A former Air Force X-ray technician has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for killing her newborn son inside a Sheppard Air Force Base hospital room nearly 38 years ago, a cold case cracked open only after investigators turned to modern DNA genealogy. Tammy Sue Kerns, now 58, admitted she suffocated the infant during a night shift at the base's regional hospital in August 1988, then wrapped the umbilical cord around him and hid his body in a hospital laundry bin.
U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould for the Northern District of Texas announced Tuesday that Kerns entered her guilty plea on September 9 in federal district court in Fort Worth, days after being charged via a federal criminal Information filed September 1, according to the Department of Justice. Because the killing happened on federal property inside the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, the case fell to federal prosecutors rather than Texas state authorities, a jurisdictional distinction laid out under 18 U.S.C. § 1111, which sets a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for second-degree murder.
At the time of the killing, Kerns was 20 years old and working the night shift at the base's regional hospital when she went into labor and secretly delivered a baby boy, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She cut the umbilical cord, then caused the infant's death by covering his mouth until he stopped breathing, the newspaper reported. Court records and DOJ statements indicate she cleaned the ultrasound room afterward and returned to duty as if nothing had happened, a detail also reported by the Tennessean.
A Body Found in a Laundry Bin
On August 4, 1988, workers discovered the infant's body wrapped in Sheppard AFB hospital linens at Ponds Laundry, an off-base commercial facility in Wichita Falls that processed hospital laundry, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. An autopsy report indicated evidence of live birth, and a pathologist determined the cause of death was hypovolemia and anemia, the paper reported. Investigators at the time were unable to identify a suspect, and the case went cold.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations reopened the case in August 2015, per the Star-Telegram's reporting, though the effort stalled again after no suspects emerged. Chief John Fine of the AFOSI Cold Case Team said reopening the Sheppard case had been among the unit's top priorities when it was established that year, according to the Department of Justice.
DNA Lab in The Woodlands Breaks the Case
The investigation's turning point came in May 2022, when AFOSI investigators submitted autopsy tissue samples to Othram, a private forensic genetic genealogy lab based in The Woodlands, Texas. The lab extracted a usable DNA profile from the degraded samples and, through genealogical research, identified the baby's biological father in 2023, the DOJ said. That man had been stationed at Andrews Air Force Base Hospital in Maryland from October 1984 to May 2003, and per the fact narrative in the case, he told investigators none of his sex partners from that period had informed him they were pregnant.
With a biological father identified but no named mother, agents analyzed 1987 and 1988 personnel rosters from Andrews Air Force Base and Sheppard Air Force Base, cross-referencing every servicewoman who had passed through both installations during the relevant window, according to the Department of Justice. That search revealed Kerns was the only female airman stationed at Andrews during the child's conception who was also stationed at Sheppard at the time of the birth. She had been stationed at Andrews in 1986 and served in the Air Force from 1986 to 1996 before transferring to Sheppard in early 1988, per the Star-Telegram's account.
A Confession, Decades Later
Agents interviewed Kerns outside of custody in May 2025, and she admitted to the killing, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She now faces five to 20 years in prison under a plea agreement, with a sentencing hearing scheduled for January before U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, who will determine where within that range her punishment falls.
In 1988, Texas had no legal mechanism allowing parents to safely and anonymously surrender a newborn. The state's Safe Haven law, popularly known as the Baby Moses Law, did not exist until June 1999 — 11 years after the Sheppard infant's death — when it became the nation's first such statute, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. That law now permits parents to anonymously leave an unharmed infant up to 60 days old at a designated emergency care site without facing criminal charges, a protection that has since expanded through efforts like The Woodlands' first Safe Haven Baby Box and has factored into other recent Texas cases, including a San Antonio mother's child-abandonment charge and an Austin newborn found in a dumpster.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas, which prosecuted the case, oversees federal matters across 100 counties spanning roughly 96,000 square miles, with staffed offices in Dallas, Fort Worth, Lubbock, Amarillo, and Abilene and an unstaffed office in Wichita Falls. Sheppard Air Force Base itself, established in 1941, remains the Air Force's largest technical training center, home to the 82nd Training Wing and the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program — a major military and economic anchor for the North Texas region where the case that took nearly four decades to solve finally came to a close.
