A Miami-Dade inmate managed to conceive a child with a fellow prisoner behind bars, despite never physically meeting.
The two inmates, who were being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami-Dade County, Florida, reportedly communicated through the air conditioning vents in their prison cells.
Miami-Dade inmate hatches pregnancy scheme
Daisy Link, 29, has been locked up on second-degree murder charges for allegedly offing her husband in 2022.
Joan Depaz, 23, has been behind bars since October 2020 on a laundry list of charges including first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, battery, and criminal mischief.
The pair were reportedly in solitary confinement, but managed to pass notes back and forth through the air conditioning vents of their respective cells.
“You would knock on it, and you can hear the people from the different floors. You would stand on the toilet actually to be able to talk to them,” Link explained to WSVN-TV.
“Being in isolation for so long, you begin to spend hours and hours talking to this person, you know, to the point where it’s almost as if you’re in the same room with them.”
“You would knock on it and you can hear the people from the different floors,” she added, noting that by standing on their respective toilets they were able to speak directly to each other.
After communicating daily, the criminal pair fell in love and decided that never touching couldn’t stop them from having a child.
Murder suspect longed for a child
Depaz always wanted to be a father, but was looking at doing hard time for his crimes came up with a plan to spawn his progeny.
“I always really wanted to have a baby. And I’m not gonna get to do that for a really long time,” he detailed to the outlet.
He reportedly shared with Link, “So if I had to choose somebody, you know, it would be you. And she was like, ‘Yeah, we could do that.’”
Depaz learned from a friend in prison that the vents were in an “L-shape” that would allow them to pass objects back and forth.
“We had figured out a way to drop the line,” Link noted. “It was a line that we had established out of like bedding material.”
Depaz would make his deposit into plastic wrap several times a day over a month-long period, and send it over to Link’s cell.
“He would kind of like roll it up, almost like a cigarette, and he would attach it to the line that we had in the vent, and I would pull it through,” she revealed.
“I don’t know what my fate is, you kind of don’t know what’s yours,” Depaz said about both of their futures. “If we’re gonna go out, might as well just go out with a bang, you know?”
Link put his genetic material into a yeast infection applicator and “administered it” daily.
Link said that despite the keeping up the act several times a day for a month, she was “very excited” to get pregnant after only a few attempts.
Miami-Dade inmate gives birth
She gave birth to a baby at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami in June, and remanded custody to her mother.
“I can’t believe it worked,” Link said about their baby girl. “I think everything happened for a reason.”
“She’s a miracle baby, she’s a blessing,” she added. “She could be anything. I think that she’s gonna be something great.”
While Link’s family initially believed she had been sexually assaulted behind bar, DNA results conducted through an internal investigation revealed that Depaz is the father.
“It’s a real twist it, it is,” the Miami-Dade inmate remarked. “Everybody says it to me: ‘This is like some Lifetime Movie Network.'”
When correctional officers grilled Depaz about having any physical contact with Link, he told them they had “never” met in person.
A fertility specialist interviewed by WSVN said that the baby was indeed a miracle, with the Depaz and Link used only having less than a 5% success rate.
Since the birth, the pair have been separated at different facilities while they wait for their respective trials to commence.
“Over here I’m like a celebrity,” Depaz said about his new home. “Not gonna lie, this is gonna go down in history.”
The pair are still allowed to talk on the phone and get to have video calls with their infant daughter.
Meanwhile, a few hundred thousand babies were not allowed to be born.