Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents (8 page)

On bail, whilst awaiting trial, Susan continued to drink and was arrested for drunken driving. She later said that people looked at her as if she were a monster, and that she felt monstrous at the time, but that, on reflection, she was very ill.

At Essex Superior Court in March 1992, Biancardi’s defence team claimed that she was psychotic at the time of the killing, though the prosecution noted that she’d been lucid enough to lie to the police about Marcia committing suicide. The defence also said that she was now suffering from psychogenic amnesia, unable to remember the homicide.

Audrey spoke up for her mother, saying that illness had made Susan Biancardi fire the fatal shot, that she had no control over her actions. She pleaded with the judge to give the killer psychiatric treatment rather than imprisonment. But, in first degree murder cases, Massachusetts law doesn’t allow for judicial input at the sentencing stage, so Biancardi was sentenced to life in prison without parole. She began to serve out her sentence in Framingham state prison, often on the psychiatric unit.

Her husband Philip understandably divorced her, citing ‘irretrievable breakdown.’ He later remarried.

Three years after her trial, Susan Biancardi’s life sentence was overturned by the Supreme Judicial Court, which noted that the original jurors hadn’t been told that, if they found her not guilty by reason of insanity, she would be sent to a psychiatric facility rather than immediately be freed. She was granted a second trial, but decided to plead guilty to second-degree murder to avoid going through the court system again.

As the years passed, Susan became a mother figure to many of the younger prisoners in Framingham State Prison though staff noticed that her idea of motherhood revolved around being in control. They also noted that she found it difficult to handle stress. But Audrey – whilst admitting that she still missed her sister and that her mother had done a terrible thing – continued to love her unconditionally.

In January 2007, almost 17 years after the murder, 59-year-old Susan Biancardi applied for parole. Audrey supported her application, saying that she was a wonderful mother whom she still loved dearly. And an aunt, who had been recently widowed, said that Susan could come and live with her if she was freed.

During her parole hearing, Biancardi apologised to Audrey, to her ex-husband Philip and to Marcia, the daughter she shot dead. She said that she was sorry for the murder, though she couldn’t remember it. She stated that she was now a different person and would never put herself through the type of
pressure that she’d put herself through prior to the homicide. She said that she had been diagnosed as bi-polar (manic depressive) and had been taking her medication consistently for the past seven years. Bi-polar patients can swing from depression to manic elation, though psychiatrists disagree as to whether it has a biological or psychological origin.

The board discussed her case then voted 6-1 to turn down her request. They stated that she ‘continues to struggle with interpersonal relationships and is still developing skills for handling conflict and stress, exactly the conditions that led to the horrific and brutal murder of her daughter.’ They also noted that she still has significant mental health problems. She remains in the mental health unit at MCI Framington.

T
hough leaving bruises on a child can land a parent in court, many mothers (and fathers) still physically chasten their children. Ill-educated and immature parents are especially likely to do so, assuming that their child is being bad when he does something perfectly natural such as soiling himself or refusing food. When light blows don’t bring about the desired results, such parents resort to hitting harder. Physical abuse is the most common cause of childhood homicide.

When children under the age of five are murdered, the culprit is most often the mother, with children in their first and second year of life being most at risk. Women who have been raised by unloving or abusive parents – and who have been unable to resolve such conflicts in their past – often grow up to feel incompetent and powerless. As such, they are incapable of coping with a relentlessly crying baby. Children with health problems are especially at risk. These women often have a mental illness, ranging from depression
to schizophrenia, which may also predispose them to assault their child.

Left alone for hour after hour with a sobbing infant, a small percentage of these mothers silence their son or daughter permanently, sometimes hitting them with household objects or battering them into the furniture, floors or walls. Babies who die from such acts of physical abuse often have fading bruises and healing fractures, evidence of previous assaults.

A 1973 study by Peter Scott found that over-inhibited mothers were the most dangerous when they eventually lost control. This type of mother is delineated in the first case, as she shook her baby for the first time with ultimately fatal results.

Martina, who suffered from low self-esteem, had an affair with a co-worker in 2003 and became pregnant but he ended the relationship when she refused to have an abortion. Largely unsupported, as her mother had died and her father lived abroad, she gave birth to Reece in April 2004.

She cared for the baby without incident until October when he began teething and often cried uncontrollably. The young mother would later admit that her stress built and built. Late in the afternoon on 21 October, she phoned an ambulance and said that the six-month-old was having difficulty breathing. Paramedics arrived at her Wakefield, UK, home to find the baby limp and unresponsive, his lips turning blue. He was taken to Pinderfields hospital but soon transferred to the intensive care unit at Leeds General Infirmary where his condition remained critical.

Two days later, Martina swallowed five packets’ worth of paracetamol whilst at the hospital then admitted to a nurse that she’d done so. She was treated in casualty. When asked
why she’d overdosed, she told medics that she knew Reece was going to die.

On 24 October, her fears came true. At the autopsy, a neurologist found brain swelling, haemorrhaging and bleeding to Reece’s eyes, consistent with Shaken Baby Syndrome and the police were called in. The young mother told them that she’d been running a bath when the infant had fallen from the settee and onto the floor, a distance of 15 inches. They were suspicious as his injuries and suggested that he’d been thrown against a hard object, but there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

Throughout 2005 and 2006, Martina McHattie remained unstable and guilt-ridden. She self-harmed, overate and again tried to commit suicide. In July 2007 she engaged in sexual activity with a 14-year-old boy. That same year, she admitted to police that she had shaken Reece in order to make him stop crying, explaining that her inability to soothe him had made her feel inadequate.

At Leeds Crown Court in May 2008, she pleaded guilty to manslaughter and said that she had caused her son’s death because she was unable to cope. The defence explained that she had been a perfect mother prior to shaking the child.

The judge, Peter Collier, took pity on her, saying ‘I am satisfied that you will live with the knowledge and guilt every day of your life and I also know it’s very unlikely you will be able to bring up a child of your own.’ He sentenced her to 12 months, suspended for two years with a supervision order.

The 26-year-old returned to court in July 2008 and was given a 26-week prison sentence, suspended for a year, for
having sexual activity with the aforementioned 14-year-old boy.

Tanya was just 19 and her husband Philip was 21 when they had their first child, a daughter, in January 1988. When the baby was six weeks old, she was taken to the local hospital in Philadelphia having almost drowned in the bathtub. Medics found that she was bruised and undernourished, so they alerted social services. The baby was put into foster care and thrived but was returned to the couple within months under the mistaken belief that babies should always live with their biological parents: the nuclear family was subsequently monitored by child welfare workers for a while.

In November 1988 the Dacris had their second child, a son whom they called Zachary. As before, Tanya found that she couldn’t stand his crying. She hit him repeatedly – by the time he was a month old, he’d suffered two separate breaks to his collarbone and had five broken ribs.

The abuse continued apace and, on 6 January 1989, she again attacked the infant, leaving him bruised and with a hairline fracture. Unsurprisingly, Zachary’s crying intensified. The following day, she drowned him in the bathtub, and when her husband phoned her from work, she told him that she’d put an end to the baby’s cries.

He came home and found his dead son wrapped in a plastic bag: his reaction isn’t a matter of record. The following night he returned home to find that Tanya had dismembered the infant, cutting him into six pieces with a kitchen knife. She had wrapped each limb, and the head, in brown paper bags, weighed down with the barbells he used to get fit. Deciding to
stand by his woman, Philip drove her to the river and helped her dispose of the grisly packages.

Three days later Tanya told the police a tale which they initially believed. She said that she’d parked on the outskirts of a busy shopping mall and that two black men had snatched Zachary from her arms. She added that she feared her father had organised the kidnapping as she’d recently filed sexual abuse charges against him for alleged earlier incestuous acts.

Detectives investigated but could find no one in the car park who could corroborate her story. They intensified their questioning of the seemingly-distraught couple and they eventually admitted what had happened and told them where to find Zachary’s butchered remains. On 12 January, divers recovered five of the parcels – the final package, containing his torso, washed up two days later. An autopsy showed the extent of the abuse which he’d suffered during his two months of life.

Tanya Dacri pleaded guilty to an open charge of murder, which meant that a lesser verdict of third degree murder was a possibility. At first it seemed as if she’d be treated compassionately on mental health grounds, with psychiatrists suggesting that she was a borderline personality and had suffered a brief psychotic episode. But, when the prior abuse of her daughter – and the earlier blows which Zachary had endured – came to light, the judge found her guilty of first degree murder and she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Her husband, who had helped her dispose of Zachary’s body and colluded in her kidnapping story, was given nine to 23 months in the county jail.

M
ost hospitals are familiar with the Munchausen’s patient, a man or woman who has deliberately made themselves ill in order to enjoy medical attention. Some of these patients will go to extreme lengths to develop symptoms, even ingesting faeces and broken glass.

Rarer, thankfully, is Munchausen’s By Proxy, henceforth abbreviated to MBP, identified by British paediatrician Sir Roy Meadows in 1977. In MBP, women (very few such cases are perpetrated by men) fabricate or deliberately cause health problems in children in their care. A third of such MBP mothers have some form of medical training, such as American children’s nurse Genene Jones who drugged and killed several of her little patients. Others harm their own offspring, and persuade medics to perform unnecessary procedures and operations on them.

These mothers, often lonely and isolated, want to be recognised as worthwhile, even important. They mask feelings
of low self-esteem and inadequacy by presenting themselves as model parents who rarely leave their child’s side. Doctors and nurses are initially impressed by such a mother’s attempts to research and understand her child’s medical problems and her refusal to leave his or her sickroom for hours at a time.

In reality, the MBP mother is the parent from hell as she only pretends to love her offspring. She really views him or her as an object which will bring her closer to the doctors and nurses with whom she craves a relationship.

Though Sir Roy Meadows got an important statistic on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome wrong at the trial of Sally Clark in 1999, he did sterling work for years in protecting children from cruel MBP parents. He has noted that MBP is a form of child abuse rather than a mental disorder. Other experts have since backed this up, noting that it’s a deviant behaviour, such as burglary. Nevertheless, the American diagnostic manual, used by many US psychiatrists, has listed it as a psychiatric condition since 1980.

It’s vital that more doctors become knowledgeable about MBP as 9 per cent of MBP victims die and many are left permanently disabled. Moreover, when challenged, some women will stop harming their children. Unfortunately others move to another part of the country and start the abuse again.

Tanya’s mother was ill throughout her formative years, so she was partially raised by a devoted older sister. Tanya was accident prone, so was no stranger to hospital herself. Shy and slightly overweight, she had occasional fainting spells in her teens and also suffered from stress-related stomach pains. She lived in Dumas, Texas, with her parents and three sisters and was a choir girl at the local Baptist church.

A couple at her church thought that she’d make the ideal
babysitter, so on 29 October 1974 they invited the 17-year-old schoolgirl over to look after their four-month-old son Scotty whilst they attended a religious event.

Tanya arrived with her homework and the couple left. Shortly afterwards she phoned her mother to say that the baby had woken from his nap and appeared to have a cold which was making him breathless. Her mother suggested phoning the baby’s parents to see if he was on any medication, and Tanya said she’d do that – but her next call was to the emergency services, explaining that the baby had stopped breathing. A police officer who was in the vicinity raced to the house to find Scotty blue and unresponsive on the couch. He gave the baby mouth-to-mouth and he resumed breathing, was taken to hospital and stabilised.

A month later Tanya was given a Good Neighbour Award from the local chamber of commerce for her quick response to Scotty’s apnoea episode. The presentation was held at a local restaurant and she was praised in – and photographed for – the local paper. More than a decade later, she still treasured the thank you note and gift which Scotty’s parents sent.

But Tanya’s life remained restricted as her father forbid his daughters to date the same boy twice. Eventually she ended up dating her next-door neighbour, Jim Reid. He was several years her senior, a successful but quiet man who was her parents’ friend.

She left school and began to train as a Licensed Vocational Nurse. A month into her training – on 25 November 1977 – she and Jim married, though she’d later admit that she was already having second thoughts, saying ‘Daddy was domineering, then I went into a domineering marriage.’ Yet, instead of seeking solace in the nursing work that she professed
to love, she quit and took a job at the factory where Jim was a supervisor. She worked there for just over a year before becoming pregnant. Again, she apparently had fainting spells which ensured that her co-workers made a fuss over her and that her boss allowed her to take early maternity leave. Bernadette (a pseudonym to protect her identity) was born on 15 October 1980 and was a beautiful healthy girl.

Fortunately, the Reids were living close to Tanya’s parents at the time of Bernadette’s birth so she got lots of attention and support. Bernadette was a colicky baby, but otherwise fine.

By the time the Reids had their second daughter, on 17 May 1983, they had moved to Illinois where Tanya was unemployed and bored. They called the little girl Morgan Renee. The baby appeared healthy yet in August she apparently had a seizure and Tanya had her admitted, limp and sweating, to hospital where she swiftly revived.

Over the next few weeks, Morgan was readmitted to the children’s ward on an approximately fortnightly basis. The baby would arrive looking blue and breathless but would stabilise quickly in hospital, be kept in for observation for several days and allowed home in good health, only to apparently stop breathing again at home. Nurses noted that Tanya quickly became frustrated with the baby girl, and once saw her slapping her on the leg, though she stopped as soon as she realised that she was being observed.

Tanya had struggled to find common ground with other young mothers in the neighbourhood, but now she regaled them with horror stories of what she’d endured with Morgan, saying that she couldn’t leave the baby alone for even a moment in case she died.

In January 1984, the Reids returned to Texas and Tanya
spent a week with relatives, during which time Morgan thrived. But shortly after moving into her new Texan home, she was rushed to hospital, blue-tinged and unresponsive. She quickly recovered but was kept in from 10 – 26 January for observation and tests, after which she was sent home with a clean bill of health.

But, on 6 February, the former Licensed Vocational Nurse called the hospital to say that her daughter had endured yet another attack. They raced the baby to intensive care but she was brain damaged and they reluctantly switched off her life support. The nine-month-old girl laboured for breath until the following day then died. Some of the nurses were in tears but Tanya was dry-eyed.

At the autopsy, the pathologist found bleeding in the baby’s skull, but he wasn’t familiar with Shaken Baby Syndrome. The body bore no external injuries, so he wrote that there was no evidence of child abuse. The authorities then determined that this was a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome case and Morgan was buried in Texas in the family plot.

Tanya continued to tell the regulars at her local church of her loss, that ‘God had taken an innocent child,’ though neighbours were surprised at how often she left her surviving daughter Bernadette with a babysitter. Fifteen months after Morgan’s death, the Reids had a son, Matthew. By now they were living in Illinois and Tanya was again isolated and bored. Three weeks after his birth, she called paramedics and explained that he’d had an apnoea episode (stopped breathing) and that she’d used her nurse’s training to resuscitate him.

Over the next few months she’d claim that he suffered from seizure after seizure. Concerned medics routinely hospitalised the blue-tinged, sweating and panicky baby and Tanya
remained at his bedside, talking to doctors, nurses and other patients about her child’s condition. The lonely housewife again had the sympathy and attention that she craved.

It was hard for Tanya to make friends as the family moved around because of Jim’s job. In autumn 1987 they moved to Iowa and she again attempted to befriend other mothers, but her endless chatter and pushy nature was off-putting to most of them. She craved adult conversation and talked non-stop to Jim when he got home from a hard day at the office but he was an introvert who understandably wanted to relax. He later admitted that she was impossible to please, and that he only stayed for the sake of the children, whom he adored. He had no inkling that she might be responsible for their health problems, though they only occurred when he was at work and when there were no other witnesses around.

As the months passed, Tanya continued to phone the Iowa emergency services to say that Matthew was having the same breathing difficulties as his dead sister. By two he could only say a couple of words so had several home visits by educational specialists. But, at two-and-a-half they were able to determine that only his language skills were delayed, that his motor and social skills were normal, so the home visits came to an end.

Tanya was enraged and told everyone that her son needed special attention. She had previously told a paediatrician that her deceased daughter Morgan had suffered from Fragile X syndrome, a genetic condition usually found in boys. She also spoke at length about the various anti-seizure medications that he was on and seemed more interested in talking about medical intervention than about alleviating her child’s distress. Medics noticed that she often tried to keep them talking whilst her toddler son fought for breath.

Within two days of being told that Matthew was
functioning normally, Tanya phoned an ambulance to say that he’d stopped breathing and had turned blue. A paramedic entered the house to find her bending over him and apparently giving him mouth to mouth. His lips were violet, yet the paramedic got him breathing almost immediately.

A fortnight later, Tanya phoned the emergency services again saying that Matthew had had another seizure. Again, paramedics arrived to find her apparently giving her son artificial resuscitation but when they moved her out of the way they found that he was breathing of his own accord.

At the hospital, nurses noted that the little boy seemed afraid of his mother and only ever uttered the words ‘Mum go.’ (A babysitter had noticed that Matthew screamed whenever Tanya was around yet was a relaxed, happy child when she wasn’t there.) This time, doctors were suspicious and asked her if anyone other than herself had witnessed the apnoea episodes. Tanya lied and named several people, saying that she’d give them the address of a doctor who had witnessed an attack, but she never did.

On another occasion, she carried Matthew into hospital and, oblivious to his cries, started to talk in depth about a possible diagnosis. Doctors noticed that he had small scratches on his face which appeared to have been made by his own nails, as if a pillow or hand had been pushed over his face and he’d tried to pull it away. They were baffled as to how he could have seizures when he was on anti-epileptic medication, and began to question Tanya more closely about the events leading up to Matthew’s attacks.

The next time that she called an ambulance, she requested that they take her son to a different hospital. A detective who accompanied paramedics noticed that Tanya was more
interested in talking to them than in her son who was lying, gasping for breath, on the ground.

The authorities asked to see the autopsy report for Morgan, Tanya’s dead daughter, and realised that she’d been shaken or slammed against a surface so that the small blood vessels going to her brain had torn and leaked. They now believed that Tanya Reid was a Munchausen’s By Proxy mother who had murdered her second born and might murder her third born any day.

In March of 1988, Matthew was given to foster parents, then to Tanya’s relatives, and began to catch up developmentally. He did not have any seizures and enjoyed good health.

It was February 1989 before Tanya Reid’s trial began in Iowa for abusing Matthew. Medics testified to his numerous hospitalisations, that they’d eventually become afraid to send him home. They described how he was so terrified at seeing his mother that he’d scream and race away in the opposite direction. Once she had approached whilst he was sitting in a high chair and he’d tried to flip himself over the back of it.

Doctors noted that the little boy only became ill in the daytime when his mother was around or during the specific evenings that his father worked late. The baby monitor showed that he’d never had an apnoea episode during the night when he – and the rest of the family – was asleep. And babies usually stop having apnoea by six months, whereas Matthew was still suffering at 18 months.

Tanya took the stand and suggested that the bleeding around her daughter Morgan’s brain could have been caused during resuscitation attempts, but medics rejected this as an explanation. She was asked if she’d ever had another child stop
breathing in her care, other than her own children, and said no. The prosecution then reminded her of how she’d been given a Good Neighbour Award for saving the life of Scotty, the infant that she was babysitting. Tanya muttered that she’d forgotten about the award.

The defence countered that Morgan hadn’t died immediately when her life support machine was switched off. They said that victims of Shaken Baby Syndrome have swollen brains, that they die quickly when taken off a ventilator. They said that both Morgan and Matthew had slightly abnormal brains, suggesting a congenital defect. A psychologist for the defence said that Tanya’s responses to standard psychological tests were normal, that there was no suggestion that she was a MBP case. In contrast, five doctors for the prosecution had said that they believed she was committing MBP crimes.

On 28 April 1989, the judge found her guilty of felony child endangerment of Matthew. She wept as she was sentenced to 10 years in an Iowa women’s prison. Shortly afterwards Jim divorced her – whilst remaining in contact – and got custody of both children. He later remarried. Meanwhile Tanya found love in another woman’s arms.