A Missouri woman who lured a pregnant Arkansas woman to her death with the false promise of a job opportunity so she could try to steal her unborn baby has been sentenced, authorities said.
Amber Waterman, 44, was sentenced to consecutive life sentences in federal prison without parole in connection with the October 2022 deaths of Ashley Bush and her unborn baby, Valkyrie Willis, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri said in a press release on Oct. 15.
Waterman pleaded guilty in July to one count of kidnapping resulting in death and one count of thereby causing the death of a child in utero in connection with the case, according to the release.
Prosecutors said Waterman admitted to kidnapping Bush, who was 31 weeks pregnant at the time, in order to claim Bush’s baby “as her own.”
Waterman allegedly used a fake Facebook profile, through which she offered the expecting mother baby clothes and a job, prosecutors have said. That prompted an in-person meeting between the two women on Oct. 28, 2022, at the Gravette, Ark., public library, according to the release.
They met up a second time on Oct. 31, 2022 outside a convenience store in Maysville, Ark., prosecutors said. That’s when Waterman kidnapped Bush under the pretext that she was taking her to meet with a supervisor to discuss the employment opportunity.
Prosecutors said Waterman drove Bush from Maysville, Ark., to her Pineville home. Later that evening, first responders received a call to assist a baby who was not breathing.
Waterman admitted to telling the officers that she had given birth to the baby in the truck while on her way to the hospital when they arrived at the scene, when in fact, the baby was Bush’s child who’d died in utero when she was kidnapped, according to the release.
An autopsy determined that Bush died as a result of “penetrating trauma of the torso” and her death was classified as a homicide, the release states.
Federal complaints previously obtained by PEOPLE stated that Waterman’s husband, Jamie Waterman, told detectives his wife confessed to killing Bush, and that the couple later burned her body and dumped it in a remote area. The affidavits claimed Jamie led police to the place where they had dumped Bush’s charred remains.
Jamie Waterman. McDonald County Sheriff’s Department
Jamie, 44, has since pleaded guilty to one count of being an accessory after the fact to the kidnapping resulting in death, admitting he knew his wife had kidnapped Bush, caused the death of her unborn baby, and helped her cover up the crime, according to the release.
Jamie has yet to be sentenced, but federal statutes state he is expected to face up to 15 years in federal prison without parole, prosecutors said. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a pre-sentence investigation by the U.S. Probation Office.
