Aug 4, 2010 By Herald Standard Staff 2 min read

A Uledi man testified that Warren Bircher told him in 2000 that he got a woman pregnant and was going to “get rid of” the baby. Although Timothy Reckner had never met Bircher, 35, of Adah, Reckner testified that Bircher came over to him at a party spot in the mountains of Fayette County, and told him, “One of my whores is pregnant.”

“I’ll just drowned it like my animals. I’ll put it in a bag and throw it in a creek,” Reckner said Bircher told him.

A short time after the body of an infant girl was found in Cove Run Creek on June 4, 2000, Reckner said he heard about the discovery, but never said anything to police until Trooper James A. Pierce visited in jail sometime in 2009.

Bircher is charged with homicide and related counts and on trial this week in Fayette County Court for allegedly killing the infant dubbed Baby Mary after her body was found in a backpack in the creek.

Sarah Sue Hawk, 26, was charged in 2008 after DNA testing showed she was the mother. She has pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, and will be sentenced next week. Hawk testified Tuesday that the baby could have been Bircher’s or Hyson Ford’s, because she was having sex with both men when she got pregnant.

DNA testing showed Ford, not Bircher – Hawk’s brother-in-law at the time – was the father.

Reckner testified under questioning from District Attorney Jack R. Heneks Jr. that he never said anything, because he didn’t want to be responsible for putting someone in jail.

Under cross-examination by Bircher’s attorney, Jack W. Connor, Reckner said that he had nothing to do with the baby’s death.

Connor posed a scenario where Reckner was drinking with Hawk, and crashed a car on the way down the mountain, putting her in labor. Reckner denied that occurred and said he didn’t know Hawk.

Defense testimony will pick up this afternoon, when defense witnesses are expected to testify that Reckner told them was the one who put the baby in the creek.