EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — Authorities suspected there was more to the story when police found in a park a woman with a dead fetus that she claimed was stillborn.

Ace Hart, a deputy coroner, said the 26-year-old woman flip-flopped in her story, saying she'd gone into labor accidentally after having consensual sex with a man she knew only as Tony. She also told police she'd been raped.

At the hospital, Hart said, the woman refused to be examined. The lifeless baby girl "looked normal" with no signs of trauma, and an autopsy failed to pinpoint how she died.

Authorities aren't so sure now. On Friday, investigators were trying to unravel whether the woman got the baby from 23-year-old Jimella Tunstall. Hart said perhaps the woman removed the fetus from Tunstall's womb with scissors found near the corpse in a weedy lot.

Authorities stopped short of calling the woman a suspect in Tunstall's death. Prosecutor Robert Haida said his office wouldn't rush to judgment in filing charges.

Searchers scoured the park for three of the slain woman's children, who investigators say were last seen Monday with the woman considered a person of interest in the case. She has been taken into custody.

Authorities say the woman in custody acknowledged to her boyfriend during the baby's funeral Thursday that the child wasn't his, and that she killed the mother. The boyfriend told police, who arrested his girlfriend hours later, investigators said.

Authorities refused to discuss many details of the case, including whether the two women knew each other, where the person of interest was being held or if she had an attorney. Also unclear was which came first: the discovery of Tunstall's body Thursday or the alleged funeral confession by the woman in custody.

The baby was buried Thursday after a funeral arranged by L. King Funeral Chapel, whose president said the 26-year-old who claimed to be the mother called minutes after the service was to start, asking if she could reschedule for a different day so more relatives could attend. At the time, Levi King said, only two relatives were there.

Dozens of searchers on Friday scoured the park for Tunstall's children, ages 1, 2 and 7. Investigators would not say what led them to believe the children were there.

The woman in custody was taken to the hospital the same day a young mother's throat was slashed and her baby kidnapped in Lonedell, Mo., south of St. Louis. An arrest has been made in that case, the mother is recovering and the baby was returned unharmed.

Also in Missouri, Lisa Montgomery will stand trial April 30 on charges of snatching a baby from the womb of Bobbie Jo Stinnett at her Skidmore, Mo., home in 2004. The baby survived.

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