FILICIDE (adoptive):Investigators put U.S. adoptive couple who killed Russian boy on wanted list

Photo Ministry of social development of the Chelyabinsk region

MOSCOW, November 21 (RIA Novosti)

The Russian Investigative Committee put on Monday the U.S. couple who was convicted by a U.S. court in the involuntarily manslaughter of their adopted Russian son on the international wanted list.

A Pennsylvania court ruled on Friday that Michael and Nannette Craver, who were found guilty in the involuntarily manslaughter of their adopted Russian son, Ivan, must serve from 16 months to four years. Since they had already spent about eighteen months in jail, they were released from the courtroom.
The Investigative Committee has handed documents on the case to the Russian Interpol office to put the couple on the international wanted list. The investigators also appealed to the Moscow Basmanny District Court to put the Cravers behind bars.
Seven-year-old Nathaniel Craver (Ivan Skorobogatov), died in August 2009 at a hospital in Pennsylvania. Doctors said the boy died of injuries and malnutrition. They discovered more than 80 injuries on his body, including 20 on his head.
The Cravers were arrested in February 2010 and denied all the charges brought against them, saying the boy suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and attachment disorders. The couple's defense said his injuries were self-inflicted.
Prosecutors demanded the death sentence for the couple. The jury however found them partially guilty, dismissing the charges of the deliberate murder of the boy.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday slammed the sentence, calling it “flagrant irresponsibility” of the U.S. judicial system.
Since 1991, a total of 17 adopted Russian children have died worldwide as a result of beatings or negligence, according to official Russian statistics.
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20111121/168906014.html

NEONATICIDE (multiple): Pennsylvania: Michele Kalina to stand trial

By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press – Jul 13, 2011 

READING, Pa. (AP) — A woman charged with killing five newborns conceived through extramarital affairs has been found mentally competent and is scheduled for a plea and sentencing hearing next month.

A Berks County judge declared Michele Kalina competent to stand trial Wednesday after reviewing independent psychiatric testing. A public defender had raised mental-health issues at a hearing last month, but withdrew her motion based on the new tests.

(AP Photo/Berks County Sheriff's Department via Reading Eagle, File)

Kalina, 45, of Reading, is now set to plead to unknown charges on Aug. 4, and be sentenced immediately afterward. A gag order prevents lawyers from discussing the case.

The home-health aide is charged with one count each of criminal homicide and aggravated assault, and multiple counts of abuse of a corpse and concealing the death of a child.
DNA tests show she conceived most, if not all, of the babies through a long affair with a co-worker. Neither he nor Kalina's husband knew about the pregnancies.
Kalina moved the remains with her and kept them in a locked closet until her teen daughter found them in the family's high-rise apartment last year and called police, authorities say.
One set of bones was entombed in cement and the others in a cooler, a plastic tub and a cardboard box.
Kalina had no prenatal care during the five pregnancies, and it's not clear where she gave birth, authorities have said.
She also had a sixth secret pregnancy that culminated with the 2003 birth in a Reading hospital of a baby girl that she gave up for adoption. That child was also conceived with the boyfriend, DNA tests show.
A prosecutor described him last year as "overwhelmed and shocked" by news of the pregnancies.
Kalina had borne two children with her husband Jeffrey, in 1987 and 1991. The oldest, a boy, had cerebral palsy and died of natural causes in 2000.
Women who kill newborns are usually young, first-time mothers who are afraid to reveal their pregnancies, experts say. They are rarely found to be mentally ill, according to Geoffrey R. McKee, a forensic psychologist at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine who wrote the book, "Why Mothers Kill."
Kalina, like many of them, appears to have been socially isolated. A native of Rockland County, N.Y., she had no extended family nearby, and seemingly no close women friends.
Her secrets went undiscovered for years, and were only unearthed by her daughter's curiosity. Kalina had told her family not to look in the locked closet.
Neither the daughter nor her husband came to court to see her Wednesday.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jsXD0MyNOFFjeTNj1qmm5YWb-IYQ?docId=2ca6d70be10446e5af18839e91095213

FILICIDE (multiple): Pennsylvania: Meghan Lippiatt found dead

James King, Tue., Jun. 7 2011

Meghan Lippiatt, found insane following murder of two sons, was discovered dead in a rural part of Navajo County.

​A Pennsylvania mom whose insanity defense allowed her to beat the rap in the slayings of her two sons was found dead in a canyon in northern Arizona over the weekend. Authorities think the death might be a suicide.
Meghan Lippiatt, 35, of Mount Joy, Pennsylvania was found dead Saturday in the wreckage of her white Volkswagen minivan. The wreckage was found crashed in a canyon -- about a two-hour hike from the closest road -- in Navajo County, Department of Public Safety officials say. Authorities say she may have been dead for nearly a week before she was found by tourists.

Lippiatt killed her two sons -- Silas, 2, and Myles, 4 months -- in 2004.
She told authorities that her "children were possessed by a demon" and that "she was possessed and the only way to save all of them was to end their lives." Lippiatt suffocated Myles, then drowned Silas in a tub.
She was found not guilty by reason of insanity after a nonjury trial in December 2007.
Following the verdict, a psychiatrist examined Lippiatt and found her to be competent for release. She went to live with her parents in Pennsylvania, despite prosecutors' demands that she be institutionalized.
Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Bart Graves tells New Times that it's unclear what Lippiatt was doing in Arizona, but says it appears she may have been to the scene of her death before.
"She knew what she was doing when she came here," he says. "[The area where she was found] is so remote it would be very hard to find without knowing where it is."
Graves wouldn't speculate about whether Lippiatt came to Arizona to kill herself.
The Navajo County Medical Examiner will determine a cause of death after an investigation.

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/06/pennsylvania_mom_who_murdered.php