Always in Our Hearts: The Story of Amy Grossberg, Brian Peterson, the Pregnancy They Hid and the Baby They Killed

I first read this book when I was 14 and found it interesting. I didn't quite grasp I recently read it again and my medical knowledge helped me to understand the reasons as to why the charges against the pair were reduced from capital murder. The circumstance surrounding the case are hard to believe. It is like something you would see on TV, in fact a Law and Order episode was roughly based on this crime. The sad thing being everything is true. It is a good book, but is biased in the sense that it presents the case in a way that more than supports the prosecutor.

On November 13, 1996 Amy Grossberg gave birth to a baby boy in a motel room. She began screaming at her boyfriend, Brian Peterson, to get rid of it. He covered the baby with a towel, went to his car to get a plastic bag, put the baby in the bag, tied the drawstrings, and calmed walked to a dumpster and tossed the baby in. They drove back to college and acted as though nothing had happened. They might have gotten away with their crime if Amy had not developed eclampsia. She experienced extreme swelling all over her body and was complaining of being sore and tired. Then she started having seizures. The college had her rushed to the hospital. When she was examined, the ER staff called in an OB/GYN. She had not passed the afterbirth and a portion of the umbilical cord was still visible externally.The OB/GYN recognized the symptoms as soon as he walked in. They knew she had given birth to a baby and prodded her to tell where it was. All she would say was that she did not know. The hospital told Amy's mother that she had given birth. Her mother called Brian and demanded he tell her everything he knew. Once he learned that everybody knew she had given birth, he admitted it and said he got rid of the baby and that he didn't think it was alive. When they asked where the body was, he refused to tell them, stating that he did not know. He finally admitted that he threw it in a dumpster somewhere. Police began a search of dumpsters in the area where he said he had been. They stopped the garbage trucks from picking and began searching dumpsters. They brought out cadaver dogs.Lisa Nyland, a dog handler with Maryland Natural Resources Police brought her yellow lab, Jesse to help. When they neared one dumpster, he started barking. She crawled into the dumpster and began searching. She found the bag with the body and radioed it in. The baby was taken for an autopsy. He had been alive and breathing on his own. There was air in the bowel and lungs, and hemorrhages in the brain: all signs that the heart had been beating and the lungs were picking up air. There was a deep indentation in the top of the baby's skull, roughly thumb sized and shaped. A fracture ran away from the hole and was slightly raised. The baby's skull had been split almost open.The parents of this couple spent more than a million dollars on their defense. The court proceedings will blow you away, especially the unorthodox move by one of the prosecutors. You likely will not believe the results.Several things about this case are absolutely unbelievable. When Amy was five months pregnant, she had a physical. The doctor failed to discover that she was pregnant, even though he felt and poked around on her stomach. Her parents failed to notice that she was pregnant. Nobody from the college ever mentioned the pregnancy to her parents. I was left asking myself how this could have happened, especially with the doctor. His license to practice to be suspended and he should be held liable for everything that

As a Jewish person with family in the same section of New Jersey that is described in the book, I can totally agree with Most's analysis of the family/school/personal situations of these two kids. Doug Most has also immersed himself into the environment he is writing about not only by covering the case from start to finish for his northern New Jersey newspaper, but also interviewing most of the investigators, attorneys, friends and families of both teenagers and attending court hearings throughout the case. He is extremely knowledgeable about the history of the case (the facts) and he presents them very well, in a concise and easy-to-read fashion. The story will hook you, and you will feel like you know these two young people and their families personally. He also describes the forensic evidence over how the baby actually died in quite a lot of detail, which might be a little hard to understand and you will be introduced to a lot of attorneys, crime lab investigators, coroner's reports and the like. If you are into crime investigation, there is enough detail to interest you. I, however, was more drawn to the social aspects of the case. What made these kids act the way they did? Most explains that very well. You will learn what it is like to live in a posh neighborhood and having to be the very best so your parents will look better, and have to have the very best clothes and get into the best colleges so your parents can achieve status in the community. He describes how "cutthroat" high-school life is in these ritzy communities, and then you begin to see why Amy and Brian had to hide the fact that they were in trouble. "Teenage pregnancies just don't happen in our community", neighbors say. "Our kids are raised better than that." They don't want their parents to be embarrassed in the community. You learn about the decision-making process the kids go through and then you see how much of a shock people get when they see the reality of teenagers' lives. I strongly believe that every parent should read this book, especially Jewish parents, and discuss it with their kids. I say Jewish families, because after all, Amy's family is, and I think that being Jewish drives parents to "encourage" their kids to strive more for success.

I thought that this story was very interesting. The suspense kept me on my toes wanting to read more all the time. The story was about two upper class teenagers raised within good families who made a terrible mistake that would soon change their lives forever. These two young teens were placed in a position where they had to make very adult decisions. The author shows just how the human mind reacts when put into a tight situation. Not only did they react, but so did the small community in which they subsided in. The author shows just how different perspectives of a case can make such a big difference in a mind boggling case.

ALWAYS IN OUR HEARTS is a compelling look at an almost unfathomable true case. In an era where out-of-wedlock pregnancy is no longer much of a shock to anyone, two bright, attractive, privileged young people panicked and did the unthinkable, destroying the baby boy they had conceived. Doug Most's research results in a searing look at a society that may be teaching the doctrine of "me first, ALWAYS. . ." This book is a classic,in that it is both fascinating reading and frightening as it shows us how far we may have come away from personal responsiblity for our children. This is not so much true-crime as it is a sociological study.I highly recommend ALWAYS IN OUR HEARTS to thoughtful readers. In the end, one must weep for everyone concerned. Doug Most will be a writer to watch over the next several decades!