A murdering mom is brought to justice

Lacey and Garnett Spears: photos can lie

A while back, I blogged (here) about Lacey Spears, mother of Garnett, who herself blogged  for years about her son's ill health.

When Garnett died on January 23, 2014 of salt poisoning, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Spears had killed him. There was hospital video showing her bringing Garnett into the bathroom with a connector tube (she had insisted years earlier on a gastrostomy) in her hand and then emerging with him in a distressed state. Police found two feeding bags in Spears’ apartment that were heavily tainted with salt, including one that she asked a friend to hide. One bag held the equivalent of 69 restaurant salt packets in it.

Last week she was indeed convicted.of second degree murder. In her defense, Spears' lawyer noted that the hospital video included tender scenes between mother and son, including one where she  puts two pairs of socks on Garnett.

"If she's planning on killing him, why does she care whether his feet are cold?" he asked the jury.

Oh my gosh, he's practically prosecuting her himself with that lame argument. Aren't wild swings between tenderness and cruelty precisely.what you'd expect from a deranged mother? Garnett, at five years old, would have finally been capable of reporting his mother's years of torture to authorities. According to the prosecution, the fear that he might do just that was the motive behind the murder.

There was no mention at the trial (NYTimes, Washington Post) of Munchausen by proxy which some experts believe fits this crime. I wonder why it was avoided.

This case must be especially horrific for parents of truly ill children, and even more-so for those of us who blog about them. That a mother would make her perfectly healthy child sick in order to join our sad, little club is mind blowing.