A Versailles man is accused of having a “sexual relationship” with a juvenile, and then disposing of the body of the newborn baby he had with that juvenile, according to arrest records.
21-year-old Damian Robert Holtzclaw is charged with concealing the birth of an infant, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, distribution of obscene matter to a minor, possession of child pornography, and unlawful transaction with a minor.
An autopsy on the baby listed the cause and manner of the death as “undetermined,” according to a complaint warrant by the Scott County Sheriff’s Office.
Holtzclaw is accused of working alongside the juvenile, who is also charged in the case, to “conceal the child’s entire existence altogether, and/ or prevent the determination of whether it was born dead or alive,” according to the complaint.
Investigators wrote in the complaint that Holtzclaw and the juvenile admitted that they buried the baby in the backyard after birth between Dec. 5 and Dec. 6 of 2022.
The two are accused of attempting to bury the baby in a shoe box, but upon realizing the box wasn’t big enough they put the body in a plastic Dollar Tree shopping bag before burying it, according to the complaint.
Investigators allege that the actions of Holtzclaw and the juvenile contributed to the decomposition that prevented an autopsy from determining the baby’s cause of death, according to the complaint.
Holtzclaw is also accused of sending explicit videos to the juvenile he was in a “relationship” with and receiving explicit images in return, according to a separate complaint.
“Holtzclaw told investigators it was his opinion that it wasn’t right that he could legally have intercourse with the juvenile girlfriend, yet still be held accountable for having sexual performance imagery on his SnapChat or cellular device would get him into legal trouble,” an investigator wrote in the complaint warrant. “Holtzclaw told this investigator that we should change that law as in his opinion it was ‘not right.’”
