COOK COUNTY, Ill. — A Michigan woman convicted in the murder of her newborn twins in 2003 will spend two decades behind bars. 

44-year-old Antoinette Briley, a Holland, Michigan, resident, pleaded guilty to murder on Tuesday and was sentenced to 20 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Authorities say the sentence was handed down over 20 years after the murders took place in unincorporated Stickney Township.

According to Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, on June 6, 2003, the bodies of two twin baby boys were found in the 4800 block of South Latrobe Avenue by a waste management employee who was emptying trash bins in an alley.

An autopsy later confirmed that the two victims had been born alive and died of asphyxiation.

The deaths were ruled as homicides, but an investigation by police did not offer any clues about a potential suspect.

Over a decade later, in 2018, Sheriff’s Police Detectives reopened the case, and using DNA evidence recovered at the scene, detectives were able to identify Briley as the potential birth mother.

The relationship was later confirmed by authorities after they traveled to Holland, Michigan, and obtained a discarded item that contained Briley’s DNA. 

Detectives said the DNA recovered from the discarded item was determined to be strongly associated with the victims’ DNA.

Briley was eventually taken into custody by Sheriff’s Police detectives after they learned she was in Cook County on Dec. 3, 2021. Authorities say after they issued Briley her Miranda warning, she admitted her involvement in the murders and the disposal of their bodies.

The next day, on Dec. 4, 2021, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office approved two counts of first-degree murder against Briley.

The death of the two boys came just under two years after the Illinois Abandoned Newborn Infant Protection Act became effective. The law grants parents who relinquish their unharmed newborn infants within 30 days of birth immunity from criminal prosecution.