FILICIDE (attempted): South Africa: Seipati Thekisho pleads guilty to attempted murder

May 31 2011 8:08AM

Zinhle Mapumulo   

The Soweto woman accused of stabbing her nine-year-old daughter eight times a week ago was denied bail at the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Monday.
Seipati Thekisho, 36, pleaded guilty to attempted murder but said she was possessed when she stabbed her daughter, Thato. The case was postponed to Friday for further investigation.
Thekisho’s mother, Mantoa Raphala, is still baffled as to why her daughter tried to kill her granddaughter.
Family members who were in court yesterday refused to speak to the media, saying the incident was still too fresh in their minds.
Thato is in hospital in a stable condition.
Thekisho is not the first woman to have attempted to murder her own flesh and blood.
Recently, a woman from Garankuwa poisoned her one-year-old child with Blue Death rat poison. The 37 year old told the police she could not support the baby on her own and decided to kill him.
In April, Mapaseka Seoka, 28, was sentenced to 12 years in jail after she pleaded guilty to killing her nine-day-old daughter, Ditlhoriso, in 2008. Half of the sentence was suspended for five years on condition she is not convicted of assault, abuse or killing a child.
Seoka was initially charged with killing her two children, 14-month-old son Lebohang and Ditlhoriso. But the charges against her for the murder of Lebohang were provisionally withdrawn pending further investigation.
Like most mothers who kill their children, Seoka told the court she was forced to do it because she could not support her children as their father abandoned them.
Psychologists have expressed concern about this growing “killer mum syndrome”. “It is all fair and equal under the law that the women be prosecuted but we must remember that there is more to this,” said Lynda Maurice, a clinical psychologist.
“It is no using hauling them before courts when we are not digging for the reasons behind this inhumane act. No mother in the right state of mind would murder her own child.
“When this happens, it signals fear, depression and state of hopelessness.”
Lucy Holborn of the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said absent fathers might have something to do with it. “Although no studies have proved that absent fathers could lead desperate mothers to kill children, it can be linked. “What concerns us though is that the outcry is always directed at the women. Instead of asking ourselves where the father was when this happened, we criticise the woman for killing her children.”
The SAIRR recently published a paper on the state of families in the country. It revealed that 9 million children have living but absent fathers.
 http://www.thenewage.co.za/19248-1008-53-Soweto_mum_who_stabbed_daughter_denied_bail

FETICIDE: Indiana: Bei Bei Shuai took poison in suicide attempt

March 16 2011
A woman who admitted to authorities that she ingested rat poison when she was 33 weeks pregnant, resulting in the death of her child days after birth, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of murder and attempted feticide as her attorney lashed out at prosecutors.

Bei Bei Shuai, 34, is from China but has been living in the United States for about 10 years.

Angel Shuai was born alive on Dec. 31 but died on Jan. 3, suffering from a brain hemorrhage because her mother took the poison, investigators said
Shuai told police that she wanted to kill herself after her boyfriend left her.

Shuai's attorney, Linda Pence, said the case shouldn't have been filed and that she will be vigorously defended.

"Charges against pregnant women are wrong. In every jurisdiction that has looked at this but one … courts have tossed this out," Pence said. "Prosecuting women that were pregnant is bad for babies. These kind of prosecutions … make women afraid to come forth for health reasons and other reasons. Babies die when you prosecute women. I can't believe this office decided to file this."

A similar case has never been brought in Indiana courts, though Shuai's defense team said there is case law from other states.

"The mother controls her body. The mother has a right to live. This is not the place to address these horrid kinds of situations," Pence said. "Criminal justice is not the place where you take care of these things."

Dave Rimstidt, Marion County chief trial deputy, said careful consideration was given before charging Shuai.

"This is a very unique case," Rimstidt said. "Every charging decision is very difficult and goes through a process where we consider all the facts, all the circumstances, and under this situation, we believe we've charged the two charges we can prove."

Shuai's defense team is also getting help from a legal defense group called the National Advocates For Pregnant Women.
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/27215238/detail.html

FETICIDE: Indiana: Bei Bei Shuai eats poison, is charged with murder after baby dies, Ind. cops say

Carlin DeGuerin Miller
CBS/AP) INDIANAPOLIS - A pregnant Indiana woman who allegedly tried to commit suicide by eating rat poison last December is being charged with murder and feticide after the baby died a few days later, according to police.
  Bei Bei Shuai (Credit: WISH)


Indianapolis police Officer Catherine Cummings said Tuesday that detectives arrested 34-year-old old Bei Bei Shuai, who surrendered Monday with help from her lawyer.

Shuai's attorney, Linda Pence, said the charges are not only unwarranted, but they could prevent other troubled mothers from seeking the help they need, according to the Indianapolis Star Tribune.

David Rimstidt, chief deputy to Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry, said the case was unique but the charges were appropriate given the facts, the paper reported.

Police say Shuai told friends in Anderson that she swallowed rat poison on Dec. 23. The friends took her to a hospital in Anderson, and she was transferred to a hospital in Indianapolis, where she gave birth Dec. 31. Angel Shuai died Jan. 2.

Shuai is currently being held without bond, but Pence told the Star Tribune she plans to ask the judge to dismiss the charges and allow her client to bond out.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20044603-504083.html

FILICIDE (multiple): Alabama: Heather Levell-Keaton

By MELISSA NELSON; AP staff writer Ray Henry contributed to this report from Atlanta:  January 7, 2011;

MOBILE, Ala. -- A prosecutor said Friday he will file capital murder charges against a woman accused in courtroom testimony of beating her common-law husband's two children while they were bound, calling them "demon spawns from hell," and letting them die. Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr. said he decided to seek tougher charges against Heather Leavell-Keaton, 22, after getting new information on the same day as the gruesome testimony. Tyson would not disclose what his office learned, citing the ongoing probe. The prosecutor said he has not decided whether to seek the death penalty against Leavell-Keaton. Leavell-Keaton, who is already jailed on other charges, will have a hearing next week on the two new counts against her. "This is an awful, awful set of facts and circumstances," Tyson said.

During a hearing Friday, investigators testified that Leavell-Keaton told police that the children's father, 27-year-old John DeBlase, used rat poison to kill his children and dumped their bodies in woods of south Mississippi and Alabama. He is charged with two counts of felony murder and two counts of corpse abuse in the deaths of 3-year-old Chase and 4-year-old Natalie DeBlase.

 

The judge ruled at the preliminary hearing for DeBlase and Leavell-Keaton that there was probable cause to send the case to a grand jury.
Leavell-Keaton, who is legally blind and not the children's biological mother, was earlier charged with aggravated child abuse and abuse of a corpse.
During testimony, Angela Prine of the Mobile Police Department recounted DeBlase's statement to detectives that Natalie died last March 4 after Leavell-Keaton duct-taped her hands, feet and mouth and put her in a suitcase. DeBlase said he attended classes and returned about 10 p.m., finding Natalie still in the suitcase and dead.
Leavell-Keaton sat in a chair at the side of the court and appear to mutter to herself as Prine read DeBlase's statements. Later, Leavell-Keaton mouthed, "That's a lie."
Attorneys for DeBlase have said he maintains his innocence.
According to DeBlase's statement to detectives, the girl's body was buried after he stopped at a store to buy a shovel and drove to a rural site in Alabama, with Leavell-Keaton and his son in the car.
He said Chase died last June 20 after Leavell-Keaton got angry during potty training and the child urinated on himself. She duct-taped his hands and legs, bound a broomstick behind his back, and later stuffed a sock in his mouth, according to the father's statement to detectives. DeBlase went to bed, saying he was still stressed out about Natalie's death and wanted Chase freed by the time he got up, but the boy was dead in the morning.
According to the testimony, he put the body in a garbage bag and drove to Mississippi to bury it.
The police department's Prine testified that DeBlase first told detectives his children were kidnapped by masked men at a park on Fathers' Day. He later said the children were tortured and killed by Leavell-Keaton.
But Prine testified that Leavell-Keaton told detectives DeBlase killed the children. She described to detectives how each had vomited a black substance before dying.
Prine also read interviews from various witnesses who described abuse by Leavell-Keaton of the children. Prine said Dana Mullins told detectives the family lived nearby for three weeks in December 2008 and that Leavell-Keaton beat Natalie, forced her to sit for lengthy periods in a chair and called her "evil brat" and "whore."
Creighton Hobbs, an acquaintance of DeBlase's, said he saw Leavell-Keaton shake the children, call them "demon spawns from hell" and put them in a corner.
The bodies were found in December when Leavell-Keaton, seeking a protective order after moving to Kentucky, disclosed they were dead. Authorities said DeBlase took them to the sites.
The couple had separate arraignments Thursday. DeBlase, his hands in handcuffs, looked down and showed no reaction as details of the children's torture and deaths were read.
According to testimony, the biological mother, Corrine Heathcock, had not seen the children for more than a year when they died.
Darryl Bender, an attorney for Leavell-Keaton, said his client feared for her life and that of the now 7-month-old child she had with DeBlase. He said toxicology tests could prove the children were poisoned.
And Bender questioned why none of the people who gave statements to detectives about the children's abuse called authorities to report the couple.  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/07/AR2011010706252.html