10 Shocking Cases of Parents Murdering Their Families. Crime If you were to list the most shocking criminal act a person could commit, murdering one’s own children would be ranked right up there at the top.
It’s especially shocking when the perpetrator has no prior criminal record, and is living a seemingly normal life before they suddenly decide to inflict violence upon their family. Here are ten parents who crossed that line, and committed an act of filicide. In many of these cases, the perpetrator is clearly guilty. Others are still mixed up in controversy about what really happened. One of the most notorious acts of familicide was committed by John List, a seemingly ordinary accountant from Westfield, New Jersey. List was unemployed and experiencing financial difficulties at the time of the murders, and his family didn’t even know he had lost his job. List remained one of the world’s most notorious fugitives until he was profiled on America’s Most Wanted in 1989. William Bradford Bishop. 20 Moms Who Killed Their Kids. Thirty-nine-year-old Megan Huntsman of Pleasant Grove, Utah, has allegedly confessed to fatally strangling and suffocating six of her newborn babies from 1996 to 2006.
Acting on a tip from her estranged husband, police searched her home on Saturday and found seven dead infants, six of them stuffed into cardboard boxes. The seventh infant had reportedly been stillborn. A search of court records revealed that apart from a 2011 traffic citation, Huntsman had no criminal record. The technical term for when a mother kills her child is “maternal filicide.” An estimated 200 women kill their children every year in the United States.
In 1997, a US Department of Justice study found that children under the age of eight are more likely to be killed by their mothers, while those eight and older are likelier to be killed by their fathers. If you’re looking for examples of female privilege, look no further than those stats. Marybeth Tinning killed her nine babies. Susan Smith When Susan Smith murdered her two children in South Carolina in October 1994, people were horrified that a mother could do such a thing to her own children.
The public anger directed at Smith intensified when it was realized she led police on a fictitious manhunt for suspects that did not exist and played on media sympathy for her loss. Bad Mothers: 8 Monstrous Mothers Who Killed Their Own Children. How can a mother be driven to kill her own babies?
From insanity to revenge, meet Susan Eubanks, Andrea Yates and more mothers who destroyed their families in a minute. Susan Eubanks: She Murdered Her Four Sons Only to Get Revenge Against Her Ex-Husband. Ex-Husband Killed Woman's 4 Kids. Christine McFadden seemed to have it all — a great career, a beautiful home, and four terrific children.
But her world collapsed around her when she returned from her morning walk on March 26. The 44-year-old Merced, Calif., veterinarian found her ex-husband's vehicle parked in the driveway, and the body of her daughter in the hallway. She fled to a neighbor's house to call police. "This is Christine McFadden. I think my ex-husband has killed my children," McFadden said in a frantic call to 911, made available to Good Morning America. "Talk to me. "I don't know. All four of her children were slain by McFadden's ex-husband. Hogan brought little Michelle Hogan, the only of the four who was his biological child, to the master bedroom. A Message Left One Clue Hogan left only one clue as to why he went on the killing rampage.
At 6:33 that morning the former Santa Clara sheriff's deputy left his best friend a disturbing voice-mail message. Heart-breaking story of the rape and murder of 8-year-old Canadian girl, Zafar Bangash, Crescent Magazine. Marcus Fiesel: Horrific story of foster child's murder retold in TV documentary. UNION TOWNSHIP, Ohio – Three-year-old Marcus Fiesel's gruesome murder by his foster parents shocked the community in August 2006.
The story was retold in a TV documentary Sunday night. Liz and David Carroll wrapped Marcus in a blanket, bound him with duct tape and left him in a hot closet without food and water while they went out of town for a weekend family reunion, prosecutors said. After finding him dead, David Carroll and his live-in lover, Amy Baker, took Marcus' body to a rural area and burned it with gasoline. Then they threw the remains in the Ohio River. The Investigation Discovery channel looked back at Marcus' story late Sunday night. Marcus died of heat exhaustion between Aug. 4 and Aug. 6, authorities said. On Aug. 15, Liz Carroll reported Marcus missing. A week later, Carroll held a news conference at the park and made a televised plea for help in finding the boy. Thousands of people searched the area for days.
Prosecutors describe chaotic life of murdered child. DETROIT — Mariha Smith did not receive the loving care that children deserve, living in chaos, without structured sleep and many other basics before her tragic death, prosecutors said during opening statements Tuesday in the trial of a 22-year-old Detroit man charged with murdering the 5-year-old girl.
Hours before the girl's burned body was discovered in an abandoned home, Mariha's mom, aunt and aunt's boyfriend, Darnell Cheatham, drank alcohol and partied, and Mariha went to bed on the living room floor with other children, Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Carin Goldfarb told the jury made up of nine women and five men.
The little girl wasn't there when her mom woke up on July 24, 2011. "Mariha was strangled, possibly suffocated, before her body was burned," Goldfarb said, adding evidence in the case will show the girl suffered before she died. "The fire was intended to burn Mariha's body and burn the evidence her small body contained," Goldfarb said. Read or Share this story: