A young mother has been found guilty of smothering her newborn twins to death because she didn't want her parents to know she was pregnant.
Jurors saw a video of Lindsey Lowe, 26, telling police she had given birth alone in the bathroom of her parents' home on September 12, 2011, and smothered the babies soon after. The bodies weren't found until two days later.
A family member discovered one baby dead in a laundry basket at the home in Hendersonville, 20 miles northeast of Nashville.
When police arrived to investigate, officers found the second body under a bloody sheet in the same basket.
Lowe was engaged at the time but became pregnant during an affair with another man, jurors were told.
She had hidden the pregnancy from her family and friends.
Hendersonville Police Detective Steve Malach said Lowe told him during an interrogation that she had kept her pregnancy secret so as not to disappoint her fiance or add to the stress of a family member's illness.
In a video of the interrogation, Lowe said she 'maybe' smothered them when she put her hand over the mouths of the babies.
"I was just trying to keep them quiet," she said on the video.
However, the defence said Lowe wanted to block out the idea of being pregnant and said she didn't even know she was giving birth until one of the babies came out in the toilet.
"Lindsey Lowe was pregnant, but she refused to accept it, her mind refused to accept it," defence attorney John Pellegrin told the jury.
The jury was shown photographs taken two days before Lowe gave birth where she was a bridesmaid at a wedding. She is wearing a strapless, floor-length gown that she had been fitted for her six months earlier.
Her sister, Lacey, said no-one ever suspected she was pregnant at the ceremony. She said her sister's weight often fluctuated so she did not think anything of it when she started to put on weight.
Lacey, 23, who shared the bathroom where her sister gave birth to two healthy boys, said Lindsey told her she had an upset stomach the morning after she gave birth.
Lowe's dad, Mark, described the moment he saw the dead body of one of his grandchildren - and how he was in so much shock, he waited 15 minutes to call for help.
He said his wife, Paula, found one infant on the morning of September 14, 2011 and called him with 'some panic in her voice' to come upstairs.
"She said there was a newborn child in Lindsey's room and at that point I looked at the child and was frankly not sure what I would do next," he told the court.
"I was pretty much in shock... I really did not know who to call or what I should do."
The jurors deliberated for two hours before Lowe was found guilty on two counts each of felony first-degree murder and felony premeditated murder.
She was sentenced to two life terms for her crimes.