‘No remorse’: Union City police arrest woman suspected of drowning her newborn
UNION CITY — The victim in this murder case had no name until after she was dead.
That’s because on the day she was born, her mother allegedly drowned her inside their Union City apartment, then left her body in a dumpster, stuck to a Costco receipt, bloodied pantyhose, and random trash, for a man searching for recyclables to find. Union City police took it upon themselves to adopt her and give her a name: Matea Esparanza. If she’d lived she’d have had her 16th birthday about five weeks ago.
Detectives approached the case with a simple premise: find the mother and you’ve likely found the murderer. Now, thanks to genetic genealogy, social media postings and a secret trip out to Denver, they believe they have.
On Wednesday, Alameda County prosecutors charged Angela Onduto, 46, with murdering her newborn daughter, Matea, on May 18, 2009. Onduto, who has also gone by Angela Anderson and Angela Onken, allegedly confessed to the killing with “no remorse” when detectives went to her Denver home to interview her last month.
Onduto has not yet been arrested, records show.
But charging records describe how the case came to be filed, 16 years after a man made a grisly discovery in a Parkside Apartments dumpster. He’d been looking for cans and bottles to trade for 5 cent apiece, and believed he’d found a baby doll until his shock wore off. When he called police, his expertise in local dumpsters proved valuable; he explained that particular garbage can got emptied daily, meaning the newborn had been dumped there within 24 hours.
Media reports at the time say police publicly emphasized the likelihood of a natural causes death. One report by this news organization refers to Doe as a “stillborn,” while another says she likely died from a rare bacterial infection contracted from her mother’s uterus. But police say an autopsy later revealed an official cause of death: drowning.
Police interviewed neighbors. Onduto — who went by Angela Anderson back then — answered her door. She said she had no idea who might be responsible, a story she’d repeat in more detailed fashion weeks later when police followed up with neighbors. During the second go-round, she said she hadn’t even known about the incident until the cops showed up en masse that day, authorities said.
The case eventually went cold, but was picked up again in 2021. By then, the genetic genealogy technique — famous for catching the Golden State Killer in 2018 — had been developed. It involves tracking down suspects’ potential relatives through public DNA databases, and police used it to narrow their suspect pool down to two, including Onduto.
When they reviewed Onduto’s history, they realized she’d lived at the apartments where Doe’s body was discovered. By the 2020s, she’d moved to Denver, Colorado. Police planned a trip there, where they trailed her until they saw her discard a beverage cup in public, then gathered it for testing, authorities said.
In June 2025, police went out to Denver again, to arrest Onduto and question her about what had happened. A probable cause declaration, signed by Detective Dominic Ayala, says what allegedly happened next.
“Angela detailed how she intentionally murdered (Matea) after giving birth at home in 2009. Angela expressed no remorse, and said she knew while pregnant she had no intention of keeping the baby,” Ayala wrote. “She admitted to discarding Baby Jane Doe in the dumpster. She denied diagnosis with any psychiatric conditions and/or drug use at the time of the incident.”