Charges: Woman drowned her son because she couldn’t enjoy a bath while he cried

Prosecutors have charged a woman with murder after she showed up at a hospital claiming her child had died there.

Charging documents state that 20-year-old Esperanza Rae Harding showed up at Children’s Hospital on Wednesday, saying that her child died of natural causes at the hospital on March 1. However, the hospital didn’t have any record of the child, nor did the medical examiner.

Police responded and interviewed Harding, who then admitted her child didn’t die at the hospital. Rather, she said she drowned the boy in the bathtub of a Bloomington hotel, then put his body in a backpack and threw it in a dumpster, according to a criminal complaint.

Harding later said she was dating a man who didn’t like her child and wanted her to give the child up for adoption to prove he was her top priority.

When she was taking a bath in the hotel room on Feb. 28, she said the child was by himself in the other room and started crying. She then admitted that she got upset because she couldn’t enjoy her bath and drowned the boy, the complaint states.

It adds that police also found a picture of the child floating facedown in the tub on her phone, plus several text messages to the man Harding said she was dating. Those messages included statements like, “Im about to do something bad” and “He going to no be here much longer,” plus messages referring to herself as a monster for killing the boy and asking how to get away with it.

Court documents state that Harding said her boyfriend came to the hotel room and tried to give the child CPR but it didn’t work.

As of Friday, police hadn’t yet found the child’s body, the complaint states.

Harding faces up to 40 years in prison.