FILICIDE (multiple): Utah: Sun Cha Warhola charged with killing 2 children found mentally incompetent

May 27th, 2011  Emiley Morgan

FARMINGTON — A woman accused of killing her two young children was deemed incompetent to stand trial Friday.

Sun Cha Warhola, 45, is charged with two counts of aggravated murder, a capital offense, for allegedly killing her children, 8-year-old James and 7-year-old Jean, in the family's home on Sept. 8, 2010.

"Two competency evaluations are in, have been filed with the court and both indicate Ms. Warhola is not competent to proceed toward trial," defense attorney Ed Brass said.

The children were found by their father, Kenneth Warhola, who arrived home from work that day and couldn't immediately find his family, according to charging documents. Eventually, he went to the children's bedroom and found the doors closed and barricaded from the inside.

Sun Cha Warhola told the man to wait 10 more minutes before coming in, the charges state. When he returned and pushed the door open, "his wife was inside, and she asked him not to look at the children who were lying on the bed covered with a blanket," the charges state.

Kenneth Warhola ran across the street to call 911. "Distinct ligature marks" consistent with strangulation were discovered on the children's necks.

An inquiry into the woman's competency was initially requested in November. Three separate review hearings were held before the determination of incompetency was made.

Prosecutors said Warhola will be sent to the Utah State Hospital for treatment in an effort to restore the woman to competency.

Brass said his client is "not well and is "severely mentally ill." But, he said, she has not received any threats or hate mail in connection with the accused crime.

"I think people realize that what happened is directly related to the fact that she is profoundly disturbed," Brass said. "(Treating Warhola's illness) is the humane thing to do."

He firmly believes his client wasn't competent when the alleged crime occurred. Even if she is restored to mental competency, he said she could "be ultimately punished for something she can't even remember took place."

A review hearing to re-evaluate Warhola's competency has been set for Nov. 4.
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=15723620

FILICIDE: Wales: Manslaughter sentence as jury accepts Yvonne Freaney was under severe strain when she killed autistic son

Helen Carter : 26 May 2011

Glen Freaney, 11, was strangled by his mother, Yvonne Freaney, who then tried to kill herself. She has been cleared of murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Photograph: South Wales police/PA

A woman has been cleared of murder after strangling her severely autistic son with a belt and then attempting to take her own life. She will instead be sentenced for manslaughter.
Yvonne Freaney, 49, booked into a hotel with her 11-year-old son Glen intending to kill him and then herself.
After strangling her son, Freaney was found with multiple knife wounds in a room at the Sky Plaza hotel in Rhoose, near Cardiff airport.
She left a note for one of her three other children, who also have disabilities, saying: "You may not understand what has happened but just think of it as I am finally getting rest."
The trial at Cardiff crown court heard she had been facing a lifetime of one-to-one care for her severely autistic son, who needed help dressing, washing, brushing his teeth and feeding. By the age of 11 he was not toilet trained and still wore nappies.
Glen had no verbal communication and used a computer that translated symbols he tapped out.
The court heard that Freaney and her husband, Richard, a 48-year-old former RAF officer, had been having marital problems. She had moved out of the family home and lived in hotels for about a month before killing Glen.
After friends raised the alarm police walked in to find the mother of four sitting on the bed next to her son's body. She told them: "I killed him about 36 hours ago. I tried to join him. He's in heaven now.
"Glen was severely autistic and he won't be autistic there. He'll be happy. No one else would look after him. I strangled him with my belt. I put him to sleep."
The court heard that Freaney also told police: "It is funny. He was laughing when I was strangling him. That is when I knew he was happy."
The prosecution said she had a "loving and devoted" relationship with Glen but there was enormous pressure on her and she was struggling to find a place to live.
An expert for the defence told the court she had a personality disorder based on a fear of losing her children, which meant she could not be a murderer.
She faced a murder charge but was cleared by a jury at Cardiff crown court after a day of deliberation. Freaney had admitted a charge of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
She will be sentenced on 10 June
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/26/woman-strangles-autistic-son-freaney

FILICIDE (multiple attempted): California mother, Lyn Benedetto, tries to kill kids before the tribulation

05/22/2011 :  Kristal Roberts

PALMDALE, Calif. - A California woman who says she wanted to protect her children from the May 21 “tribulation” is in jail after slitting the throats of her daughters’ before cutting her own back in March, KTLA reports.
Lyn Benedetto, 47, told authorities that to prevent her family from suffering, she had her daughters, 11 and 14, lie on a bed, took a box cutter knife to their throats, then cut herself March 19.
The suspect reportedly drove the victims to a friend’s home that she thought was empty, planning to die there.

Lancaster deputies say they responded to call regarding an assault with a knife around 5:30 p.m. from the owner of that home.
The mother was found at the location and arrested. The two victims were taken to Antelope Valley Hospital for “moderate though non life threatening injuries” and released to custody of Department of Children’s Services.
Benedetto is being held on a $1 million bail.
http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/national/california-mother,-lyn-benedetto,-tries-to-kill-kids-before-the-tribulation,-deputies-say

FILICIDE (charged): Wales: Jury finds Yvonne Freaney not guilty of son's murder

Liz Keen and Daniel Fisher, May 27 2011

A MOTHER who killed her severely disabled son as she fled from an abusive marriage showed no emotion as a jury found her not guilty of his murder.

Yvonne Freaney, 49, who was homeless after eventually walking out on a violent husband, had always admitted strangling 11-year-old Glen to death in a rented hotel room.
Her defence team said she did it while suffering from an abnormality of mind while under stress, suicidal and suffering from a personality disorder.
Defence barrister John Charles Rees QC told the jurors: “She was a battered wife but her way of solving her problem wasn’t to kill Mr Freaney but to kill herself and their son.”

She told police officers who found the child’s body, surrounded by his favourite soft toys at the Sky Plaza Hotel in Rhoose, last year: “I had to do it – no one else could look after him.
“My husband wouldn’t have been able to cope and it would have been cruel to leave him behind.
“I put him to sleep, put his toys around and started cutting myself.”
She said she had killed Glen, a pupil of Ashgrove School in Penarth where staff said she was a devoted and caring mother, 36 hours before the officers arrived.

“I’ve sent him to the Kingdom of Heaven” she told them. “My only regret is that I couldn’t end my life – my blood kept on clotting.”
As she was being taken back down to the cells yesterday, Freaney paused and leaned over the back of the dock, to plant kisses from her hand gently onto to the heads of her two grown-up children, who had rushed from the public gallery to embrace her.
The court heard how Glen, who couldn’t be properly toilet trained but who loved to ride his bike and play on the swings, died some time between May 12 and 16 last year.
Even the prosecution, in bringing a charge of murder, accepted she was a woman who had devoted herself to the full-time care of the youngest of her four children.
“He could not be left alone for a minute,” prosecutor Gregg Taylor QC told the jury. “He could walk and run in special boots made for him but had no awareness of danger and would rush to look at cars and fire engines. He would have needed supervision for the rest of his life.”
Freaney herself did not give evidence but the trial heard of her state of mind and the stresses in her life through a series of texts messages between her, husband Mark and daughter Carla, 22, and in letters she left at the RAFA club in Penarth, where her husband was chairman and where she agreed, at his request, to become treasurer and sort out the books, which were in a mess.
Mr Rees said she did it to try to please the husband who had been abusive towards her for years, although it was too much for her and she just couldn’t cope.
In what were meant to be suicide notes left at the club and on the dressing table of her hotel room she spoke of the amount of her time the RAFA took up and alleged her husband gave it more attention than he did his family.
The court heard how the family had to leave their mortgaged home in Salop Street, Penarth, because it was so run-down it was declared uninhabitable.
After a period when they stayed with her daughter, she decided to leave Mr Freaney, also 49, who admitted being violent towards her and spent several weeks before the killing searching for a home for herself and Glen as they lived in a series of local hotels.
Trial judge Mr Justice Wyn Williams told Freaney she was being remanded in custody until sentence is passed in June. Mr Rees said: “The question of her coming back into the community and how that is to be dealt with will have to be considered.”

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/cardiffonline/cardiff-news/2011/05/27/jury-finds-mother-not-guilty-of-son-s-murder-91466-28775441/#ixzz1NqFuTyfI

FILICIDE (multiple): Quebec: Shedding light on the darkest of crimes: family killings

JANET BAGNALL,  May 27, 2011

 

 The trial of Guy Turcotte, a cardiologist charged with killing his two small children, started just days after a 28-year-old mother walked into the freezing waters of the Rivière des Prairies, a twomonth-old baby in her arms and her five-year-old son attached to one of her wrists.

Then, as Quebecers reeled from learning of Turcotte's frenzied knife attack against his children in 2009, another father put his three little children in his truck, set it ablaze, and went off to kill himself.
Seven people died in the three incidents. Only Turcotte, the baby from the river and a badly burned 6-year-old who escaped his father's attempt on his life survived.
What was going on in Quebec society? How could parents do such things to their own children?
Little is known about the young mother, but the two fathers, Turcotte and Martin Houle, appear to fit a pattern where personality characteristics in combination with a lengthy and acute family crisis formed an "explosive cocktail," says Quebec psychology professor Suzanne Léveillée. Turcotte's superior education did not make him atypical, Léveillée says. Men who kill their children and/ or whole families are often middle-class.
Léveillée, together with Julie Lefebvre, her Université du Québec à Trois Rivières colleague, will launch a book on the subject of murder within the family at the International Conference on Violence against Women to be held in Montreal May 29 to June 1.
Because the three cases were all over the media at the same time, it might seem to Quebecers that there has been an increase in the number of children murdered by their parents, but statistically this is not true. There is a distressing sameness to the numbers year in and out. Between 1997 and 2007, 68 children in the province were killed by a parent. Forty of the 68 were killed by their father, 28 by their mother.
Men and women kill for different reasons, research suggests. Men kill out of vengeance against the woman who has spurned them. Women tend to kill their children out of a misplaced "altruism," in which they think they are sparing the child the same misery they themselves have endured.
Men also tend to be responsible for "familicides," in which the whole family is killed. Quebec's chief coroner investigated 16 such cases dating from 1986 to 2000. In all cases, it was a man who carried out the killings. Excessive violence - such as the savage knife attacks by Turcotte on his children - was a characteristic in nearly half of these killings.
Léveillée and Lefebvre studied 10 of these "familicides." They found that there seemed little to suggest ahead of time that the men would go to the extreme of killing their entire family rather than "lose" them. Eight of the 10 men were working. Five were in the process of separating from their spouse. Only one man had a criminal past, and it had nothing to do with violence against another person. Only one man had been hospitalized in a psychiatric centre in the year before he killed his family. Nine of the men killed themselves afterward, one in prison.

"It is very difficult to foresee these crises," Léveillée told me. "Men don't consult when they are in distress."
But there are signs, she said. Among the strongest is the breakup of the couple, particularly if one or both of the partners are incapable of accepting a separation, feel the separation is something they cannot live through. Other signs include the presence of psychological or physical violence, threats of suicide, alcohol or drug consumption, and unhinged behaviour like frequent, hysterical phone calls.
For their book, Léveillée and Lefebvre interviewed, in prison, Quebec men who had killed their spouse. Out of 100 possibilities, only 23 agreed to talk to the researchers. They did so, Léveillée said, "not out of guilt - it's not obvious that they regret what they did. If it was a child, they think it was unfortunate. In many cases, they are not people who feel regret. They have personality disorders.
"Talking to us, I think, was a form of making reparations. It wasn't possible to stop them, but maybe by talking about it they can help stop someone else."
Although Léveillée does not think this spring's killings were connected, she worries that child-custody battles are becoming more of a minefield. Today's Quebec has fewer children and more separations. "We'll see in a few years whether there is a trend here," she said. "It may stabilize, but it is something to watch."

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Shedding+light+darkest+crimes+family+killings/4846675/story.html#ixzz1NqCyTh80

FILICIDE: Parents who kill their kids not always insane, expert says

Electa Draper  :  05/27/2011

People tend to believe that any parent who kills a child — especially a mother — must be crazy, but a leading expert on the crime says it isn't true.
"The view that parents who deliberately kill their children are 'mad or bad' is too simple," said Dr. Phillip Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Mental illness is a big factor, he said, but so is desperation.
Kelli Lynn Murphy, the 41-year-old Castle Rock mother accused in the deaths of her son, Liam, 9, and daughter, Madigan, 6, called a police dispatcher Monday and said she intended to kill herself. When asked about any children in the home, she said: "They are in heaven."
Murphy and her

SUSAN SMITH Sentenced to life in South Carolina for the 1994 drowning of her two sons to pursue a relationship. (Dave Martin, The Associated Press)

husband, Eric, reportedly had been under severe financial stress, with talk of divorce and domestic violence tearing the fabric of family life.
Researchers estimate 250 to 300 children are murdered by their parents each year in the U.S.
"Historically, one out of 33 homicides is a parent killing a child younger than 18," Resnick said.
Five types of filicide
Filicide, the deliberate act of a parent killing his or her own child, is the third-leading cause of death in American children ages 5 to 14, Resnick found in a 2005 study.
Those bleak statistics are echoed in FBI Uniform Crime Reports indicating the murder of sons and daughters accounted for 3.1 percent of the 90,869 homicides in the U.S. from 1995 through 2000.
In a 40-year career, Resnick said, he has identified five main types of filicide, which vary according to parent gender.
The first is "altruism." When severe stress, depression, mental illness or claim of mental illness is involved in a case, a mother likely will explain her motive was unselfish — the child was killed to prevent suffering.
"The woman is still trying to be a good mother but no longer knows what to do," Resnick said.
While

STEPHANIE ROCHESTER Superior woman has pleaded insanity because of postpartum delusions that her son had autism. (Marty Caivano, Boulder Daily Camera)

only one of 23 suicide attempts is successful in the U.S., Resnick said, one-fourth of women who kill their children also kill themselves.
A woman often sees the child as an extension of herself, Resnick said, and the line between a mother's suicide and the murder of her child can be blurred.
"But it's harder to kill yourself than your children," Resnick said.
A second circumstance of filicide is an acutely psychotic parent who has lost touch with reality.
Lamar mother Rebekah Amaya pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity after drowning her two children in 2003. She was 33. She said a spider was a sign that she was meant to kill Grace, 4, and 6-month-old Gabriel. She was found not guilty and hospitalized in

CASEY ANTHONY On trial in Florida in the 2008 disappearance of her daughter; claims accidental drowning. (Orlando Sentinel | Red Huber)

the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo.
The third type of filicide involves fatal battering. Resnick said this accounts for 80 percent of homicides of children younger than 1.
A fourth type of filicide is that a parent doesn't want the child or feels incapable of caring for it. Some believe the child is endangering or preventing another, more valued relationship. Other parents are unprepared and overwhelmed by the needs of a baby.
"You were more likely to be killed by your parents on the day you were born than any other day," Resnick said.
"The child was unwanted" is the motive given in 85 percent of homicides of newborns, Resnick said.
Stephanie Rochester of Superior faces murder charges for the suffocation death of her 6-month-old son, Rylan, in June 2010. The 35-year-old told police she thought Rylan was autistic and would be difficult to raise. She also said she didn't want her son to suffer.
She is being evaluated at the state mental hospital before trial, the Daily Camera reported.
Revenge against spouse
A fifth type is revenge against a spouse for infidelity or other perceived failing. Custody disputes sometimes trigger killings.
Researchers find that men who kill often feel they have lost control of their finances, families and relationships. They often kill in retaliation for something their wives or lovers have done.
Homicide is the leading cause of death in children 4 and younger. Of children murdered before the age of 5, 61 percent were killed by parents, Resnick found.
Friends of the family killed 30 percent of the children, according to a 1999 U.S. Department of Justice study. Other family members killed about 8 percent of the victims.
Filicides are hands-on murders. A 1988 Justice Department study found that while 61 percent of murder defendants used a gun, only 20 percent of parents who killed children used one. Children are beaten, shaken, drowned, smothered, poisoned and stabbed.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that women are likely to dispose of their children's bodies in ways suggestive of returning them to the womb — swaddled in blankets, wrapped in plastic, submerged in water.
Women, who committed only 13 percent of all violent crimes in the U.S. from 1995 to 2000, committed about half of all filicides, according to the FBI crime statistics.
Even considering that some mental illnesses associated with maternal filicide, such as postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis, are caused by maternity itself, it isn't known why women who are violent kill their children rather than mates or strangers.
Society considers the mother-child bond sacred and inviolable, so the expectation is that a mother would kill her child only if she had a serious mental illness. The defense of insanity is apparently more successful for women.
Resnick said women convicted of killing their children are more often hospitalized than jailed. Fathers, he said, are more likely to be imprisoned or executed.
The Colorado Violent Death Reporting System indicates that from 2004 to 2009, 143 Coloradans under 18 were killed. The average is about 24 child homicides a year.
The state saw 12 incidents from 2004 to 2010 of homicide-suicides with one or more minor victims.
Because of the confidential nature of some of the data, the state cannot release the specific number of children killed each year by their parents, said Kirk Bol of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
However, the Colorado Child Fatality Prevention System 2010 Annual Report included a comprehensive review of the 82 child homicides that occurred between 2004 and 2006.
They found that eight of the deaths were murder-suicide cases in which an adult killed one or more children and then committed suicide.
Most homicides, 59.8 percent, occurred among children under age 5. The perpetrator was the child's primary caregiver in 56.1 percent of the cases.

Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com

Parents who kill their kids not always insane, expert says - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18151310#ixzz1NqBNK1Pn

FILICIDE(multiple): Colorado: Kelli Murphy charged with 1st degree murder

May 28, 2011 
DENVER - On the same day the funerals were held for her children, 41-year-old Kelli Murphy appeared in court to face two counts of first-degree murder.
Just after 8:30 a.m. on Friday, Murphy walked into the courtroom dressed in a gray jumpsuit with bandages still on her wrists. According to police, she tried to kill herself after allegedly murdering her children.
Friday morning, she waived her right of the reading of her formal charges. The judge ordered that the court's record of actions be unsealed. As a result, the charges made against Kelli Murphy were made available.
On those court actions, Murphy is charged with two counts of murder, two counts of murder of a victim less than 12 years of age and two counts of reckless child abuse.
Early Monday morning, Castle Rock Police responded to the home when a woman told 911 dispatchers she was going to commit suicide.
When officers arrived, they found 9-year-old Liam and 6-year-old Madigan dead in the bedrooms. After authorities arrived at her home Monday, Kelli Murphy was taken to the hospital with injuries to her wrists.
In court documents Kelli Murphy accuses her husband, Robert Murphy, of abusing their children.
On Tuesday, the Douglas County Coroner's Office performed autopsies on Liam and Madigan and could not determine a cause of death.
A candlelight vigil was held Thursday night in honor of Liam and Madigan. Several hundred people turned out for the vigil to remember them.
Friends, family, neighbors and community members gathered in Founders Park, less than one mile from the home where the children were found dead.
Robert Eric Murphy, the father of the victims and estranged husband of the mother accused of killing them, did not speak at the vigil. He was visibly grief stricken and surrounded by a small group of family and close friends.
The judge on Friday set a mandatory protection order against Kelli Murphy so that she cannot contact the children's father.
http://www.9news.com/news/article/200415/339/Funerals-held-for-2-kids-mother-charged

FILICIDE: US statistics

James Alan Fox, May 23, 2011

 

At least based on comments uploaded to my "Why mothers kill" blog post of last week, there appears to be some disagreement about whether mothers or fathers are more apt to commit infanticide. The opposing positions are supported by conflicting research reports that use different data sources and different time frames.

There are logical reasons to back either point of view. One might think that fathers are more inclined to kill their children in light of the very uneven gender split generally among those who commit homicide. Overall, 90% of murderers in this country are male.
On the other hand, mothers tend to have much greater contact with their children, increasing the opportunities for violent outbursts directed against their sons or daughters. To whatever extent infanticide is precipitated by the stresses and strains of child rearing, one might expect mothers to outnumber fathers as perpetrators of infanticide.

Of course, the question is not really open to opinion or debate as it can be settled easily and directly with official police statistics on homicides of children. The following chart shows the yearly average number of fathers and mothers who murder their children according to the age of the victim. While fathers and mothers are virtually tied in the number who murder children under the age of one, a slight edge for fathers emerges with increasing age of the victim.

The discrepant outcomes derived from earlier studies may just be a function of the years covered in the data. As shown in the figure below, until the mid-1990s mothers and fathers were represented equally among those who murdered children ages 7 and under. Since then, however, the numbers have clearly diverged. Specifically, whereas the number of fathers killing their children has remained fairly level in recent years, the number of mothers committing infanticide has dropped by as much as one-third over the past decade and one-half.

I will leave it to others (including those who post comments to this blog) to debate the possible reasons for this recent pattern. In my mind, at least, the increasing tendency of mothers to be working outside the home (using alternative forms of child care) likely accounts for at least some of the decline in maternal infanticide.
There are those who question the choice that many mothers make to return to work while their children are still very young because of the possible impact on their development. Apparently, there is one positive side effect: fewer children are being murdered by their mothers.

BLOGGER'S Note: the conventional use of "infanticide" is age less than one year; probably "filicide" is intended.

http://boston.com/community/blogs/crime_punishment/2011/05/fewer_mothers_killing_kids.html

FILICIDE: Florida: Casey Anthony: lawyers claim daughter Caylee drowned in swimming pool

Jacqui Goddard
24th May 2011


Casey Anthony sobbed in court today as her defence attorney revealed for the first time her two-year-old daughter drowned in a swimming pool.
For the first time, prosecutors said Caylee Anthony died from three pieces of duct tape being placed over her mouth and nose while a defence attorney for the mother claimed the toddler drowned in the family pool and the little girl's grandfather covered up the accident.
Casey Anthony, 25, is charged with first-degree murder. If convicted, she could be sentenced to death.
An autopsy was never able to conclude a cause of death for Caylee.

Tearful: Casey Anthony cries during the opening statements of her murder trial at the Orange County Courthouse today

Cindy Anthony, holding a teddy bear, and her husband, George Anthony, leave the courtroom after listening to the first part of the state's opening arguments

Casey Anthony waited a month before telling her mother that Caylee had disappeared during the summer of 2008, and that was only after her parents, George and Cindy Anthony, had recovered a car Casey had been driving, prosecutors said. The vehicle, which the grandparents picked up from a towing lot, had a foul odor inside.Defence attorney Jose Baez said: 'She what she's been doing all her life - hiding her pain, going into a dark corner and pretending that she doesn't live in the situation in which she's living.
'She went back to that deep, dark, ugly place called Denial to pretend that there was nothing wrong.'

The remains Caylee Marie Anthony, 2 were found in woods by the side of a road with traces of duct tape on her face

Caylee, who loved to swim at her grandparents' Florida home, where she lived, had wandered out of the house while her mother and her grandfather were at home that day, Mr Baez said.
'Everyone wants to know what happened. How in the world can a mother wait 31 days before reporting where her child is....Well, the answer is relatively simple.'

CONTESTED EVIDENCE: THE FIGHT TO INCLUDE 'AIR SAMPLE' AS PROOF

For the first time in a U.S. court, prosecutors in the Casey Anthony case want to include an air sample as evidence.
But in Florida courts, new types of evidence are admissible only if a judge is convinced the technique is generally accepted by the scientific community.
Prosecutors want to admit the sample which was collected from the boot of the defendant’s car, canned, and tested by a human decomposition expert.
Dr Arpad Vass, who analysed the sample, testified that when he opened the can he recognised ‘the smell of human decomposition’.

The court heard: 'She (Caylee) never was missing. Caylee Anthony died on June 16, 2008, when she drowned in her family's swimming pool.
'Casey was home with Caylee and so was her father. George Anthony came in and began yelling at her 'Where's Caylee, where's Caylee?' They searched in the house, they searched in the bedroom, they searched under the bed, in the closets, in the garage, then they went outside,' said Mr Baez.
'As soon as Casey came around the corner...she saw George Anthony holding Caylee in his arms. She immediately grabbed Caylee and began to cry and cry and cry.'
Anthony is accused of first-degree murder and faces death by legal injection if convicted.
Throughout the case - which has gripped Florida since 2008 - her parents wavered between loyalty to their daughter and grief over their missing grand-daughter.
Baez also claimed that Casey's brother made advances toward her and was given a paternity test to see if he was Caylee's father. All those secrets eventually led to the cover up of Caylee's drowning, Baez said.
'You will hear about a family that is dysfunctional,' Baez said. 'Ugly things. Secret things.'

Casey Anthony held tissue to her face and cried during opening statements, as she had in pretrial hearings

Caylee's remains were found in December 2008. She was first reported missing in July 2008, about a month after she was last seen alive.

Casey Anthony has pleaded not guilty and previously said a babysitter kidnapped Caylee.
Her defence has requested that video footage of the 24-year-old mother, filmed as she discovered that her daughter's body was found, be barred from the trial.
She was in custody at the time the footage was taken and her attorney said the video was taken without her knowledge.
There have also been fierce legal arguments about the unprecedented step of including a sample of air as evidence.
Mr Baez also blamed the police department for botching the investigation, alleging they wanted to feed a media frenzy about a mother killing her child instead of investigating a mundane drowning.

Cindy Anthony wears a bracelet in memory of her granddaughter at the Orange County Courthouse today

Members of the public line up for seats outside the Orange County courtroom to hear opening statements in the Casey Anthony murder trial in Orlando, Florida today

Later on George Anthony denied that he had ever sexually abused his daughter, or that he had found his grand-daughter drowned in the family swimming pool.
On the day in question, June 16, 2008, he had kissed and hugged both Caylee and Casey goodbye as they left the house as usual - Casey supposedly to go to work, and Caylee to stay with a babysitter.
Asked if any of the allegations that Mr Baez had made about him in court were true, Mr Anthony stated firmly: 'No sir.'
He added that as a former law enforcement officer, he had been trained in resuscitation and 'would have done everything humanly possible to save my grand-daughter' if he had really found her in the pool as Mr Baez claimed.
'I never knew of anything that happened to Caylee until our lives started to unfold on July 15,' he said.
Earlier in the day as the prosecution set out their case as Anthony sobbed and shook her head.
The jury heard how she 'lived the good life' while her daughter's remains lay in a swamp.
She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and drew sharp breaths as a jury in Orlando heard how the seemingly happy childhood of her daughter, Caylee Marie, ended in horror, her remains tossed away like garbage, while her mother continued to party and lie about her whereabouts.
'It’s time to tell the story of little Caylee Marie,' said prosecutor Linda Drane-Burdick, opening the trial today nearly three years after the little girl’s disappearance.
Today, parents Cindy and George Anthony, of Orlando, sat at the back of the courtroom as Mrs Drane-Burdick told how they had doted on their grand-daughter, who was born in August 2005 and lived with them along with Anthony.

She said: 'They filled her room with toys and stuffed animals. Caylee’s room was decorated with every imaginable Winnie the Pooh item available.
'In the back yard of George and Cindy Anthony’s home was every little girl’s dream, a playhouse complete with a mailbox and her name.'

For one month, Anthony¿s mother Cindy, a nurse, grew more and more anxious about Caylee after Anthony allegedly gave excuse after excuse over where she was.

For one month, Anthony’s mother Cindy, a nurse, grew more and more anxious about Caylee after Anthony allegedly gave excuse after excuse over where she was.
It was reported that Anthony told her mother that the toddler was with a fictitious nanny named Zanny, despite Caylee never previously having spent a single night away from her grandparents.
She then claimed that she was staying with various friends, enjoying days out at SeaWorld in Orlando and Busch gardens in Tampa.

Anthony’s mother finally called police on July 15 to report her fears for her missing grand-daughter and voice her suspicions at her daughter’s series of stories.

George Anthony (L) escorts his wife Cindy Anthony into the Orange County Courthouse for opening statements in their daughter Casey Anthony's trial

Police later discovered that for most of that time, Anthony had been staying with her boyfriend at his apartment and that Caylee was not with her.
CCTV footage showed her out shopping for clothes, going clubbing, and enjoying a July 4 fireworks show. She also visited a tattoo parlour several times.

Three days after Caylee was last seen alive, Anthony drove to her parents’ home while they were out, backed the car into the garage and then asked the neighbour if she could borrow a shovel.
A ‘very distinctive odour of decomposition' was later found in the boot of her car, along with a hair that, under forensic examination, showed scientific characteristics of having come from a decomposed human body, and a high concentration of chloroform,' the court heard.

A forensic examination of her parents’ computer showed that on various days in March – prior to Caylee’s disappearance and while George and Cindy Anthony were out at work - Google searches had been conducted using keywords such as 'making weapons out of household products', 'chloroform', 'shovel' and 'neck breaking.'

'There can have been no other user making those searches than Casey Anthony,' said Ms Drane-Burdick, spelling out in heartbreaking detail how the child’s skull and bone remnants were finally discovered by a utility worker on December 11, 2008, close to the family home, in a swamp.

Casey Anthony sits in court with defense team members Dorothy Clay Sims, right,

She was 'wrapped in a Winnie the Pooh blanket, stuffed in a garbage sack, shoved in a laundry bag and thrown into a swamp like she was just another piece of garbage.'
Roots of plants had entwined themselves in her hair.
For ten days, crime scene personnel painstakingly worked on their hands and knees 'collecting the remains of caylee Anthony to make sure, make certain, that she would no longer suffer the indignity of lying in a land swamp,' said Ms Drane-Burdick, as Anthony listened grim-faced, clenching her jaw and swivelling back and forth in her courtroom chair.

'Duct tape covered the nose and mouth of that tiny human skull,' the prosecutor revealed.

'The duct tape was placed on there prior to decomposition…indicating that Caylee’s killer never intended that it be removed,' she added.
 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390517/Caylee-drowned-swimming-pool-Shock-revelation-defence-grisly-Casey-Anthony-trial.html#ixzz1NMEdfuOI

NEONATICIDE (attempted): New York City: newborn baby survived after being thrown into a trash compactor

22 May 2011
A newborn baby survived after being thrown into a trash compactor, police revealed today.
A Brooklyn superintendent heard cries coming from a plastic bag in his building, and called police at 9:20am.
Responding officers say they found a newborn baby inside a bag attached to the trash chute at the Walt Whitman Houses projects.
They said they did not know how far the child fell, but suggested the plastic bag may have broken his fall.
Police say they took the baby to Brooklyn Hospital for treatment, and say he is currently in 'stable condition'.
MailOnline.com asked a New York Police Department spokesperson if they had been able to identify the child's name.
She said: 'He’s a newborn, he probably doesn’t even have a name'.
The police spokesperson said the investigation is currently ongoing, so she couldn't share any details.
Officers are thought to be canvassing the neighbourhood and area hospitals, searching for information about the child and his parents, who are not known.
Regarding whoever put the baby in the chute, a local resident, Tisha Holmes, 26, told the New York Daily News: 'That's just sad and pitiful. They need to burn in hell, that's what they need to do.
'People are shocked here. They could've given it to anybody. Ain't nobody in their civil mind would do that'.

 

A woman who lives in the building, Fontaine Simon, 38, told the paper: 'Oh God, I hope the baby is alright.

'I've been living here for 30 years, nothing ever happened like this before - never'.

Scene: Walt Whitman Houses in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where police say they found a child in the trash chute

The Walt Whitman Houses are located at 287 Myrtle Avenue in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York, where they are bordered by St. Edward's Street and Park and Carlton Avenues.
They consist of 15 buildings, all 6 or 13-stories tall, with 1,636 apartments housing about 4,276 people.
The 18.44-acre complex was built in 1944, and is named after the great American poet Walt Whitman.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389759/Newborn-baby-SURVIVES-tossed-Brooklyn-trash-compactor-Walt-Whitman-House-projects.html#ixzz1NAWvXpHD

FILICIDE: India's Supreme Court Says Honor Killings Should Be Punished By Death

posted by: Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

 

 

 We write all too often about "honor killings" here on Care2, which are particularly prevalent in rural parts of India.  Just last month, I reported on two women who were bludgeoned to death by men from their village (including one of the women's nephew) because they were suspected of having a lesbian relationship.  Now, the Indian Supreme Court has taken a harsh stand on honor killings, saying that those convicted of such crimes should receive the death penalty.

"It is time to stamp out these barbaric, feudal practices which are a slur on our nation," said the court.

Each year, according to a recent study, hundreds of people are killed for violating some element of their family's honor code - whether it's inter-caste marriage, premarital sex, adultery, or another social taboo.  People are rarely given the death penalty when they are convicted of honor killings, but that may be about to change.  Ruling in the case of a man who had been accused of strangling his daughter, Justice Markandeya Katju and Gyan Sudha said,

"All persons who are planning to perpetrate 'honor' killings should know that the gallows await them.  He cannot take the law into his own hands by committing violence or giving threats of violence.  In our opinion honor killings, for whatever reason, come within the category of rarest of rare cases deserving the death punishment."
I feel very ambivalent about this declaration, despite the horror of the crimes which the Supreme Court is trying to address.  Because I am staunchly against the death penalty, I can't condone its extension, even for these terrible actions, which are often encouraged by village councils and sanctioned by larger communities.  But I do admire the Supreme Court's apparent resolution to end honor killings in India.  They should start, though, with trying to convict and jail more people who have committed honor killings, rather than declaring that they, too, should die.
 http://www.care2.com/causes/human-rights/blog/indias-supreme-court-says-honor-killings-should-be-punished-by-death/

FILICIDE: India: the practice of "honor killing"

Phyllis Chesler on May 18th, 2011




Two Muslim mothers, both widows, both living in Uttar Pradesh in India, helped each other murder their grown daughters, Zahida, 19, and Husna, 26, for having committed the crime of marrying Hindu men.

They held their daughters down and slowly strangled them to death. The poor dead darlings actually believed they were entitled to marry non-Muslim men and for “love,” and that ultimately their mothers and Muslim community would accept them back. This is typical of many honor killing victims. While these two young women knew enough to contact the police for help—and the police actually got their mothers to sign an agreement that they would not “harm” their children—it was only a deceptive piece of paper. But the daughters’ longing for reconciliation and naive hopefulness was their undoing. Their mothers agreed not to hurt them and sweet-talked them into returning; once the girls were home, they became prey for the kill.

But life without a family network is unthinkable for someone whose identity is not individual but rather located in a collectivity. Progress and “modernity” may be coming to India, but slowly, very slowly.

Neither mother, Khatun or Subrato, has expressed the slightest remorse. Both feel justified because their daughters brought shame to their families. According to the police, Khatun said: “We killed them because they brought shame to our community. How could they elope with Hindus? They deserved to die. We have no remorse.”

This is cold-hearted, barbaric, almost unbelievable. But such Muslim-on-Muslim crimes and woman-on-woman crimes are typical in many parts of the world.

Clearly, this is an extreme case of woman’s inhumanity to woman; I published a book with that title. We expect women, mothers especially, to be able to defy social custom for the sake of saving their children. The reality is just the opposite. The slightest transgression, especially by women, will upset huge networks and topple all social stability. No one will marry someone from a “shamed” family; that family will be forever ostracized, impoverished, and may also die out genetically. Mothers, fathers, relatives are loyal to their tribal social customs rather than to any one individual, even if that individual is their own child. The system itself demands and allows for such barbarism—but the sacrifice of the individual is seen as in the service of the greater tribal and caste based social structure or “civilization.”
In addition, woman’s inhumanity to woman is a common phenomenon in India where mothers-in-law routinely assist their sons in burning their daughters-in-law to death. This is known as a “dowry killing” because it is done so that a new bride can bring another dowry into the impoverished and/or greedy family. There is actually a special wing in a prison in New Delhi for such mothers-in-law. In addition, female infanticide was a long-time practice in both India and China. Both women and men steal children in India and sell them to be adopted abroad or, more frequently, to be groomed into sexual slavery either at home or abroad. A dear friend is visiting me from India right now and her stories on this subject are unbelievable — and yet all too believable.

Surveys have shown us that women in India believe that women deserve to be beaten. Perhaps they are also saying that women should simply expect this to happen. Many Hindu and Muslim mothers refuse to accept severely battered child-daughter brides back into their home. In Afghanistan, this often leads to suicide, often self-immolation as well.

To its credit, the Indian Supreme Court has recently declared that “It is time to stamp out these barbaric, feudal practices which are a slur on our nation.”

Once again, the major mainstream media in the United States have, thus far, failed to do any original stories about this awful case. The Washington Post relied again on an AP story. The New York Times has neither published nor posted anything.

In the past, the Washington Post has only covered Hindu honor killings in India. This time, they were forced to use the word “Muslim” to identify the perpetrators. The victims were not identified as “Muslims.”

That only happens when Israelis or Americans have killed them.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/18/muslim-mothers-who-honor-kill-their-daughters/

INFANTICIDE (attempted): California: Danielle Mailloux charged with attempted murder after infant stabbed

May 16 2011

 

A Bakersfield mother is under arrest on charges she tried to kill her own baby.
Police were called to a house on Crawford Street in east Bakersfield Sunday evening. When they arrived, they found a six-week-old girl with multiple stab wounds on her upper body.
The baby's mother, 24-year-old Danielle Mailloux, was arrested and is due in court Tuesday on charges of attempted murder.
"Shocking and disturbing," said one neighbor.
"We don't have a motive at this point," said Ray Pruitt, Kern County Sheriff's Department. "The case is still under investigation."
Authorities believe Mailloux stabbed the infant multiple times with a kitchen knife.
"The stab wounds were primarily to the upper body," said Pruitt.
The Sheriff's Department wouldn't release the name of the child, but said she is in stable condition at Children's Hospital in Madera.
Investigators say there were other children at the house who are now staying with relatives.
It's not the first time Mailloux has been investigated for crimes against children. Two years ago, she delivered a full-term baby that was stillborn. Tests showed the child died as a result of Mailloux's methamphetamine use and the coroner ruled the death a homicide.
Under California law, however, the mother of a fetus cannot be charged with murder if they solicited, aided, abetted, or consented the act that killed the unborn child.
Neighbors we talked to didn't know much about the couple, other than they often saw them hanging out in their front lawn.
"Always having nothing to do," said Robert Herrera. "I was always up and down coming from work and I would see them outside. Early in the morning, late at night, they would be outside."
"I'm shocked. I'm really shocked," said Cynthia Mancha. "I guess in this neighborhood it shouldn't faze me, but for a mother to do that I am really surprised."
http://www.kget.com/news/local/story/Mom-accused-of-stabbing-infant-daughter/oIxosE5_pEqy__k0sBq8-A.cspx

 

FILICIDE: Wales: Yvonne Freaney killed son 'to protect him from care'

20 May 2011

Yvonne Freaney has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 11-year-old Glen Freaney but denies his murder

A woman killed her severely autistic son because she was frightened he would be taken into care, a court has heard.

Yvonne Freaney, 49, admits the manslaughter of Glen, 11, at a hotel near Cardiff Airport, but denies murder.
She told police no-one else would look after him.
Cardiff Crown Court heard Mrs Freaney, from Penarth, may have a personality disorder linked to a fear of losing her children. The trial continues.
On Friday, her defence began with consultant psychiatrist Dr Tegwyn Williams of the Caswell Clinic in Bridgend arguing her condition meant she was not a murderer.
Mrs Freaney was sent to the clinic for psychiatric evaluation after the death of her son at the Sky Plaza hotel in Rhoose, Vale of Glamorgan in May 2010..
Dr Williams' evidence contradicted the opinion of a prosecution expert who insisted her condition was not serious enough to amount to a personality disorder.
"I believe that she saw no other option other than to kill herself and to kill Glen”Quote Dr Tegwyn Williams Psychiatrist

John Charles Rees QC, defending, asked Dr Williams if there was any doubt in his mind that Mrs Freaney was suffering a personality disorder.

"None at all," he told the court.
"And that it substantially diminished her responsibility?" Mr Rees asked.
"None at all," Dr Williams said again.
Continuing to give evidence, Dr Williams said that Mrs Freaney's self-worth and self-esteem were based on the idea that she was a good parent.

Mrs Freaney has admitted Glen's manslaughter but denies murdering him

He added that a clear sign she was suffering a personality disorder was that she demonstrated an inability to function in all other areas of her life.
"I think that the threat that the children may be removed from her was overpowering," Dr Williams told the jury. "My understanding from discussions with her is that initially she was so helpless and powerless that she wanted to kill herself. "Her state from that point deteriorated and I believe that she saw no other option other than to kill herself and to kill Glen. "In her mind she was protecting him from the awfulness of his abuse by people who would have to care for him other than her."

Dislocating shoulder
Dr Williams said that Mrs Freaney had had an unusual upbringing which "left a lot to be desired" and included a relationship with a 22-year-old man when she was 12, and which was "with the agreement" of her parents. He added that she would have suffered from low self-esteem as a child, but taken those issues with her into adulthood and they could have been made worse by her husband, Mark Freaney, who he alleged was abusive. Earlier in the trial, Mr Freaney admitted dislocating her shoulder in one of many assaults on her.
The court has heard that all Mrs Freaney's four children had disabilities.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-13477391

INFANTICIDE: Ohio: China Arnold put her child in the microwave oven

21st May 2011

  Sentenced: China Arnold got life in prison without parole

An Ohio woman convicted of killing her month-old baby daughter in a microwave oven was spared the death penalty and sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole.
Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Wiseman sentenced China Arnold, 31, of Dayton, who psychologists testified showed no signs of serious mental illness.
Arnold declined to make a statement during her sentencing.
Arnold was convicted last week of aggravated murder by the same jury that recommended her punishment. Jurors deliberated about six hours Thursday and Friday.
Prosecutors say Arnold intentionally put 28-day-old Paris Talley in a microwave and turned it on after a fight with her boyfriend. The couple had argued over whether the boyfriend was the infant's biological father.
Defense attorney Jon Paul Rion argued that the evidence pointed as much to the boyfriend as it did to the child's mother, who Mr Rion said was drunk at the time.
After Friday's hearing, Mr Rion told the Dayton Daily News he would appeal. He did not immediately return a message left at his office by The Associated Press.
The prosecutor's office had no immediate comment.
Medical experts testified that the baby died quickly after her temperature reached between 107 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. They said she probably was in the microwave for more than two minutes.

 

Dr. Marcella Fierro, retired chief medical examiner for Virginia, said: 'She died because she was overheated. She was cooked'.

It was Arnold's third trial in her daughter's 2005 death. Her first trial ended in a mistrial when new witnesses surfaced just before closing arguments.

  Sad: One-month-old baby Paris Talley succumbed to her injuries after being 'cooked' in a microwave oven

Her second trial ended in a guilty verdict and a life sentence. But an appeals court overturned the conviction when it found prosecutorial misconduct and said the trial judge erred in not allowing a relevant witness to testify.
The sentencing phase was delayed earlier this week to allow time for a mental exam of Arnold. Two psychologists testified Thursday that Arnold was of average intelligence and showed no signs of serious mental illness.
Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon said Arnold suffered from a 'low-grade chronic depressive condition' as well as alcohol and drug abuse. He said he found nothing 'that would have justified the death of this child'.
In arguing for the death sentence, Assistant Montgomery County Prosecutor Dan Brandt told the jury there were no factors that mitigate the 'purposeful murder of baby Paris in that microwave'.
Defense attorney Kevin Lennen said that death or life in prison would be a tough penalty, but death should go only to the worst offenders. He pointed to evidence that Arnold was drunk at the time of the baby's death.
Assistant Prosecutor Dan Brandt told jurors that Arnold's actions were 'even more purposeful' than a slaying with a gun or knife, the Dayton Daily News reported.
During closing arguments, Mr Brandt told jurors: 'Baby Paris is without life, but she's not without a voice. Please listen to her'.

Evidence: Baby Paris was badly burned after being put in a microwave oven - she died in hospital the next day.

Mr Brandt claimed that Arnold had to carry the baby over, place her in the microwave, shut the door and press buttons. Then she waited while her child cooked to death, Brandt claimed.
Defense attorney Jon Paul Rion had told jurors: 'This doesn't make sense to you. It doesn't. I've been watching your faces'.
The prosecutor cut and fit evidence to show 'this loving mother somehow was so evil that she killed her baby in this way', he said.
Mr Rion has said he 'realised from the first day' that Arnold was innocent.
Prosecutors said Arnold had a criminal past and was convicted of abduction in 2000 and forgery in 2002.
Arnold reportedly took Paris to the hospital the following day but she succumbed to her injuries.
Arnold was initially arrested but then released due to lack of evidence.  She was re-arrested in November 2006.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389418/China-Arnold-sentenced-life-prison-escapes-death-penalty-cooking-month-old-baby-Paris-death-microwave-oven.html#ixzz1MzVx90HS

INFANTICIDE (attempted): Texas: Shantaniqua Scott seen on video smothering baby son

Paul Thompson: 20th May 2011

Hidden video cameras caught Shantaniqua Scott placing a blanket over her four-month-old son's mouth

This is the shocking moment a teenage mother attempts to smother her baby in a hospital.
Hidden video cameras caught 18-year-old Shantaniqua Scott placing a blanket over her four-month-old son's mouth.
Moments later she clamps her hand over his face and mouth as the newborn baby kicks and struggles for life.
By the time the single mother removes her hand her son Raymond's body appears limp.
Seconds later, with alarms going off indicating the baby had stopped breathing, doctors and nurses rush in to resuscitate him.
The footage was played to a shocked courtroom in Texas where Scott is on trial for attempting to kill her newborn son.
Jurors sat in rapt silence as the video tape recorded at the Cook Children's Medical Center in July 2010 was played in a Fort Worth courtroom.

Jurors in Fort Worth watched in shocked silence as video showed Scott smothering the baby with a blanket and then her hand

They had heard how Scott's son had been taken into hospital after he was reported to have suddenly stopped breathing.
Doctors who examined him at first thought he suffered from severe acid reflux.
He underwent surgery to correct the condition - when acid from the stomach backs up into the oesophagus - and was released from hospital.

 

But two days later he was back in the emergency unit after he mysteriously stopped breathing.

Staff suspected he was the victim of abuse and set up a hidden camera on the ward where the baby was recovering.
Scott is seen peering into her son's cot and placing a blanket over his face for up to 20 seconds.

Scott was caught peering into her son's cot and placing a blanket over his face for up to 20 seconds at a children's medical centre

When a nurse briefly enters the room Scott paces the floor and appears to check her cell phone.
Then, when left alone she reaches into the cot and with her bare hand clamps it over her baby son's mouth and nose.
The video records her trying to suffocate her son for one minute and 14 seconds.
Heart and lung specialist Dr Sami Heed said the baby would have died but for the intervention of staff when his monitors sounded an alarm.

Seconds later, with alarms going off indicating the baby had stopped breathing, doctors and nurses rush in to resuscitate him

He told the court: 'I still get emotional. I get night sweats when I think about it. I take care of the sickest of the sick. His life was being put in danger by someone who was supposed to take care of him.'
Jurors were told that Scott confessed to police she no longer wanted to care for her son and in a taped confession admitting smothering him.
Sgt Pedro Criado of the Fort Worth Police Department said Scott told detectives she didn't want her child anymore.
'She just basically stated that she wanted to go back to that carefree attitude she had before she had the child,' Sgt Criado said.
She also said it was hard being a teenage mother, complained that the baby's father didn't help and added that she didn't want to deal with the stress anymore.
Doctors said it is not known if the child will have any lasting injuries from the lack of oxygen. He is being looked after by social workers.

Scott faces life imprisonment if convicted of two counts of causing serious bodily injury to a child.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1388809/Hospital-surveillance-video-shows-Shantaniqua-Scott-trying-suffocate-baby.html#ixzz1MtQZqBSG

FIILICIDE: New Hampshire: Julianne McCrery of Texas said, "I killed my son"

By Daily Mail Reporter

19th May 2011

A mother has allegedly admitted killing her son after the dead boy’s body was found on a dirt road, it was revealed today.
Julianne McCrery, of Irving, Texas, allegedly told a female trooper: ‘I killed my son. I want to kill myself’ - after six-year-old Camden Pierce Hughes was found dead in Maine.
She is believed to have told police she accidentally gave him too much cough syrup, reported ABC. A telephone tip led authorities to the woman at a highway rest stop in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

Mugshot: Julianne McCrery, left (in a 2005 mugshot), of Texas, allegedly told an officer: ‘I killed my son. I want to kill myself’ - after Camden Pierce Hughes, six, right (computer generated image), was found dead in Maine

McCrery was taken to hospital for a medical evaluation and she is being questioned by authorities. A source said she was in a vehicle reading a Bible when arrested. She will be arraigned on Thursday.
She was charged with second-degree murder and being a fugitive from justice, according to the Boston Globe. Her son's body was found in Maine near the state line with New Hampshire.
But she was charged in New Hampshire because police believe the boy died in Hampton, where a state police command post was set up outside a motel on Wednesday.
Preliminary autopsy findings showed that the cause of Camden's death was suffocation and the manner of death was homicide. The homicide remains under investigation.

 The Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) were called in to help police identify the child, who was found by a resident of South Berwick, Maine on Saturday afternoon.

A man called investigators after recognising the boy from a computer-generated photo of the child that had been released by police.
'Julie's a good person,' said Christian von Atzigen. 'If you would ever ask me if she would harm a hair on that precious little boy's head, I would say never. She loves that boy.'

Together: McCrery is pictured with Camden, whose body was found along a road in Maine

Transferred: McCrery is wheeled out on a stretcher to be evaluated by medical staff

The woman has been revealed as a former school bus driver and cement mixer, who once wrote a book about how to fall asleep, called: 'Goodnight, Sleep Tight'.
But she was also a troubled woman who battled mental illness and substance abuse and had tried to kill herself, relatives told the Boston Globe.

McCrery's ex-boyfriend Robert Miller, 49, said she and Camden moved in with him about two years ago - but she would often leave for short periods because they regularly argued.

Mr Miller told WCVB he never thought she would hurt the child. 'She loved him dearly,' he said. 'He was a very nice little boy. He was real smart.'
McCrery does not know who is Camden's father.

'I'm the only daddy (Camden) has ever had,' Mr Miller told the Boston Globe. 'Her and I and (Camden) had a very strong faith in Christ. That's why I know he's in a better place and I'm glad he's there.'

Mr Miller believed McCrery was still in Texas as she did not say anything to him about being away or reveal anything was wrong when they last spoke on Tuesday.
He said both mother and son had been coughing lately and were very ill - while she sounded sick on the phone.
Mr Miller told the Boston Globe that McCrery's older son is a 23-year-old chef in the U.S. Navy, stationed on the USS Oak Hill in Norfolk, Virginia.

McCrery's mother, LuRae McCrery of Curtis, Nebraska, had also spoken with her daughter as recently as Tuesday - and also thought nothing was wrong.
'We've been talking every day,' she told the Boston Globe. 'I have no idea why she went to Maine. I don't think she knew anyone in that part of the country. I don't have a clue.'

Interviewed: McCrery's ex-boyfriend Robert Miller said she and Camden moved in with him about two years ago

Tragic death: Camden Pierce Hughes was found dead on Saturday afternoon along a dirt road

She also said her daughter had lost her job delivering car parts around a month ago - but kept it private and 'got to the end of her rope'.
'Juli and Cam were so close,' she told the Boston Globe. 'Her whole life was raising her son. That's why I just can't make sense of this.'
She confirmed to Boston 7 News WHDH that McCrery was arrested in 2003 and 2004 at least four times and convicted on charges of prostitution and drugs - before Camden was born.
Massachusetts police would not identify the woman or the boy and referred reporters to the New Hampshire state attorney - but declined to say why they were not in charge of the investigation.

Map: This picture shows Irving in Texas and South Berwick in Maine, where McCrery seems to have travelled to

It has also now emerged that an eyewitness spotted the woman driving a blue Navy insignia-embossed Toyota Tacoma pick-up truck near where the boy was found.
Police have towed away a truck matching the description found in Chelmsford. NCIS investigators are going to military installations and naval reserve centres in the region.
The child's body was discovered fully clothed with a grey-coloured camouflage hooded sweatshirt and navy blue t-shirt with 'Aviator Series' on the front.

He was 3ft 8ins tall, weighing 45lbs and police said he was 'not undernourished'.

Officers in Maine say they were amazed no-one reported the child missing and appealed for information.

Vehicle: A Toyota pick-up truck is towed from in a rest area along the I-495 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts

'God bless this little boy': A memorial site is seen near the spot where the young boy's body was found last Saturday

The boy still had his baby teeth and dirty blond hair, as well as distinctive 'Lightning McQueen' black trainers inspired by the Pixar film 'Cars'.
Investigators say if the boy belonged to a transient, military family, he was less likely to be known to neighbours, which could explain why he has not been reported missing.
They have fielded more than 200 tips since the body was found and were conducting DNA tests on the boy's body in the event this could track down family members.
'There's really no explanation for this ... how nobody can report this child is missing. To me, it's unthinkable,' Maine State Police Lieutenant Brian McDonough said.

Back of beyond: The body was discovered on a remote road near South Berwick, Maine

Distinctive: Police hope the boy's 'Cars' themed Lightning McQueen trainers will trigger a witness's memory

'He was clean. His fingernails seemed clean and appropriate. He was a small kid, but I don't think he was under-nourished.

Investigation: Maine State Police Lieutenant Brian McDonough said police are investigating over 200 tips on the child's disappearance

'He's a very cute boy, and again, he was clothed well. The sneakers are virtually brand-new on him.'
There have been no recent missing-person reports filed for a young boy and police are treating the case as suspicious although the cause of death hasn't been released.
Officers released a computer-generated photo of the boy and have been in contact with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Police refused to confirm how long the body may have been by the road or whether there were visible signs of trauma.
Authorities are also taking mitochondrial DNA from the body in the hope that they can scan it through databases of convicted criminals and make family matches.
Investigators believe the boy was placed alongside a dirt road nine to 10 hours before the body was discovered around 5pm on Saturday.
The wooded location where the body was found wrapped in a blanket is now a memorial, with flowers, teddy bears and other items left as a remembrance to the boy.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1388324/Julianne-McCrery-confesses-killing-son-Camden-Pierce-Hughes.html#ixzz1MnzWcvhe