Woman Indicted for Killing Five

(Belleville, Illinois) A 25-year-old East St. Louis woman, Tiffany Hall, was indicted Friday by a St. Clair County grand jury for first-degree murder of three children; DeMond Tunstall, 7; Ivan Tunstall-Collins, 2; and 10-month-old Jinella Tunstall.

Hall had previously been indicted for the September 2006 murder of the children's mother, Jimella Tunstall, and she was also indicted for the intentional homicide of Jimella Tunstall's unborn child.

Hall allegedly beat Tunstall unconscious and then ripped her fetus out of her abdomen using a pair of scissors, leaving Tunstall to bleed to death. Hall dumped Tunstall's body, wrapped in a curtain, in an East St. Louis lot. Afterward, it's alleged that Hall "drugged the children with cough syrup, drowned them in a bathtub and hid their bodies in a washer and dryer." Astonishingly, Jimella Tunstall is reported to have been Hall's best friend.

Hall portrayed the dead fetus as her own and arranged a funeral service which lured her boyfriend home on leave from the U.S. Navy. She confessed her actions to her boyfriend who alerted the authorities.

Hall is currently in custody in the St. Clair County Jail in lieu of $5 million bond.


[Update 08/16/07]

Hall gets two death penalty trials.