Three people charged in a bizarre kidnapping plot — which left a 3-week-old baby dead, her parents and uncle with gunshot wounds, and another woman beaten with a baseball bat — appeared Friday afternoon in court in Long Beach, where their arraignment was postponed.
Giseleangelique D’Milian, 47, and her three alleged accomplices were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of charges related to the kidnapping and homicide of baby Eliza Delacruz, who was taken from her Long Beach home Jan. 3 and found dead in a San Diego County dumpster the following day.
No charges were filed against D’Milian’s 30-year-old daughter, Charisse Shelton, who was among those arrested. She has been released, according to police.
Long Beach police announced Wednesday that D’Milian wanted to convince her married boyfriend that she had given birth to his twins while out of the country and thus needed to produce appropriately aged children to show off as her own. She hatched a violent kidnapping scheme, investigators said.
She allegedly enlisted 29-year-old Anthony McCall of Oceanside to storm into the Long Beach home where she had tracked the unidentified mother of Eliza Delacruz. McCall is accused of shooting Delacruz’s parents and uncle and fleeing with the infant.
The baby’s death occurred the same day she was abducted, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.
About five weeks after Eliza was found dead in Imperial Beach, McCall allegedly used a baseball bat to beat a young mother whom D’Milian knew in an attempt to abduct the woman’s 4-month-old son from an El Segundo hotel room.
The kidnapping was thwarted when hotel employees on the woman’s hotel room door, police said. McCall fled and the baby was unharmed.
Long Beach police and El Segundo police began working together on the case in mid-February. The investigation into the Long Beach kidnapping was delayed in part because Eliza’s parents and uncle’s injuries made them unable to explain what happened to investigators.
D’Milian allegedly had a charitable organization that she said was designed to help the mothers of young infants. Anyone who may have had contact related to those efforts was urged to contact detectives.
Police have still not been able to figure out why baby Eliza ended up dead, Long Beach Chief Robert Luna said Wednesday.
The string crimes was unlike anything Luna had seen in nearly 30 years in law enforcement, he said.
D’Milian, McCall and 43-year-old Todd Boudreaux of Fontana were all charged Friday, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced. The criminal complaint gave an alias of Rene Reyes Stefannie Brewster for D’Milian.
D’Milian and McCall were charged with murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and attempted kidnapping. Boudreaux was also charged with attempted murder and attempted kidnapping in the El Segundo incident, as were McCall and D’Milian.
Shelton of Corona was arrested on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact, police said Wednesday.
Authorities initially also held Boudreaux only on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact, but the DA’s office indicated he was a suspect in the El Segundo incident. Neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney would comment on his alleged involvement.
Bail was set at $5 million for D’Milian and McCall, and at $1 million for Boudreaux.
All three face life in prison if convicted as charged.
No booking photos have been released, and no clear cameras were allowed in the courtroom Friday.
The defendants were ordered to return for arraignment on April 30.