I know some have doubts about a mother being able to kill her child. Below is a snippet regarding another case. The stats are shocking:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/25/kehoe.mom.charged/index.html
(snip)
Cases of mothers who kill their children, like Susan Smith and Andrea Yates, continue to fascinate the public, even as the rates of filicide -- the act of a parent who kills his or her own child -- have remained fairly stable.
"Because these cases are so tragic, they pull at your heartstrings, but they happen all the time," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California.
In 2005, 555 children under the age of five were victims of homicide, compared with 544 in 1976. The rate peaked in 1991 at 778 and bottomed out in 1971 at 511, according to statistics from the Department of Justice.
Another fairly stable statistic: In more than 50 percent of child homicides, the killer is a parent.
"The natural defense to anticipate is
insanity because why would a mother kill her own child?" Levenson asked.
"It certainly can be insanity, but it's not always the case. Perfectly sane people can do horrible things and they do, every day."
Mothers can be motivated to kill their children by several factors, according to criminologist James Alan Fox, Lipman Family professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University.
Some act on genuine psychotic delusions, as jurors determined to be the case with Texas mother Andrea Yates, who told doctors she drowned her five children because God told her to do so. Others can be motivated by selfish reasons: Susan Smith's alleged motive for killing her children was that she perceived them to be an obstacle in her relationship with her boyfriend.
"It's a crazy thing to do but crazy describes the behavior, not the mind," said Fox, adding that between 300 and 350 children have been homicide victims in 2008.
