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Baby Kate Trial – Letter from Sean says he gave baby ‘to a guy’

Posted at 2:23 PM, Oct 06, 2016
and last updated 2016-10-06 21:10:09-04

LUDINGTON, Mich. - Testimony resumed Thursday in Ludington in the trial of Sean Phillips.

Phillips is accused of killing his four month old daughter, Katherine, also known as Baby Kate, in 2011.

Testimony was largely halted Wednesday as the Assistant Attorney General who is prosecuting the case filed a motion to have Judge Peter Wadel removed from the case due to some perceived improprieties.  The judge denied that request, but the hearing and deliberation took most of the day.

Thursday, a Michigan corrections officer testified about finding a letter on Sean Phillips where he explains that he gave Baby Kate "to a guy, along with a list of families that are adopting (addresses)." The man was allegedly going to put Baby Kate on the doorstep of one of the addresses and that person would keep her.  The addresses were supposedly from a website called ParentProfiles.com .

An FBI agent testified Thursday that they searched local newspapers to see if Phillips or Kate's mother, Ariel Courtland, had communicated with potential adoptive families.  A Michigan State Police detective also searched Phillips' computer for searches and did find the site ParentProfiles.com narrowed down to Michigan.  Other searches included "fake adoption papers" and "terminating parental rights in New Mexico" and "international waters."  Phillips also allegedly had "HideMyIP" installed on his computer to hide his internet activity.  Most of the searches happened in June of 2011, before Baby Kate went missing on June 29.

Under cross-examination the detective admitted that they can't say for certain who was doing the searches on Phillips' computer, but it was password protected.

Darren Cunningham will have more from Ludington starting at 4:00pm on FOX 17 News.  He's also live tweeting the trial and you can follow him by clicking below.