Mother Avoids Prison After Hiding Baby’s Body in Freezer | Monique Burton

Now part of the Darkcast Network. Welcome to Indie Podcasts with a Dark side. On the morning of August 20, 2022, 35 year old Monique Ellen Burton was rushed to the hospital In Geraldton, about 400km north of Perth, Australia. She was bleeding heavily, showing clear signs that she had recently given birth. But when medical staff questioned her, Monique repeatedly denied that she had delivered her baby. Her condition was serious enough that she was transfer to King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth for further treatment. What hospital staff didn’t know was that back at her home, hidden behind a couch, was a black garbage bag with something in it that no one could have ever imagined. Welcome lambs. Welcome to Love and Heartbreak to Homicide, your weekly true crime podcast telling you cases of relationships that turn to homicide. And we do it with the victim and their families and their friends and their loved ones all in mind. So you may hear some ranting and raving coming from me. Don’t forget that this is my last week of being off. So you’re getting still many episodes this week and I might tell you about my time when I get back next week. If you didn’t know. I’m sitting here telling you that I’m off and everything like that, but my name is Kai, thank you for joining me. Take a seat, take a listen all the way to the end. And if you do like what you hear, don’t forget to subscribe. Also, you can subscribe on our patreon for free patreon.com forward/loveandmurder where you do get some benefits of being a free subscriber. Actually I have two videos over there for my free subscribers, but it’s not set to public so you wouldn’t see it if you were not a subscriber. So that’s kind of the little benefits that you get for being a free subscriber. But if you want to be a voice of the victim, help out this podcast. The podcast is 100% listener funded and you’ll hear more about that at the end of this show. If you want bonus episodes, if you want case extras, so videos of the case pictures and we’ll talk more about that at the end of the episode. And if you want, like I said, to be a voice of the victim, then choose one of our bonus tiers, patreon.com forward/loveandmoney now before this intro is longer than the case itself, let’s get back to this case of love and murder. Monique was a mother of five who had been in a 14 year relationship with a man named Shawn Bradley Balam. She had previously concealed pregnancies throughout her relationship. And just two years earlier, she had lost a 15 month old child to medical complications. Something that she was kind of still grieving. Days after the Aug. 20 incident, while still in the hospital, Monique finally confessed to a social worker about what had happened. She said that this pregnancy was her sixth pregnancy, but that Shawn was not the father. She wanted to keep the pregnancy from him, so she repeatedly lied about it. Then, uh, when Shawn questioned her about her growing stomach, she gave him a false pregnancy test which showed that she wasn’t pregnant. Instead, to explain her symptoms, she told him that she had a liver condition. Then, on the night of August 19, while Shawn was asleep, Monique secretly gave birth in the living room of their home. I don’t know how she did that, but I guess this was her sixth, uh, because there’s no way I could have kept that labor secret. There’s no way it hurt too much. After the delivery, she wrapped the baby in some clothing, reportedly her leggings, and then placed him inside a black garbage bag, which she then hid behind the couch. On August 25, 2022, police went out to Monique’s home and looked for the black plastic bag behind the couch, but it wasn’t there. They started searching the house and found the baby’s body in the freezer. Police then asked Shawn what happened, and he told them his side of the story. He said that on the morning of August 20, he noticed that Monique was weak and bleeding. So. So he took her to the hospital. While she stayed at the hospital, he came back later that day looking for a lost phone. That’s when he stumbled across the hidden bag. Inside, he felt a hard, heavy lump and feared that it might be the head of a baby, especially given Monique’s history of concealing pregnancies. Panicked, he didn’t call the police or even open it. Instead, he wrapped the bag in another black garbage bag and put it inside the freezer on the back porch, thinking that that’s what would have been done in a morgue. Now, am I the only one who thinks this story is a crock of lies? What would you do if you took your sister or your partner, you know, whoever that you love, to the hospital from bleeding? And then you came back home to find a garbage bag with what you think is a newborn baby inside? Are you going to dump it in the freezer or are you going to first open the bag wide to check and see if the baby is still even alive? Then, after you determine its state, wouldn’t you call 91 1? So this is why I think this explanation is complete trash. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Toxicology tests revealed that there was methamphetamine in the infant’s system. When interviewed again in January 2024, Monique told police that her memory was, quote, fuz. That she had, quote, blocked it out or disassociated from the events. Seriously? That’s what you say? You know, uh, little rant here. I’m really annoyed how in recent years, everyone supposedly knows how to diagnose everything themselves, or they use the most psychological terminology to explain almost anything, but they haven’t even taken, like, one psychology class. Do you know what I’m saying? Monique was later charged and pleaded guilty to interfering with a corpse with intent to prevent an investigation. She also faced fraud charges after a, uh, GoFundMe set up by a friend who the friend thought that Monique was terminally ill, and the GoFundMe had raised more than $3,000. Monique, again, didn’t create the fundraiser, but admitted that she was aware of it. But at the same time, she didn’t even stop it. And on top of all of that, she accepted the money. During her trial, State Prosecutor Jenna Winter called Monique’s actions morally repugnant, pointing out the indignity to the baby and the layers of lies that frustrated investigators. Her defense attorney, Anthony Elliott, argued her severe mental health issues played a central role, pointing to her tendency to disassociate from trauma. That is not an excuse of why you kept a baby hidden, a pregnancy hidden, and because you didn’t want the man to know it wasn’t his child, you put it in a plastic bag. So that’s not trauma. That’s kind of lying. So she doesn’t disassociate from lying, does she? Psychologists had later described her as struggling with adjustment disorder, unresolved grief, depressive episodes, and anxiety. A critical issue in the case was that the baby’s cause of death could not be determined due to the time the body spent in the freezer. Monique claimed that the child was stillborn, which, I mean, she wouldn’t really say it was alive, so I expect that’s what she would say. But wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I thought her memory of that time was fuzzy. Or she blocked it out. So how does she know definitively that the baby was stillborn? Hmm. Anyway, she said the baby was stillborn because she said there was no noise and he, quote, looked like a doll, which, again, my question would be, you said you blocked Everything out and you disassociated from the event. So. And your memory was fuzzy, so you couldn’t tell them why there was meth in the infant system, but you could definitely. Clearly, I could see it like it was yesterday. Remember that the baby was stillborn and that he looked like a doll. You remember that, though? Judge Darren Renton, who presided over her case, told Monique, you had a stick in your head, in the sand approach to deal with stressors and would go into a state of avoidance and denial. He agreed with her defense that her actions were not sophisticated or somewhat naive, motivated by denial of her pregnancy and her psychological struggles rather than deliberate malice. Really, uh, where, where is the naivety in what part of this does it show a naive person? The judge, also despite Norton doubts about her credibility, accepted that it seemed likely the baby was stillborn and found no evidence of a violent death. Why would you take her word for it when asked, okay, let me just continue. He added that had Monique reported to Stillbirth immediately, she would not have faced criminal charges. Period, point blank. Judge Renton concluded that Monique was remorseful and had begun to engage with support services. I don’t like where this is going. He warned that immediate imprisonment would undermine her rehabilitation. Even so, he described the case as tragic on many levels, leaving a child remembered only as baby Burton and a family marked by grief and denial. Like, I’m shook, shook. I cannot believe what I just heard. Did everyone miss the part where the baby had meth in his system? Or is it just me? Am I going crazy here? Did they miss how she said she had the baby and immediately put it in a plastic bag and hid it? That she lied to the hospital staff. But okay, the last two are circumstantial. But you know what? It is hard evidence. The meth in the baby system, what happened to that? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Is it just me freaking out here because I feel like maybe I missed something or I’m going crazy? One of the two. On August 1, 2025, in Perth District Court, Monique was sentenced to 19 months in prison, suspended for 12 months. Judge Renton said that it was by the, quote, barest of margins. I want to see this margin. I want to see this margin. Oh my God. That she avoided jail. Instead, she will serve as supervision order and must complete programs addressing her mental health and parenting needs. Sean had already been sentenced to a 12 month community based order. The dude, I mean, he didn’t help her. But my thing is you put a baby’s body, a newborn Infant body in a freezer. You didn’t call 911 yourself? How did they, how did they just, just get away? I don’t, hmm. Um, I just don’t understand how they both got away with this. I don’t get it. Maybe I’m missing something. Please, please, LaMs, let me know what I’m missing in the comments below, because I have to be missing something. What did you think of this case? This is one of the most baffling outcomes I’ve heard since I basically started the show. As you can see, I literally, I literally have no words. I just, I just can’t. They just got a slap on the wrist. And, uh, if I have to tell you one more time, I, I, I, okay, I, I don’t know what else to say. Please help me with my words and my shock in the comments below. I believe that you could probably articulate my emotions better than I can right now. Uh, anyway, that’s all I have for you today. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Patreon. Patreon.com forward/loveandmurder. You can subscribe for free and get a bit of extras, or you could choose one of our bonus tiers and you’ll get commercial free episodes, intro free episodes to that long intro that I did before. You don’t get any of that. You get bonus episodes depending on the tier that you choose. You get case extras. So, like third Saturday, Saturday, I put out the update of the James Craig case, and part of the extras that you got with that update was, uh, video of the trial. So that’s kind of like the case extras that you do get when you sign up to the Patreon. Plus bonus episodes like the New Deadly Duos series that we have going out and your regular monthly bonus episodes that goes out. So you get all of that by being a Patreon subscriber. Not to mention you do become part of the voice of the victim. And want to remind you, I did say this in previous episodes, that this podcast is funded by listeners like you. Um, basically, if you remember, last season, I did have some commercials in there from sponsors, but with sponsors come different demands. They don’t want certain things to be said how they’re said. They probably don’t want, uh, for instance, they might not want ranting. They might not like this episode. They might not want me saying, like, did they miss something? Which clearly they missed something. And what is the family going to say? The family is going to say, what’s going on? They missed something. Some of Them, not all of them. I, uh, do have cases of, you know, coming out soon with the suspect did something horrible, and the suspect’s family was like, you know, he wasn’t that bad. And the victim’s family is. Are we. Are we thinking about the same case here? So, you know, some sponsors wouldn’t want me pointing out the fact that this is crazy. They just want me to stick to the facts, tell the story, and that’s it. Be out. No emotions in it. And with the victims, families, and friends reaching out to me in the past and saying that the way that I do the cases, they like it. I’m not going to change the way I do the cases. You know, I may edit it a little bit, but the ranting. 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Feel free to check out the bonus tiers and go ahead and join us over there. I look forward to seeing you there. And as I end each episode, I want to remind you that it’s say it with me now. All, ah, love and no murder, y’. All. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support, and I will see you in the next episode. Bye, Sam M.