The Knock

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He could have been born on Christmas. I'd been terrified that was going to happen. In 2017, Laura Nowlin and her husband were expecting their first child. The baby was due on December 13th. Why were you terrified he was going to come on Christmas? Oh, just, you know, people always, well, my mother was born December 30th, and so she'd always, you know, lamented.

And I knew someone else who'd been born on the 26th and just that whole thing. It's kind of a bummer, isn't it, to have your birthday on Christmas? Or even the day after is almost worse because... What are people going to get to? Two presents? You kind of get robbed. Yeah, yeah. And my mom had always felt that way.

And I worked at the county library at the time. And so whenever I'd come across somebody who had a birthday close to Christmas, I'd say, I'm due December 13th. You know, I'm in the two-week window where it could be Christmas. Like, what did your family do? Mostly it was about, they'd say, wrapping paper. You have happy birthday wrapping paper instead of Christmas. I was just trying to arm myself with details about how to make a Christmas birthday special.

and then surprised you. It was very early. On November 8th, five weeks before her due date, Laura had a bad headache that wouldn't go away. She eventually went to the hospital. and ended up having an emergency C-section. She had a son. He did great. He was only in the NICU for a few days, but it was a very intense introduction to motherhood.

About seven weeks later, on Christmas morning, they were at home in St. Louis preparing to go to Laura's mother's house. My mother had wanted us to arrive by 10 a.m. And I'd put my foot down and said, I can do 11. She was just so excited about her first grandchild, and my sister was bringing the man she was eventually going to marry. And so it was just a very important Christmas, and Mom was, you know, all a flutter about it, and she'd wanted to.

us to be there super early and I'd said it's gotta be at least 11. And had Christmas always been a big thing in your family? Oh, my mom... loves Christmas. It's a very big deal for her. Every year it's a big deal, but this year was particularly a big deal. And my dad's an Episcopal priest, so there's also a religious element for my family.

There were also going to be, one of my friends from college had strangely gotten a job working with my mom and like they'd become friends and his family was going to be out of town. that year and so she'd invited him. So there was a lot of good things, you know, waiting for us that we were excited about. Laura's parents' house was a 30-minute drive away.

Before getting in the car that morning, Laura was in her living room, feeding her son, Percy. And tell me a little bit about Percy. That's not a name you hear every day. I always note unusual names, and if I hear one I've never heard before, I look it up. So when I was pregnant, I had a list. I think I probably had about 100 names that we had to narrow down to.

Percy is short for Percival, which means pierce the veil. And we decided on that because with the emergency C-section, piercing the veil is kind of an old English idea of like moving from... this world to the next, and so that's how he'd come into our world. So then, yeah, we liked that it had lots of nickname options. And for now, we've landed on Percy, but sometimes I joke about him going to law school and going by civil.

He was very sweet. He had just a very sweet, quiet, obliging temperament. So I mostly just remember that morning before everything that happened just... Sitting with him and him just being very sweet and quiet and cuddly. And it had been... super icy like one of those winters where it would snow a ton and then the sun would come out and melt it just enough so that when the sun went back down it froze so there was ice everywhere

I think the temperature was in the teens. And, you know, we get freezing weather here pretty regularly, but like in the low teens, that's maybe like once or twice a year. that that would happen. We rarely have white Christmases. And so it was a little romantic, like, oh, Percy's first Christmas. So tell me what happened that morning.

I had just finished feeding Percy, and we had these stairs in front of our apartment. Our building was on a steep hill, and there was a flight of stairs. and then a bit of a landing, and then another flight of stairs just to get to our porch. And I heard someone running up the stairs, and the stairs were incredibly icy. The whole city had been shut down. because of um the ice and so when i heard the running i thought that's crazy and then just a frantic knocking on the door um and i thought

oh, it must be a package. You know, this person must be running so late. Everyone's packages had been running late. And they're working, you know, for extra hours on Christmas, and they're just trying to get through the route, and they're just... in a panic. So I called through my husband to go get, you know, whatever had just been delivered. Laura's husband, Rob, went to open the door. And he came back and he said, there's a kid outside.

And I said, like, a teenager playing a prank? Laura says her husband looks stunned. And he said, no, like, a baby. The baby was in its car seat. on their porch. There is no one else around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Laura says her first thought was, this is some kind of a mix-up. They lived on the first floor of a two-unit brick house. And I said, well, it's got to be somebody's. Maybe, uh...

The guy who lives above us has a kid we didn't know about, and his ex-girlfriend just dropped it off. Rob went outside and started walking around to see if he could find anyone. And he was gone for a few minutes, and... He came back and he said, there is nobody out there. And I knocked on the neighbor's door and nobody answered. So I'm bringing the baby inside because it's freezing. And.

I don't know what I thought in that moment. I trusted my husband's judgment, but it was hard to believe, like, really, there's no one out there. And so I came into the front room. And I saw the carrier with the baby in it, and it was really just so surreal. He looked at me and he started... And I rushed to him. And, you know, I knew how to do the snaps from my own baby. And so I was able to get him out. But, you know, he was securely in there. So he was completely strapped into...

His car seat. Yeah. Buttoned up. Buttoned up. He had, it wasn't, you know, you can't put babies in car seats with really puffy coats anymore. You got to have like a thick sweater or something so that they can't like. slide out and the seatbelt can grip on them. So it was the appropriate kind of jacket. Like he had been dressed really warmly. It was obvious.

You know, the thing that helped me cope in the first few weeks of parenthood was to kind of break it down to a to-do list of you got to make sure the baby is clean, fed, and loved. And that's really... everything will fall under that umbrella and just this baby was clearly clean fed and loved and so I picked him up and I was trying to um

comfort him and I just said the first thing I was thinking was somebody loves you. Somebody dressed you up all warm and put you in this car seat and I don't know why you're here or what's happened. But you're safe, and Annie stopped crying. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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What did you think had gone on here? I had no idea. Like I said, my first thought had been maybe someone had been doing a custody. exchange with a parent, and there had been a mix-up. So in those minutes, you're thinking this is a custody battle. I mean, I'm just trying to think of what I would think.

What I kept saying to the baby is, I think there's been some kind of mistake. As I was just bouncing him on my hip, I'd say, I think there was a mistake, but we're going to get you back to the people who love you.

I mean, but a mistake like an Amazon package got delivered? I mean, I just am trying to—I mean, it's a big mistake. Yeah, no, and I thought, like, I got— hugely angry because I was like, if you thought you were dropping this baby off somewhere with people who, you know, were expecting a baby to be there, you should have made sure that they were there and they could, like, and I became...

furious with whoever this mystery person was. It's freezing cold outside. It's absolutely freezing cold outside. It was dangerous to have left a baby like this. Laura says she kept thinking, what if they had already left for her mother's house, and there had been no one home to open the door that morning? But then as I was...

You know, holding the baby and thinking, somebody loves this baby, I can tell by how they're cared for. I became afraid that something had happened to that person. And I did say to the baby, You know, I think there's somebody who loves you, and we're going to try to find that person and get them back to you. And if something's happened to that person, I bet they have somebody who loves them who will take care of you, and it'll be okay.

And I don't know, it felt like he understood. I know that sounds silly. Laura's husband called 911. He said... Someone left a baby on our porch? The whole thing had question marks behind it. And he said that the woman on the other line shouted, We got a baby! So they'd obviously been waiting for some kind of call. And so when he told me that kind of sent kind of a clue that they were aware that something had happened.

Rob and Laura were told that the police were on their way to their house. Laura says she was surprised by how fast they got there. Just a few minutes. I heard the knock on the door and my husband... Went to answer the door, and for some reason, he picked up our baby, and I was thinking, oh, no. And then I said, hold on, and I stepped forward.

with the baby who'd been dropped off, and I'd said, this is the baby, that's my baby, and pointed to my baby. There were several officers from the St. Louis police in front of their house, and a couple of police cars were parked in the street. And I saw there was a woman standing down at the bottom in the street. And again, we had a short flight of stairs.

From the sidewalk, a bit of landing and then another flight of stairs to get up to our apartment. A police officer standing at Laura's front door showed it down to the woman. And she said, ma'am, is this your baby? Laura says she remembers the woman, shouting yes. I have no memory at all of her coming to me. And then she's just there. She couldn't have levitated or just appeared. She had to have run up those icy steps. And as I handed it to her, I said, he's okay. And she only had eyes for him.

And she took him from me and she just crumpled over him. And I don't remember her leaving. Someone must have escorted her down the icy steps again and into the car, and then they were just gone. And, um...

They were gone. I was on the day shift, so I would have started around 7 a.m. Police officer Austin King was in his patrol car with his partner on Christmas morning. He had just graduated from the police academy in January that year and was still pretty new on the job. When you're a young police officer, does it mean that, you know, you work Christmas because...

You know, you don't have any seniority. Right. Yeah, that's usually how it goes. The officers with seniority usually gobble up the vacation days for Christmas earlier that year. That's definitely something you can expect. He says it was a pretty quiet day of patrolling. Christmas Day usually is. A few traffic accidents here and there. It's a very, a lot of vehicles, a lot of people driving in that area.

But just a few here and there, minor calls, a couple different sundry calls. It was relatively quiet. But then, a few hours into their shift, a call came in over their police radio. It sounded very different from the other calls they had received that morning. A woman had called 911. Her car had just been stolen. So dispatch pulled us at the... Collar's infant son was in the backseat when the car was stolen. And so we knew we had something very serious going on.

Austin King and his partner were about a mile north of where the woman was calling from. We went lights and sirens down there, talked with the victim, the mom, who told us what happened. She was, of course, very distraught. We were relatively, I think, the same age, if I recall. Obviously, we tried to be as empathetic as we could. There's only so much you can say to a person or a parent in that moment.

understandably very distraught. The baby's mother lived just a few blocks from Laura's house. She had left her house with her six-month-old son when she realized that she'd forgotten to lock the front door. She went back up the stairs to her house to lock it. She left her son in his car seat. The car was still running. Then, with her back turned, she said she heard a car door slam and turned around.

and saw someone in the front seat of her car, driving off. She ran after the car, then called the police. She told the news reporter, it replays in my head over and over.

All I can hear is the tires screeching and seeing the back of my car. We need to locate this car as quickly as possible. We need to recover this child before too much time, because as time progresses, the lesser... likelihood of being successful as law enforcement goes down right the woman knew her license plate number which was incredibly useful most people don't know their uh their license plate number they usually don't have that memorized but she did

which was very helpful. So we put out the make, model, color, license plate over the radio. A lot of officers from the 2nd District and the 3rd District nearby. a neighboring district, came because they heard the call come out. And even though it wasn't their district, they came over to help because they knew it was serious. After driving just a couple of blocks, the person who had stolen the car stopped at Laura's house, where he ran up the stairs.

put down the baby and knocked on the door, then got back in the car and drove away. Just shortly after we put out the description of the vehicle, dispatch told us that they had just received a call. that someone had left a baby in a car seat on their front porch. And we obviously immediately knew this is probably going to be our baby, right? They told the baby's mother they might have found her son.

to relax her nerves a little bit and say, hey, there was someone just called. It sounds like your kid might be okay. They've got just a few blocks down. We're going to take you over to him. She got into the back of our car. We took her over there. Meanwhile, another police officer happened to spot the stolen car. The license plate and description matched. The officer did a U-turn and chased the car. Other police officers joined.

The suspect got out on foot, stopped the car somewhere, got out on foot, ran on foot. And we had some officers catching the suspect after jumping a few fences through some backyards.

Laura and her husband learned about what had happened and about how the suspect had already been arrested from a police officer who stayed behind when everyone else left. And I was still so furious at the person, whoever had done this. And I had to ask, I was like, what kind of monster did this? But then, Laura says she was told...

that the person who had stolen the car was a teenage boy. She says she remembers hearing that he was in foster care. And I asked the police officer, he was wandering alone on Christmas? My whole preconceived notion was shattered. You know, this wasn't someone, this wasn't an adult who had made a decision to put... A child at risk. This was a child who had done something stupid. And all that anger I'd had just... vanished. So, this...

Kid had stolen this car, probably having no idea that a baby was in the backseat. That's what I always imagined, was that when he was... driving off with the car, and then he heard the cry of the baby in the back seat that he was so panicked when he ran up the icy stairs and the way he banged on the door. Like, I feel like...

he realized the gravity of the situation. Laura says she's often thought about the footsteps and the knock on the door she heard that morning, and how it seemed too frantic for a delivery person. She says she can still play back the sound of the door knock in her head. Later, Laura thought about how their porch was not the most convenient choice for the teenage boy.

Since they lived on a hill, he had to run up two sets of stairs to get to the porch. She wondered if maybe the teenage boy lived in the neighborhood and knew that they had a child. One of their windows had been open. Laura says maybe there's a chance he saw it and realized they were at home. I can't... I can't deny the fact it was still so reckless, but I... I just...

Seeing the mother's trauma, and it probably still haunts her today sometimes, and I never want to speak down to that trauma, but... I just feel like there were two boys who were lost, and my thought was the kid realized what he had done, you know, and tried to do the right thing. We'll be right back.

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Code criminal at checkout. Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree. Zoe, this thing weighs a ton. Kersky, lift with your legs, man. Santa, Santa! He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not that. Of course he did. Right, Santa? You know, my elf Drewski here, he handles the nice list. An elf? I'm 6'3".

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Months later, Laura Nowlin and her husband were at the teenage boys' court hearing. Laura's husband had to testify about finding the baby and calling 911. Laura remembers that a judge had decided that the boy would be tried as a juvenile. In Missouri, children under 18 are generally considered juveniles, but they can be tried as adults if a judge decides that the case is serious.

Laura says she remembers that the teenage boy was sent to a juvenile detention center. And Laura says they never learned the boy's name. But she saw him briefly when he walked by the waiting room where she was sitting. He was about as tall as, you know, he looked like a 14-year-old, even just seeing him from behind. You know, maybe 15, but, you know, this wasn't a six-foot.

This was very obviously a child. If I could, I would look up and find out how I was doing, and I wish I could say to him, like, Hey, I'm glad you tried to do the right thing. What was the rest of that Christmas like? What did you do? Well, I had to call my mom and tell her that we were going to be late. And I said, I promise you we have a good enough excuse. And she did not.

believe me that no matter what it was that it was going to be a good enough excuse for being late and you know she was expecting oh the baby had spit up and we needed an outfit change and that wasn't going to be acceptable so when we said baby was on our porch no one believed us at first but we had to repeat it and then it was a surprisingly short story the baby had come

The baby had gone, and now we're here. And Laura's sister's new partner was there, meeting the family for the first time, listening to the story. Mouth hanging open, not believing it, but then having to believe it because we were saying, no, it's true, it happened. What an introduction. Yes, well, he's never surprised by anything that happens to me now. But it was a good rest of the Christmas. It was my first Christmas as a mom, and so we had multiple Santa outfits to make, you know.

make through in the day what do you mean multiple santa outfits well when you have a new baby at christmas everybody gives you santa outfits and you have to Put them all on and take a picture and then post that one so they know that you appreciated the outfit. Do they come with beards for babies? None of the ones that I received did.

You might have an Etsy product idea there. I do have a favorite picture of him sitting in my lap on Christmas morning in a big wingback chair at my mother's house, and I look. You look very peaceful and happy. I mean, you must have been thinking, what the hell just happened? Yeah, no, and it was one of those things where you kind of felt the need to keep telling the story to make sure it was real.

The whirlwind of it. That night, when they were in the car on their way home, Laura tried to write down what had happened that day. She says it was hard to put it all into words. She posted what she'd written on Facebook. The next day, she got a message from the baby's mother, who had read Laura's post. She told Laura how scared she'd been that morning.

and thanked her for taking care of her baby. The baby's grandmother also wrote to Laura, saying, Thank you for keeping my grandson warm. Is it changed Christmas a little bit now? Well, every year we tease Percy that for 20 minutes he had an older brother. And to him it's kind of a funny story. I'm not sure he, he's seven now. I'm not sure he entirely believes it. He might think we're teasing him because it does sound so unreal, but I'll be thinking about it every year for the rest of my life.

I'll be thinking about the baby, hoping he's somewhere out there being happy and loved. I know that he has a sibling now. I know he's doing well. And I'll be thinking about the other boy and hoping he has somebody who's loving him and helping him. Well, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to tell the story.

I appreciate the chance to talk about it. And I hope you have a good Christmas. Oh, I love Christmas. So you too, get ready for, we'll both get ready for Christmas. We'll get ready for Christmas. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Zajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane.

Our engineer is Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter. We hope you'll join our membership program, Criminal Plus, now on Patreon. It's the very best way to support our work.

You can listen to Criminal This Is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes photos and videos, and you'll be able to talk directly with us and other Criminal listeners. Criminal Plus also makes... a great holiday gift. Learn more and sign up at patreon.com slash criminal. We're on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast.

We're on Facebook at This Is Criminal and Instagram and TikTok at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Support for this show comes from The Home Depot. This holiday season take advantage of savings on the wide selection of top smart home security products at The Home Depot.

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