WELLINGTON ? A Geuda Springs woman has been charged in Sumner County with first-degree murder in the death of her newborn child.

Rebecca Lynn Gregory, 29, was being held in the county jail on $50,000 bond Monday night. She will not be allowed unsupervised contact with her 2-year-old son, authorities said.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Sumner County Sheriff’s Department searched the grounds around a pig farm Monday for the baby’s body, but officials declined to say whether that effort was successful.

“You’ll have to call back in the morning and ask the sheriff that question,” a man working in the jail said Monday night. “I don’t know if they found anything tonight or not.”

Some of her longtime neighbors near Geuda Springs said they were having a hard time understanding how Gregory, whom they saw as loving to her young son, could be charged with killing her baby.

At a news conference Monday afternoon at the sheriff’s department in Wellington, authorities said their investigation began Friday and Gregory was arrested early Saturday.

Sumner County Atty. William Mott and Sheriff Gerald Gilkey declined to comment on the newborn’s gender, how it died or whether there was an autopsy. They said the baby was not born in a hospital and died in rural Sumner County.

Mott and Gilkey said Gregory was the only suspect in the infant’s death.

John Rogers, who employs Gregory’s father on a large farm near Geuda Springs, described Gregory as a helpful, peaceful member of her rural household.

“She’s not vindictive,” Rogers said. “I haven’t heard anything that she was not a good momma.”

Gilkey said he expected Gregory to make a court appearance Thursday in Wellington.