Baby snatcher who  faked birth papers behind bars

Ruth Olmos Valdés  a 37-year-old schoolteacher   who befriended a teenage  indigenous mother and then stole her 15-day- old baby girl is in preventive detention after appearing before a judge of guarantees Erick Polanco on Sunday, September  1

The victim’s mother, Yaribeth Palacios, 18, said the woman approached her at the José Domingo Obaldía Maternal and Child Hospital in Chiriqui province and promised to help her.

The indigenous woman, because she did not have identification documents, could not remove the baby on August 29. and the woman took her to a Fonda in David, Chiriquito to eat and then to a store supposedly to buy her clothes. While they were in the store, the woman disappeared with the baby.

According to the prosecution, Valdés had planned the theft of the baby since December 2018, as she had altered documents from a private hospital where she said she had given birth after telling her partner she was pregnant.

According to the judge, the accused used the victim’s vulnerability to strip her of the infant. In addition, he said that she is considered a danger to the community for which he ordered provisional detention.