Mississippi woman tries to sell daughter's baby

Brandy Moore was upset Friday, and was working to get custody of her baby - a baby that her mother tried to sell to another woman.

"For her to try and sell my child...I don't understand," Moore said.

Paula Best is that other woman, and says that Tracy Martin - Moore's mother - offered to sell her the two-week-old boy for $2000 and a car after passing the boy off as her own.
 
"We never took her seriously until she offered to sell us the baby and that's when I told my husband that something was wrong," Best said. "I already knew the baby didn't belong to her.  She was 50-years-old."

Best contacted the Yalobusha Sheriff's Department, who later got the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation involved. Thursday afternoon, the sheriff's department arrested Martin, but not charges related to the baby, but instead on an arrest warrant from a probation violation in Alabama.

Friday, Moore said her baby boy was born July 27th in Pensacola, Florida.  More said she left shortly afterwards to stay with her paternal grandfather, who also lives in Yalobusha County.

Now, Moore said, she is just looking for some closure, and to take her son back home.

"I knew she had him," Moore said. "My lawyers trying to find out what I can do. and we have been working on this for about a week now.  I am just trying to go about proving this is my child and getting my son home."

"It relieved something in me to know that she had knew what was going on, and that she had found her baby," Best said.

Late Friday afternoon, Tim Douglas of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said an investigation is active and ongoing, with many questions left to be answered.

A spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Human Services would not say whether or not the baby was in the agency's custody, but said they were cooperating with law enforcement officials.

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