the West Central Tribune (http://bit.ly/kgiFMz ).

A court petition said Anderson-Person held a gun to her head when South Dakota authorities were executing a search warrant to collect her DNA at her Clarkfield home on Aug. 13. Officers struggled with her, and the gun fired into the ceiling, but no one was injured, the petition said.

Anderson-Person said she had hidden the gun knowing that investigators were coming to her home, the petition said. She stated, "I had a gun knowing this day would come," and also said she was overwhelmed by all the police officers surrounding her home.

Anderson-Person, formerly of Hendricks and referred to as Kelly Anderson in other court documents, has been held at Rice Memorial Hospital in Willmar since Aug. 13.

Anderson-Person's court-appointed attorney, Theresa Patock, declined to comment.

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