Tennessee toddler Evelyn Boswell, the 15-month-old girl whose weeks-long disappearance in 2020 ended in heartbreak after her remains were found on family-owned property, was suffocated by a blanket and aluminum foil, a forensic pathologist testified.
The revelation was made Friday at a hearing to discuss which photos can be used as evidence in the trial against Boswell’s mother, Megan, who is accused of murdering her daughter and going to great lengths to cover it up.
Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan, the chief medical examiner in Knox and Anderson counties, testified that the jury should see certain photos of the toddler’s body, as they would help them decide whether the death was deliberate or accidental, WJHL reported.
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According to Mileusnic-Polchan, the 15-month-old’s body had been folded in an unnatural position when she was found in a storage shed on property owned by the Boswell family. Photos from the grim crime scene were also said to demonstrate how tightly Evelyn had been wrapped up in foil and a blanket—so much so that the pathologist said her face was somewhat flattened.
Agent Brian Fraley of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation testified that detectives found Evelyn’s body inside a “trash can” placed inside a playhouse in the shed.
“We received a call from the defendant’s father talking about property—a storage shed on the property. He believed it may have been valuable for us to look in it and search, so we did respond and search that,” he said.
He said the toddler’s body was found inside a black trash bag that was spotted after agents removed several other trash bags from inside the playhouse.
“I observed a leg and a foot attached on top of this trash wrapped in that same described fleece blanket…” Fraley was quoted saying by WJHL.
Megan Boswell, then 18, never reported her daughter missing after she vanished in early 2020, and police said she’d given conflicting accounts of what happened to the toddler from the get-go. She now faces a slew of charges in her daughter’s death, including felony murder, abuse of a corpse, felony child abuse, and aggravated child neglect.
“She claimed that it was an accidental death—that she and her boyfriend at the time were sleeping in bed with [Evelyn] and when they woke up that morning that she was unresponsive…that she had been smothered,” Fraley testified about what the young mom told investigators.
With her trial scheduled to begin on Feb. 6, 2023, Boswell on Friday also requested a new attorney, though the judge denied that motion, WBIR-TV reports.
