MA - Remains of 3 infants found, Erika Murray charged, Blackstone, Sept 2014

[lndigo]

I tend to think the 3 infants died from neglect, but we'll probably never know. I can't imagine it's easy to keep infants healthy in that environment. Throw out proper nutrition and the possibility of visiting a pediatrician, and it has to be next to impossible to survive early childhood.

 

[wenwe4]

Trulia says 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, 6 rooms total. Didn't the neighbor say the 3 yo and baby were in separate bedrooms upstairs?

http://m.trulia.com/homes/Massachus...00169117-23-Saint-Paul-St-Blackstone-MA-01504

I am not sure if Trulia gathers info from the County Auditor for tax information on the parcel but often that info will only reflect information on the main floor living space with square footage, and how many bedrooms are there, but they usually count all of the baths in the home. (I used to work at a Title Insurance Co. and would give this info to Realtors all the time).

ETA: I looked up the county tax information and it says the main floor has 720 sq. feet, the 1/2 story (I assume the upstairs) has 432 sq. feet of living area for a total of 1152. This is a Cape Cod style with a slanted roof line - I imagine the upper portion of the home has alcoves on either side where the roofline slants. Maybe that is the "closet" or other door they forced open that emitted the horrendous stench.

Here is the link: http://data.visionappraisal.com/BlackstoneMA/findpid.asp?iTable=pid&pid=1051

I had to find it under RR's sister's name for property owner.

 

[Lovejac]

Conditions of the animals rescued from the home:

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinio..._pets_likely_the_only_comfort_for_children_in

:furious: Those poor animals! They fared no better than the two youngest children.

But 'mom' and the two older children are just fine. See, this is why I don't buy the whole 'mentally ill' line of thought. She took care of her older two children and herself, did things with them, posted pictures of them, posted pictures of food she cooked them, etc.

She 'chose' to take care of her older children and 'chose' to ignore and neglect her younger two. She hated the younger children, plain and simple and she made them pay for being born.

 

[SaucyGal]

Darn it! I can't access anymore Boston Globe stories online unless I pay to subscribe...I'm such a cheapskate. There have been so many articles and apparently you can only view 10 a month. I suppose I will subscribe as they seem to be the most up-to-date and reliable source. Hopefully they will report the children's progress, which is what I want to hear more than anything.

Thanks for the info on the house! I tried looking it up the other day and was unsuccessful.

 

[sapofamily]

Trulia says 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, 6 rooms total. Didn't the neighbor say the 3 yo and baby were in separate bedrooms upstairs?

This is from a column in the Boston Herald re: the neighbor who rescued the two young children. It does indicate they were in separate rooms; however, there are also reports that she found both children covered in feces as she entered a 'dark room', so it's hard to say what's the most reliable or accurate information considering the source.

Same with the remains of the other 3 infants...some reports appear as if the police found newborns, but others indicate they were thought be birthed by EM between the 10 and 3 yr-olds. Wouldn't they all have been skeletal remains?

The woman came home and went to Murray’s house. She had never been inside. She could “hear the babies” and asked Murray’s son where they were. The boy led her inside the filthy home and upstairs — and she found a 5-month-old baby girl on a bed in one room and a 3-year-old — who she believed to be a boy — on a bed in another room.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinio..._neighbor_on_blackstone_horror_i_tried_not_to

 

[wenwe4]

Conditions of the animals rescued from the home:

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinio..._pets_likely_the_only_comfort_for_children_in

fleas, yeast infection, lost fur, raw skin, painful eye requires surgery, terrible teeth, infected ears, Lyme disease, rat bites, respiratory cough - and these were just the animals who could walk, run, scramble away, bite, howl, hiss, and attack. - What were those poor babies supposed to do?

 

[Oblio]

I am not sure if Trulia gathers info from the County Auditor for tax information on the parcel but often that info will only reflect information on the main floor living space with square footage, and how many bedrooms are there, but they usually count all of the baths in the home. (I used to work at a Title Insurance Co. and would give this info to Realtors all the time).

ETA: I looked up the county tax information and it says the main floor has 720 sq. feet, the 1/2 story (I assume the upstairs) has 432 sq. feet of living area for a total of 1152. This is a Cape Cod style with a slanted roof line - I imagine the upper portion of the home has alcoves on either side where the roofline slants. Maybe that is the "closet" or other door they forced open that emitted the horrendous stench.

Here is the link: http://data.visionappraisal.com/BlackstoneMA/findpid.asp?iTable=pid&pid=1051

I had to find it under RR's sister's name for property owner.

I've spent hours on an antique home site, most one and a half story homes have two bedrooms upstairs, and the bath and remaining rooms on the bottom. I would assume that this house is much the same. The other thing that keeps coming to mind is often in these one and a half story homes, the staircase has a door and as you walk through the house, there is no hint that it is anything more than a closet until you open it. In most cases, if there is a second bathroom, then there would be one upstairs. That said, nearly all half story bathrooms have gable because they are right in the middle. I have lived in a home that didn't, but it was a very large house, so it had a lot of room. The stairs went straight up the center of the middle third of the house. There was a door at the top and bottom. When you got to the top, you were in the first bedroom, facing the windows at the end of the house. If you turned around, there was the stair door in the middle, and one on each side. The one on the right was a walk through closet, with a door leading to the other bedroom, and the one on the right was a walk through bathroom, with a door on the other side leading to the same bedroom as the closet. The bedrooms were almost exactly the same length, but the walls in the first bedroom were cut in taller, so the room was just slightly narrower. If I recall correctly, both rooms had access doors to the attic space under the roof. Very creepy and fun.

1 1/2 story homes happen to be my favorite configuration for family homes. Kids grow up, it's nice to be able to shut a door and not bother with heating or cooling the half story after they leave the nest. I dream of the day I may own one, but then again, by that time I may have an empty nest.

 

[Oblio]

Okay, I've just looked at the appraisal info. That is one old house. I notice that it sold for 92k in the eighties. Do home prices fluctuate less on the east coast than they do the west? I would expect it to be worth quite a bit more than the current zillow estimate.

The other thing I noticed is that it has been in the family since 87. And the sale to the current owner was recorded as $0, so I think that the sister not being so invested in the house, even though she owned it, probably didn't pay much attention to what was going on there as her brother lived in it.

 

[ashleyd8402]

I hate when MSM accuracy and integrity go out the window during stories like this (link below)....as if the facts aren't incredible enough. While I am not defending EM by any means, it ticks me off when journalist decide to take artistic license to sensationalize such a story. I watched the video, heard the interview with the neighbor, then read the article and at no time did the neighbor say anything about asking EM about the deceased infants. The neighbor couldn't have known according to the timeline of when those remains were found! Also exaggerating the amount of pot that was found in the basement - 1 plant, some baggies, and buds = a lot. RR is a veritable cartel unto himself it seems. Blah! Irresponsible journalism, whaddya gonna do? *sigh*

http://myfox8.com/2014/09/16/neighb...-when-asked-about-feces-covered-kids-squalor/

I just want to say that I really appreciate your posts. You're really good at filling in gaps based on what little bit of information is available.

I'm also really irritated at the media's exaggeration on this case. I'm not defending EM or anyone else, but the investigators clearly reported (I can find exact quotes to back this up) that the diapers were stacked a couple of feet high. I saw a popular local blogger exaggerated that the diapers were stacked to the ceiling after that. The next day, many news article also said that there were diapers stacked to the ceiling. It's a small detail, and it's ultimately not important, but it's inaccurate. This is similar to the younger children both being reported as girls in the beginning, but then it was misconstrued in one article and then in everything that followed that article. Everyone is desperate for more information on this case, but exaggerating and reporting inaccuracies isn't the way to get it.

This case haunts me. My background is in social work and I'm a mom of four. I have to know all of the whys. I have to know how those younger two children survived. What were they fed? Who interacted with them and to what degree? Someone was obviously changing some diapers at some point, or the diapers wouldn't have been stacked up. What about the babies that died? If they lived past birth, what were their lives like? I've never seen anything like this and I'm bound and determined to understand it on some level.

 

[ashleyd8402]

I'm probably not allowed to make this comment, as it is hearsay, but I was reading comments on the Boston Globe FB page when the story first broke. A lady commented claiming that she was a close neighbor and knew EM from the neighborhood. She confirmed, as everyone else has that everyone thought that EM only had two children - the 13 year old girl and the 10 year old boy. HOWEVER, she said that she had seen EM out with two younger children a couple of time and that EM said that she was babysitting. Again, it's just hearsay, but it's left me holding on to hope that those kids weren't always locked away in horrible conditions.

 

[lawstudent]

While she did function better for the older ones, they still grew up in a physical and emotional environment that was beyond intolerable, so she really can't be said to have adequately cared for them even if she wanted to. Favoring certain children is far different than pretending some don't exist. Clearly no one in this family was benefitting from
Any kind of consistent rational thought process.

 

[musicaljoke]

I tend to think the 3 infants died from neglect, but we'll probably never know. I can't imagine it's easy to keep infants healthy in that environment. Throw out proper nutrition and the possibility of visiting a pediatrician, and it has to be next to impossible to survive early childhood.

Yes, that would fit in with the rest of the situation. If their deaths had registered as a loss to her, she probably would have wrapped them in a blanket and buried them in the yard. But, who can comprehend the actions of such a demented mind?

Thankfully, it is very rare to find a situation like this one, where there was such a long time before someone stepped in to rescue the children.

 

[Oblio]

I just want to say that I really appreciate your posts. You're really good at filling in gaps based on what little bit of information is available.

I'm also really irritated at the media's exaggeration on this case. I'm not defending EM or anyone else, but the investigators clearly reported (I can find exact quotes to back this up) that the diapers were stacked a couple of feet high. I saw a popular local blogger exaggerated that the diapers were stacked to the ceiling after that. The next day, many news article also said that there were diapers stacked to the ceiling. It's a small detail, and it's ultimately not important, but it's inaccurate. This is similar to the younger children both being reported as girls in the beginning, but then it was misconstrued in one article and then in everything that followed that article. Everyone is desperate for more information on this case, but exaggerating and reporting inaccuracies isn't the way to get it.

This case haunts me. My background is in social work and I'm a mom of four. I have to know all of the whys. I have to know how those younger two children survived. What were they fed? Who interacted with them and to what degree? Someone was obviously changing some diapers at some point, or the diapers wouldn't have been stacked up. What about the babies that died? If they lived past birth, what were their lives like? I've never seen anything like this and I'm bound and determined to understand it on some level.

I'm glad to see there are others here who have issues with the media's exaggeration of facts. There was another recent case where the child had been undernourished. The media proclaimed the child was X many lbs under weight based on Y being the average for the age and gender. I checked it out and found that Y was the very high end of the chart, and posted as such, and IIRC, not a single poster here gave me kudos for my post. Not that kudos count for anything, but it made me feel like many posters here don't exactly care about truth. There is no need to villainize suspects, I feel it's fine to let their true actions and the true evidence speak for themselves.

 

[ellemo]

:furious:
But 'mom' and the two older children are just fine. See, this is why I don't buy the whole 'mentally ill' line of thought. She took care of her older two children and herself, did things with them, posted pictures of them, posted pictures of food she cooked them, etc.

She 'chose' to take care of her older children and 'chose' to ignore and neglect her younger two. She hated the younger children, plain and simple and she made them pay for being born.

it's not unheard of, unfortunately, for parents to abuse/neglect some children while doting on others. However, it may not be the mom who is taking care of them. I would not be surprised if the 13 year old did a lot of the mothering of her and her sibling and wouldn't be surprised if the two older ones were told not to play/ take care of the younger ones and so did not interact with them when the mother was around. I really hope they did so at least some of the time.

 

[PrimeSuspect]

This is from a column in the Boston Herald re: the neighbor who rescued the two young children. It does indicate they were in separate rooms; however, there are also reports that she found both children covered in feces as she entered a 'dark room', so it's hard to say what's the most reliable or accurate information considering the source.

Same with the remains of the other 3 infants...some reports appear as if the police found newborns, but others indicate they were thought be birthed by EM between the 10 and 3 yr-olds. Wouldn't they all have been skeletal remains?


http://bostonherald.com/news_opinio..._neighbor_on_blackstone_horror_i_tried_not_to

I've read in certain instances, like if the air is cool and dry, the baby's remains can mummify.

Here is case of this -

Hamzah Khan's starved and mummified remains found in a cot with a teddy The court heard Hamzah died of malnutrition in December 2009 after being starved in filthy conditions at the family home.
His body was left to mummify in his cot until police gained access and found his remains in September 2011.


The body was discovered nearly 2 years later.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ath-mother-let-authorities.html#ixzz3DmH44Awu


If you look at link you will find disturbing pictures of the living conditions of this household. Unbelievable. Poor sweet little boy.

 

[wenwe4]

Something about a report yesterday bothered me, there was a report to LEO from a neighbor who complained about the smell of dog feces and urine in the yard. I have had dogs most of my life and have found they have favorite places to relieve themselves. I have never smelled urine from the dogs in the yard but we also have grass. Has anyone else experienced this? Could this have been the house that this neighbor was smelling? Could this be from Dad's friends relieving themselves in the yard? Or, could this be another MSM exaggeration?

 

[Oblio]

I think if the others died of neglect, we will know. I'm fairly certain there will be skeletal changes that show age, even with malnutrition. Of course, I'm not an expert.

 

[Lovejac]

Something about a report yesterday bothered me, there was a report to LEO from a neighbor who complained about the smell of dog feces and urine in the yard. I have had dogs most of my life and have found they have favorite places to relieve themselves. I have never smelled urine from the dogs in the yard but we also have grass. Has anyone else experienced this? Could this have been the house that this neighbor was smelling? Could this be from Dad's friends relieving themselves in the yard? Or, could this be another MSM exaggeration?

I agree. I think the neighbor was smelling the house. I've had two dogs and have never smelled urine in my yard. I've smelled poop sometimes if I've missed picking it up, but never urine.

ETA: I have grass too

 

[Linda7NJ]

Something about a report yesterday bothered me, there was a report to LEO from a neighbor who complained about the smell of dog feces and urine in the yard. I have had dogs most of my life and have found they have favorite places to relieve themselves. I have never smelled urine from the dogs in the yard but we also have grass. Has anyone else experienced this? Could this have been the house that this neighbor was smelling? Could this be from Dad's friends relieving themselves in the yard? Or, could this be another MSM exaggeration?

Yes, at the greyhound adoption agency where I got my dog.
All dogs get "turned out" together separated by sex. It's a dirt corral..large area. It's like a musty, dank, urine pungent odor. It gets limed often..but still ..it's rather funky in that area.

Bought a house once to flip and ripped up the carpets..same smell. Had to replace all of the sub-flooring because of the same odor.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[wenwe4]

Someone upthread mentioned the sex of the dead babies. I am wondering if they were boys as she stated on her FB that if she had her son first then she probably wouldn't have had anymore because he was a handful. Again, I think we are all just trying to make sense of what could have been going on in her brain for her to neglect - well, everything.

Let's look at what was going through Dad's brain (from what has been reported) - oh something like "I don't know, I didn't know, I will never know what was happening". I bet the next report is he claims he couldn't possibly be a father as he didn't know he had a p*nis! (Sorry - hope I didn't offend anyone)