Brother Found Sister's 4 Babies in Freezer After His Guardian Appointment in Wake of Her Hospitalization: Docs

Alexis Aldamir Apartment Building
The four babies were found at the home of Alexis Aldamir, hidden in the freezer (above: the police scene at Aldamir's apartment building the day the babies were discovered in 2022).Getty Images

Alexis Aldamir "has intermittently been aggressive towards staff, pushing staff and throwing water and food," wrote her social worker in a request to put the woman on antipsychotic medications. The remains of her newborns were later found in a freezer.

Alexis Aldamir's secret that she kept hidden away in her Massachusetts home—the remains of four infants, stashed away in a freezer for an unknown amount of time—was discovered after her apparent failing faculties left officials concerned that she could be the death of others if she continued to live unsupervised, documents reviewed by Inside Edition Digital showed.

Police officers brought Alexis Aldamir, 69, to Tufts Medical Center Emergency Department on Aug. 15, 2022 after being alerted to the smell of gas in her apartment, according to a guardianship petition filed in Suffolk County Family and Probate Court that was obtained by Inside Edition Digital.

Doctors evaluated Aldamir and soon found "she was unable to provide any meaningful information about herself," could not "explain any reason for the stove being left on" in her apartment and "also appeared to have no safety awareness and little concern for the potential explosion risk in her home due to accumulation of gas," said the petition.

The social worker appointed to Aldamir's case said in the petition that she would need a guardian once she left the hospital.

"Aldamir lacks capacity for medical decision-making. She Is unable to care for herself and cannot safely return to her prior living situation where she was residing alone in the community, In the hospital, Ms. Aldamir Is disoriented, inattentive and agitated, requiring medication to manage her agitation and exit-seeking behavior, and she requires a one-to-one sitter," read the petition.

A month later, another court filing said that Aldamir had started to receive antipsychotic medication.

"She has intermittently been aggressive towards staff, pushing staff and throwing water and food," wrote her social worker in the findings she filed in court to ask the judge to allow doctors to put Aladmir on a treatment plan drawn up by doctors which included antipsychotic medications.

The role of guardian would eventually go to her brother, John Harrelson, who traveled to Boston in November of 2022 to clean out Aldamir's apartment. A few hours into cleaning, Harrelson and his wife called police to say they had discovered what they thought might be a fetus in his sister's freezer. By the end of that day, police discovered four full-term babies dead in the freezer.

"All were frozen solid. All were found in shoe boxes wrapped in tin foil. Two were male and two were female," the district attorney's office said.

All four still had their umbilical cords attached. The two baby girls had their placentas attached, according to the district attorney's office. Testing determined that all four babies were the children of Aldamir and a man not named by the district attorney's office.

The district attorney's office said in a statement last month that no charges will be filed in the case due to the "many unanswered questions about the cause of death of the four babies," it would not be ethical to take the case to trial.

Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said that because investigators were unable to prove the babies were ever alive and were unable to determine a cause of death for the four children, his office could not file homicide charges or definitively determine that a crime had been committed.

Investigators also said that after speaking with Aldamir, 69, they found that she would "unlikely be able to stand trial."

“Throughout the interview, Aldamir appeared confused and demonstrated a lack of understanding about where she was and who she was speaking to,” officials said in the statement. “As a result, she was unable to provide investigators with any significant information. To further assess Aldamir’s cognitive ability, investigators reviewed publicly available probate court records and spoke with a lawyer for Aldamir. The information obtained suggests strongly that Aldamir would be unlikely to stand trial."

“This investigation, which is one of the most complex, unusual and perplexing that this office has ever encountered, is now complete. While we have some answers, there are many elements of this case that will likely never be answered,” Hayden said. 

The medical examiner reported that there was no scientific method to determine how long the babies had been frozen and that an autopsy found no signs of internal or external trauma and no evidence of obvious injuries. There were no signs of food, or milk, or formula inside the babies’ stomachs, and there was no way to definitively determine whether the babies had been born alive, the medical examiner's office said. 

The medical examiner found the cause of death for all the babies to be “undetermined.”

“We will never know exactly where or when the four babies found in Alexis Aldamir’s apartment were born," Hayden said. "We will never know if the four babies were born alive, and we will never know exactly what happened to them. We will never know how Alexis Aldamir concealed her pregnancies, or why she chose to do so."

As for Aldamir's brother, his post as guardian was short-lived after her social worker filed a petition asking that Harrelson be removed for failing to provide the court with information about his sister's estate as is required under state law.

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