Wellington - New Zealand police found a doll when they exhumed a casket from a cemetery while investigating the reported death of a baby, a newspaper reported on Friday. A 33-year-old woman later confessed to staging a funeral to avoid admitting to her partner, who wanted a baby, that she had not been pregnant, the Manukau Courier reported.
"We interviewed the alleged mum and she said there was no body in the grave," detective Darrell Harpur told the paper.
He said the woman, who was not named, initially believed she was pregnant - as her partner wanted - but then discovered she was not. "For some reason she couldn't tell him, so she embarked on this subterfuge," Harpur said.
The detective said police exhumed a casket from the Mangere Lawn Cemetery, South Auckland, after authorities became suspicious when they received a request for birth and death certificates for a baby with no doctor's certificate.
He said police believed the woman had told only her partner the truth about the fake burial and most of her family members still believed there was a baby in the grave.
