Ex-USC student pleads no contest in dumping of newborn in trash bin

A former USC architecture student accused of dumping her newborn baby in a trash bin near the campus pleaded no contest today to child endangerment.

Under a plea bargain, Holly Ashcraft will not spend any additional time in custody, according to her attorney, Mark Geragos. Instead, prosecutors agreed to two years’ time served and five years’ probation.

The plea ends a three-year legal odyssey in which judges repeatedly threw out murder charges against Ashcraft. Formal sentencing is scheduled for June 27.

“Holly wants to close this chapter, finish school and move on with her life,” Geragos said.

Prosecutors have long labeled Ashcraft a murderer.

The 23-year-old, they alleged, hid her pregnancy and, after secretly giving birth, dumped her newborn son in a trash bin near a popular campus hangout.

But over the last two years, two Los Angeles County Superior Court judges questioned whether there was enough evidence to charge her with murder.

The native of Billings, Mont., was arrested in October 2005 and charged with abandoning her newborn son in a cardboard box in the trash bin near her apartment north of the USC campus. A homeless man picking through trash discovered the child and called police.

Until being suspended after her arrest, Ashcraft was a third-year architecture student.

Adding to the mystery surrounding her case, Ashcraft also was investigated by police, but not arrested or charged, in April 2004 after she arrived at a Los Angeles hospital having just given birth but without a baby.

She told authorities that the child was stillborn and that she had disposed of its body. Law enforcement sources said police did not do an extensive search for the child’s body because they believed too much time had passed to determine if a crime had been committed.

Ashcraft’s arrest made national headlines, but the legal case quickly centered on whether her baby was alive at birth.

Deputy Medical Examiner David B. Whiteman concluded that the boy had been born alive, after a 32-week pregnancy, and said his homicide finding was based on “caretaker neglect.”

 Andrew.blankstein@latimes.com