A man allegedly tightened a rope around a pregnant woman’s neck as his girlfriend sliced her stomach open to rip her baby from her womb, a court heard.

Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, 22, was eight months pregnant when her body was found wrapped in plastic and dumped in a river.

William Hoehn, 33, has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder, but claims that he found his former girlfriend Brooke Crews, 38, cleaning up blood in the bathroom.

Eight children

He claims that after finding her she presented him with the baby and told him: ‘This is our family’, the court heard.

Hoehn is already a father to four children while Crews has seven children but a day after the killing he allegedly told co-workers that Crews had given birth to an eighth child.

It is still not fully understood how the Savanna’s body ended up in the river, according to police, but forensics have concluded that she bled to death.