Inmate who had 'miracle' baby after using air vent to get pregnant learns fate for murder charge
A Florida inmate who stunned the internet after revealing she got pregnant behind bars without ever meeting the father has now learned her fate in a murder case that’s followed her since before her headline-making ‘miracle’ conception.
Daisy Link, 30, made international news last year when she claimed she conceived her baby with fellow inmate Joan DePaz using only an air vent and some improvisation.
Held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami-Dade, the two reportedly built a friendship by talking through their cells’ ventilation system.
Link explained that you can ‘knock' on the vents and ‘hear the people from different floors’, adding that ‘being in isolation for so long you begin to spend hours and hours talking’ until ‘it feels like you’re in the same room’.
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But now, the same woman who drew fascination for her bizarre jailhouse pregnancy has been found guilty of second-degree murder for the 2022 shooting of her longtime partner, Pedro Jimenez.
A South Florida jury took less than two hours to reach its verdict this week.
Link had been awaiting trial for Jimenez’s death since her arrest in June 2022.
Prosecutors said she shot him in the leg outside her Homestead home and walked away as he bled to death. Her defense claimed the shooting was in self-defense after years of domestic violence, arguing she had been beaten and threatened in the days leading up to the incident.
She said, during the testimony: “That’s the father of my kids…It’s not like I didn’t love him, I did.”
Her 11-year-old son also testified remotely, saying he saw Jimenez point a gun at his mother and miss before pistol-whipping her.
But jurors ultimately sided with prosecutors, one telling reporters, as reported by the New York Post: “If he’s running away and she shot him in the back, doesn’t seem much like self-defense if he’s running away.”
The case had already gained national attention after Link gave birth to a baby girl on June 19, 2024, conceived while in custody. Link said she inseminated herself with semen passed through a vent in plastic, using yeast infection applicators.
DePaz, who remains behind bars on his own murder charge, called the conception ‘like the Virgin Mary’.
Dr. Fernando Akerman, medical director of the Fertility Center of Miami, said the pregnancy was ‘absolutely a case that is exceedingly unusual’, estimating the odds at ‘less than five percent’.
Link will return to court on November 21 for pre-sentencing, facing years in prison, the same place where her ‘miracle baby’ story began.
When talking to CBS News, Link’s sister, Crystal Barretto, has her fingers crossed that the circumstances could lead to the judge giving her a lighter sentence. She said: “I hope the judge takes into consideration all the evidence that was presented, the past domestic violence, history against Pedro and Daisy and the time she's already served.
"And also taken into consideration, her children and the new baby that was just born."
Ben Williams