Will eonaticide become the new buzzword?
AMY GROSSBERG WAS SENTENCED last week to 30 months in prison for the death of her newborn son. Her boyfriend Brian Peterson, the baby’s father, was sentenced to two years for his role in the crime. In November 1996, the fresh-faced teenage couple’s arrest made national news when their infant was found dead in a trash bin behind a Delaware motel where they had thrown him out in a plastic garbage bag. At the time, prosecutors in the case said they would seek the death penalty, but they soon weakened in their resolve as local public opinion shifted toward pity for the teenage parents. Amy and her parents “They’ve been punished enough,” a family friend told author Melanie Thernstrom, whose July 13 New York magazine cover story “Child’s Play” dissects not only the infant’s murder but social attitudes toward infanticide generally. Both Grossberg and Peterson pleaded guilty to manslaughter in separate plea agreements with prosecutors, but neither parent admitted to inflicting the skull fractu
