ETA: Lengthy article at link that author attributes to BSR, her aunt and mother. A week before prom, BSR goes to gynecologist for the first time and obtains bc pill Rx at her mom's direction. A missed opportunity to tell mom the pill too late as she was already pregnant. Mom Kim also acknowledges how "ash" was found/ tested with remains.
Why Is This 19-Year-Old on Trial for Murder?
March 23, 2018 -- Good Housekeeping
.....The police were at their house saying Skylar (whose first name is Brooke, but she goes by her middle name) needed to come down to the station for questioning because she “may have witnessed something.”
“Get over here, now,” Skylar’s dad, Scott, told her over the phone, and together they drove the half-mile to the Carlisle, Ohio police station for the interview. No need for a lawyer, the police said, according to Skylar’s aunt Vanessa. The questions would be routine.
Skylar knew why she was there. In a private room, away from her parents, Vanessa says the officers asked about a tip they’d received from the county coroner. Skylar, then 18, told them everything: that she’d unexpectedly given birth to a stillborn baby in the middle of the night two months earlier. That she hadn’t known what to do, so she did what she thought you do with dead bodies: She buried it.
[...]
Night fell, and when Scott, Skylar, and her mother Kim got home, it was clear to Jay they had been crying. Exhausted, they pushed through the crowd still gathered outside their house, grabbed some clothes and toiletries, and left again to find a hotel room. Vanessa says the Richardsons watched on TV, shocked, as authorities took soil samples from their yard and bagged burned scraps from their fire pit. They were inside the house, too, ripping out the carpets and confiscating computer hard drives, phones, iPads, Kindles.
Why did they need the bathroom rugs?
[...]
Because of a gag order issued by the judge, Skylar, her parents, and both sides' lawyers have been barred from speaking about the case for most of its duration, and Skylar maintains that she won't speak publicly until her trial. But through interviews with her close family members and friends - and with those who accuse her of murder -
I've pieced together what she says really happened.
[...]
A lot of this, from my perspective in viewing this evidence, came down to a situation where if members of the community were to find out that the Richardson girl was pregnant and perhaps gave birth, and even if after giving birth gave that child up for adoption, that was something that simply was not going to be accepted in that household, at least by Skylar and her mother."
[...]
When senior year rolled around, Skylar was excited about her future for the first time in a while. She was on student council and the honor roll, volunteered at a soup kitchen, and taught cheerleading to kids with disabilities. She'd been accepted to the University of Cincinnati, and planned to move onto campus as a freshman the next fall to study psychology.
After years of severely disordered eating, Skylar's family was relieved when she started putting on weight. She was more confident, and briefly dated a student from another school in the fall of 2016, then found Brandon, a guy who was a year younger at her school. They started dating in January 2017.
Brandon and Skylar's families say they don't believe Brandon was the father of the baby, and he says he never suspected she was pregnant. "She looked beautiful, we were hanging out every day," Brandon says. "I didn't notice anything."
[...]
On April 26, the week before her prom, Kim confirms that Skylar went to her first-ever gynecologist appointment with Dr. William Andrew at Hilltop OB-GYN. Her body had always menstruated erratically because of her eating, and she was concerned about the abnormally heavy periods with sporadic spotting she'd been experiencing over the past few months. Vanessa says that Kim had also noticed Skylar had been spending a lot of time with Brandon, and the two had discussed Skylar getting a prescription for birth control pills.
But at her appointment, after an examination, Dr. Andrew told Skylar that he could not prescribe her birth control because she was already approximately 32 weeks pregnant. According to Vanessa, who says she heard the story from Skylar after her arrest, Skylar left that appointment with a warning from her doctor: he would give her the birth control prescription so her mom wouldn't ask questions, but she should tell her parents about the pregnancy as soon as possible.
After the appointment, according to Vanessa, Skylar seemed upset, but Kim didn't question her daughter. A young woman's first trip to the gynecologist can be stressful, she figured. They filled the birth control prescription and didn't discuss the appointment any further.
Only Skylar knows for sure what happened about 36 hours later, when she says she gave birth to a lifeless baby in the middle of the night. Her mother, Kim, tells me that Skylar had woken up with some stomach pains and needed to go to the bathroom. When she went, the baby came out quickly. Shocked, Skylar looked for a pulse in its limp body, but couldn't find one. She wrapped the baby in a towel and cradled it for hours, crying. According to court documents filed by Rittgers and confirmed by Kim, sometime in the night, Skylar decided to name her baby Annabelle. "When she saw her, she thought of how pure and beautiful she was," Kim tells me. "I'd never heard the name before." Eventually, Skylar took the baby outside through the back door, found a shovel in the garage, and dug a small grave.
When I ask if the prosecutor's accusation that Skylar burned the body is accurate, Kim unequivocally says no. She does offer an explanation that might explain any ash in the tested remains: The family often burns boxes and other biodegradable trash in their backyard fire pit, Kim says, and, after prom, Skylar had dropped the then-wilting flowers Brandon had given her - a bunch of small sweetheart roses - into the pile of ash for the next burn. But as she dug Annabelle's grave, Skylar remembered the flowers, and retrieved them. Kim says Skylar recalled placing a pink rose on her grandmother's casket the year prior, and decided to do the same for the baby.