A teenager who buried her stillborn baby in a shallow grave wishes she had died in her place.
Skylar Richardson, from Ohio, in the US, was arrested after police discovered charred remains of a newborn in a shallow grave.
Her doctor had tipped off police, who brought the then 18-year-old in for questioning before charging her with aggravated murder.
At the end of a lengthy trial a jury deliberated for four hours and found her not guilty of smashing her newborn baby's head with a stone.
They concluded the child had been stillborn.
Giving her version of events for the first time, Skylar, now 20, told how her mum Kim took her to her first gynecologist appointment two weeks before senior prom.
The mum, who realised her daughter had been engaging in sexual behaviour with her boyfriend Brandon, wanted to get her on the pill.
There the teenager, who had been preparing to go to the University of Cincinnati in the autumn, was told she was 32 weeks pregnant.
As Skylar drove home with her mum she declined to tell her about the unborn baby.
“I wish I would have done it differently, I’m plagued by guilt every day for not telling someone," she told Cosmo.
She decided to open up about the pregnancy after prom.
A photo taken on the night of the dance shows Skylar and Brandon posing outside Richardson's house.
A small bump is visible beneath the young woman's red dress.
At the time her friends and family assumed she'd finally overcome her long terms issues with eating disorders.
Skylar didn't drink or stay long at the prom, Brandon taking her home before the dance had finished.
The following day she suffered from stomach cramps so bad she almost collapsed when she tried to stand up.
Not realising she was in labour, Skylar went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet with the sensation that "something needed to come out."
The baby girl, shocking white and wet with blood, fell into the bowl.
She lifted the child from the water and realised she was dead.
Her umbilical chord wasn't attached and the baby never moved or opened her eyes.
“I hoped she would start coming alive,” she later told police.
Covered in blood and slumped in the bathtub, Skylar felt unable to tell her parents or younger brother Jackson, 15, what had happened.
So she decided to do the only thing she could think of - bury the baby.
Skylar took her mother's garden trowel and dug a shallow grave in the backyard.
While she prepared the baby's final resting place she decided to give her a name - Annabelle.
Skylar unwrapped the towel swaddling baby Annabelle, placed her in the ground and covered her with a layer of dirt.
She placed a bunch of pink flowers on the grave.
It wasn't until July that Skylar spoke about the baby again.
On a trip to the doctors to get birth control a different medic, tipped off by the first, asked her about the pregnancy.
The teenager broke down, sobbing so loudly that people outside the consultation room could hear her.
She told the doctors everything, believing because she had not harmed the baby there would be no recriminations.
The doctor alerted the state authorities who called Skylar into a police station two days later.
She told them numerous times that she did not kill the baby.
Regardless, Skylar was charged with aggravated murder, involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment, tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse.
Two years later, when Skylar sat in front of the courtroom, she weighed less than 90pounds - the stress of the events causing her eating disorder to worsen.
For two years she had been under house arrest and then having to abide by a strict curfew, left to hear about the fun her friends were having at college from her childhood bedroom.
The ordeal has taken a toll on Skylar.
She said: "Every night, I would lie down and wish that I could have died in place of Annabelle.”
The trial, during which Skylar was accused of burning the baby, proved no better for her mental health.
“Very few things have been harder than having to listen to prosecutors allege horrible, unthinkable things of me and put countless photos of my daughter’s bones on a big screen," she said.
The idea that Skylar had acted selfishly and had other choices, as suggested by Tracy Johnson - whose son Trey turned out to be the biological father - came as a further blow.
After turning down a plea bargain in which the most serious charge of aggravated murder would be dropped and a possible life sentence reduced to 15 years, Skylar was found not guilty of the killing.
The one charge she was convicted of - abuse of a corpse - saw her sentenced to three years' probation.
