A monster in female form.

Every so often I'll read something that makes me rethink my stance on the death penalty. I'm normally against killing people, believing rightly or wrongly that people ought to pay for their crimes yet remain breathing, and somewhere dimly in the back of my mind I believe we don't have a right to take another life. However in this case I'd just put this woman down.

"Tiffany Hall said she knew she would never get out of an Illinois prison after being sentenced to life for killing a pregnant friend to take her unborn baby."
"I will never get out," Hall said softly after St. Clair County Circuit Judge Milton Wharton asked during the hearing if she understood the magnitude of the sentence, the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat reported."

"In court, Haida recounted the shocking details of the crime that began on Sept. 15, 2006.

Hall struck her friend Jimella Tunstall, 23, on the head repeatedly with a table leg at Hall's mother's house, then cut Tunstall's fetus from her womb in a bathtub. After Tunstall bled to death, Hall dumped her body in an East St. Louis lot, Haida said.

Hours later, Hall told police in Illinois she had been sexually assaulted in St. Louis and given birth to a stillborn child after the attack. When police arrived, she had the dead fetus with her, claiming it was her own. She refused to be examined at a hospital.

Three days later, Hall visited the father of two of Tunstall's children and the unborn child, Haida said. The father treated all the children as his own, and was caring for them, Haida said. Hall lied to the father, saying Tunstall wanted him to let her pick up the children and Tunstall's vehicle, he told police.

"He relayed to the officers that was the last time he saw his three children," Haida said.

Hall then drowned the three children — DeMond Tunstall, 7, Ivan Tunstall-Collins 2, and Jinella Tunstall, 1 — in the same bathtub where she killed their mother, Haida said.

Authorities said Hall's story began to unravel on Sept. 21, 2006 at the funeral for the fetus, when she told her boyfriend, home on leave from the military, that the baby wasn't his and that she killed a pregnant woman and stole the fetus. He told police.

The bodies of the three children were found two days later hidden in a washer and dryer inside the East St. Louis apartment where the children lived with their mother.

Hall later told authorities that she "had contemplated taking Ms. Tunstall's unborn child for quite some time," Haida said. He said she bought rubbing alcohol, a sharp object and a nasal aspirator a week before the attack.

One of Hall's attorneys, James Gomric, said Hall had been mentally fit to stand trial, but also said she had unresolved mental health issues and tested at an IQ in the mid-70s. After the court proceedings, Gomric said he could not speak to a motive in the case, or discuss if his client had ever shown remorse."