Motherhood blogger gets life term for killing son with salt
Print Edition
A suburban New York woman who wrote a blog about motherhood was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison by a judge yesterday for murdering her 5-year-old son through salt poisoning so she could use his illness to gain social media attention.
Lacey Spears, 27, who chronicled her son Garnett鈥檚 illnesses on a personal blog called 鈥淕arnett鈥檚 Journey鈥 and other social media, was convicted by a jury in White Plains, New York, last month of second-degree murder in his 2014 death at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York.
Prosecutors said Spears loaded the hospitalized boy鈥檚 feeding tube with a lethal amount of salt and kept on blogging.
Spears鈥 lawyer Stephen Riebling said she was innocent, blamed the hospital for negligence, and said he planned to appeal the verdict.
Prosecutors blamed Spears, who lived in Chestnut Ridge, about 51 kilometers north of New York City, for her son鈥檚 short and tormented life.
鈥淭hroughout his five years, Garnett Spears was forced to suffer through repeated hospitalizations, unneeded surgical procedures and ultimately poisoning with salt, all at the hands of the one person who should have been his ultimate protector: his mother,鈥 Westchester District Attorney spokeswoman Janet DiFiore said after Spears was convicted.
The prosecutor said Spears used her son鈥檚 condition to 鈥渟elf-aggrandize herself鈥 and that her actions directly led to the boy鈥檚 鈥渢ortured death.鈥
Spears told investigators that her son, whose father was killed in a car accident, suffered from a slew of medical problems from Crohn鈥檚 disease and Celiac diseases to ear abnormalities, according to court papers.
Her social media posts about his ongoing problems and hospitalizations, including photos of his final hours on life support, were introduced as evidence by the prosecution at trial.
Spears had moved with Garnett from Decatur, Alabama, to Clearwater, Florida, to Chestnut Ridge, where they lived in The Fellowship Community, a non-profit residential community focused on back-to-earth living.
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