Prom Night Dumpster Baby

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About

Prom Night Dumpster Baby is a nickname given to the newborn who was found dead in a garbage can in the bathroom of a high school in New Jersey after being discarded by its teenage mother on the night of the senior prom in June 1997. Upon the discovery of the baby, the case of infanticide became a subject of intense scrutiny in the news media and it remains a recurring topic of discussions in popular culture and online to this day, due to the heinous nature of the crime.

Origin

On June 6th, 1997, New Jersey teenager Melissa Drexler gave birth to a child in a bathroom stall at Lacey Township High School, then strangled the newborn and disposed of the corpse in a plastic bag before returning to her senior prom to dance with her boyfriend. Following the discovery of the incident, Drexler pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. On November 26th, 2001, she was released on parole after serving 37 months.^[4]

Spread

In 2000, the horror film Dumpster Baby was released, in which a drug addict gives birth to a pre-mature infant and abandons it in a nearby dumpster, who subsequently embarks on an adventure (shown below).

On March 4th, 2007, Season 5 Episode 12 of Family Guy was broadcast, which featured a song performed by several abandoned newborn babies titled "Prom Night Dumpster Baby" (shown below).

On September 2nd, Urban Dictionary^[3] user UpperGreens submitted an entry for "Prom Night Dumpster Baby," defining the term as "a baby which is disposed of quickly on prom night." In November 2010, the question "What is a prom night dumpster baby?" was submitted to Yahoo! Answers.^[5] On May 12th, 2016, Redditor jasonianfootsoldier submitted a post titled "What the hell is a 'Prom Dumpster Baby' and where did it originate?" to the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[2] subreddit, where many cited the 1997 Melissa Drexler incident as the origin. Within 24 hours, the post gained over 2,200 votes (86% upvoted) and 370 comments.

Search Interest

External References

^[1] The New York Times – New Jersey Charges Woman 18 With Killing Baby Born at Prom

^[2] Reddit – What the hell is a Prom Dumpster Baby

^[3] Urban Dictionary – Prom Night Dumpster Baby

^[4] Wikipedia – Melissa Drexler

^[5] Yahoo! Answers – What is a prom night dumpster baby?

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Top Comments

Nedhitis

May 13, 2016 at 02:09PM EDT

"On June 6th, 1997, New Jersey teenager"

Well, that explains everything (no offense to any decent New Jersey people what might be reading this).

In any case, this seems to be an event that is not quite evolving as it is just asked around. Not sure if can be "confirmed" by KYM standards given that. Maybe it should not evolve, anyway, since it is no laughing matter and, given how old it is, there is no point getting rustled about it at this point.

Also, it was submitted as a meme. This is most definitely not a meme, as 2 videos separated by 7 years of distance is not a memetic enough spread. It was an Event, if you ask me. Maybe it could be confirmed as such.

+46

ballstothewall Moderator

May 13, 2016 at 05:25PM EDT in reply to roberthaha

Obviously she'd had the baby a while and it was "limiting" her teenage life, so … kill it and be done with it, right? Except it turns out that no, she really did give birth and kill the child within the same evening. It was probably really premature since she showed almost no signs of pregnancy and managed to keep it a secret from more or less everyone she knew. The baby corpse was apparently discovered by a school janitor who was "suspicious of the trash bag's weight".

This is apparently called "neonaticide", that is, the act of killing a child within the first 24 hours of its life. According to statistics general parental infanticide is more commonly committed by fathers, but neonaticide is more commonly committed by mothers.