Man who found dead baby says mother treated boy ‘like trash’

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A Sioux Falls man who discovered a dead baby in a ditch 38 years ago says the woman who gave birth to the boy and was last week charged in his death threw the child away “like trash.”

Lee Litz told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that he cried tears of relief when he learned 57-year-old Theresa Bentaas was arrested Friday and charged with murder and manslaughter in the killing of the child known as Baby Andrew. Litz found his body wrapped in a blanket in a cornfield ditch in February 1981.

Sioux Falls Police used DNA to determine Bentaas was the biological mother. She’s being held on a $250,000 bond.

Litz says his family and the 50 strangers who attended the infant’s funeral are his true family.

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Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com