Rebecca Park was still alive when her mother allegedly cut her unborn child out of her womb.
That is just one of the gruesome details prosecutors shared in a Michigan courtroom on December 2 during the initial appearance of the two people now charged with murdering the 22-year-old pregnant woman – her mother Cortney Bartholomew, 40, and her 47-year-old stepfather Bradly Bartholomew.
“This is, frankly, evil personified,” Wexford County Prosecutor Johanna Carey told the judge while asking that the Bartholomews be held without bail.
The arrest brings to an end the nearly month-long mystery surrounding Park’s disappearance.
Park had not been seen since leaving her mother’s home just before midnight on November 3.
Carey detailed what allegedly happened next during their first court appearance on Tuesday, December 2.
“Mr. Bartholomew brought Rebecca to their home, [he and Cortney] forced her into another vehicle and took her into the woods where they stabbed her, forced her to lie on the ground while they cut her baby out, and ultimately caused her death and the death of the baby. They then left Rebecca in the woods,” Carey said in court.
She called it a “case of premeditated torture and murder,” alleging that the Bartholomews “created a plan” and “conducted research.”
Both face one count each of first-degree murder, felony murder, torture, conspiracy to commit torture, assault on a pregnant individual causing miscarriage/stillbirth and conspiracy to commit assault on a pregnant individual causing miscarriage/stillbirth.
Each of those six charges carries a possible life sentence in prison.
They are also charged with one count each of unlawful imprisonment and removal of a dead body.
Search parties had spent weeks searching for Park before discovering a body matching her description on Nov. 25 in the Manistee National Forest.
An autopsy confirmed the body was Park’s — while the child she was due to give birth to three days prior was no longer in her womb.
On the same day that the body was discovered, authorities arrested Park’s fiancé Richard Falor and her sister Kimberly Park.
Falor, 43, appeared in court the following day and was arraigned on two counts of delivering methamphetamine before the judge set his bail at $1 million.
Kimberly, 21, was arraigned that same day on charges of tampering with evidence, lying to a police officer and filing a false report. It is unclear what those charges are related to; her bail was set at $750,000.
There was no suggestion that Falor or Kimberly were involved in Park’s murder at their initial court hearings.
Falor, Kimberly and the Bartholomews are now all being held at the Wexford County Jail.
The public defenders representing the four did not respond to a request for comment, and all four have yet to enter a plea in court.
Cortney had posted a video on her Facebook page on the same day her daughter was due to give birth, with a caption that read: “My alibi of where I was the night my daughter came up missing.”
In the video — which features only a black screen with audio — her 14-year-old son said: “She gave me my meds at about 8:40, I don’t remember a lot as I just said, but she was there when I went to bed and she was also there when I woke up the next day. I know that she never goes out and about when I’m sleeping just because she doesn’t like to drive at night.”
Cortney also accused her daughter Kimberly of being involved in Park’s disappearance, both before and after her body was discovered, in private messages and an interview on the true crime podcast Steph’s Case Files.
By CHRIS SPARGO/People