Blanca

​Twenty-one-year-old Blanca Montano carted her two young children into University Medical Center in Tucson in late February claiming they were both ill with flu-like symptoms. Her toddler son and infant girl were both treated for infections, and the boy recovered quickly...

But the seven-month-old daughter's condition only grew worse. The little girl would eventually be diagnosed with nine separate rare infections during the course of her hospitalization.

Initially, the medical staff was miffed, unable to ascertain why the child only got sicker and sicker. Their collective perplexity soon turned to suspicion, though, once it was realized that the baby's condition only worsened after visits from her mother.

They began to suspect they were dealing with a case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy -- where a parent inflicts harm on a child in an effort to gain attention for themselves.

http://www.truecrimereport.com/2011/04/mother_blanca_montano_repeated.php 

Rebel With A Cause

Friends,

I want to share with you some of my thoughts behind the cute and cuddly. This is my self-therapy. A way of confronting some of my demons. I have been working on this series I Love You To Death, for two years now. I spend lots of my time researching the subject of mothers that murder their children, and when I think I might be reaching completion of this series, there is another mother on the news that has found a new way to kill her kids.

I have been asking my self why I have chosen such a bleak subject matter to paint about. I am a mother, and I thought my point of view would be from the mothers point of view. At times I tried to empathize with the mother, because she had to love her children. Some times I thought there is no way a mother could love her children, if she chooses to kill them. I often felt desensitized, until I remembered the characters in the paintings were real mothers and real children. Feeling desensitized allowed me to suppress my personal feelings, and complete my work.

On my journey creating these paintings, I have learned a lot about my self. These paintings are not about the feelings a mother has to deal with when she is confronted with killing her child, because as a mother I have never had similar feelings. Therefore I am not able to paint from experience. The paintings are about me. I had an epiphany one night, that answered the question, why I chose to paint about the subject matter of mothers killing their children. 

I am painting from the child’s perspective, not the mother’s perspective. I am painting about the child that witnesses her mother killing her siblings as she waits her turn to die. Living in fear and wondering if this is the day that her mother will snap. Helpless, and worried for her siblings. Always walking on pins and needles. Normal one minute and chaotic the next. On my journey I have learned a lot about my self. The process has been bitter because of the despair the mother and the child must be feeling. Sweet because I am able to confront feelings I have not been able confront in my past. 

I have been considering what the child must be going through right before she meets her fate. The last child must have seen unfathomable horrors knowing there is no way to escape. Until the child’s last breath, I believe she is feeling hope. A hope for change. A hope to be rescued. Hope is what we live for. 

Rebel With A Cause, 
Loretta G 

Alysha

Neighbors said a 7-year-old pulled from a burning house Saturday with her two younger sisters screamed, "Why mommy? Why mommy? Why did you do this to me?"

Alysha Green, 29, accused of coaxing her children into a closet and burning them, had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder but stopped taking her medication.

Three-year-old Ariania Green died Tuesday after being removed from life support. About 90 percent of the girl's body was burned, according to court documents.

The older girls -- Alexandria, 5, with burns covering about 40 percent of her body, and Adamiria, 7, with burns covering nearly 20 percent of her body.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-19-3592033131_x.htm

Maria

I Love You To Death

The title of my current series is I Love You To Death.  The soft colors are meant to draw the viewer in for a closer look, revealing the message of cute and cuddly, but deadly.  

I use the child as a metaphor to represent real life mothers that have killed their children in factual criminal cases.

According to the American Anthropological Association, more than 200 women kill their children in the United States.

My painful memories of growing up with a bipolar mother compels me to bring light to the subject matter of filicide.  

Susan

At around 8 p.m. Susan put her barefooted sons in the car, strapped them in their car seats and began driving around. In her confession she stated that she wanted to die and was headed to her mother's house, but decided against it. Instead she drove to John D. Long Lake and drove onto a ramp, got out of the car, put the car in drive, released the brake and watched as her car, with her children sleeping in the back seat, plunged into the lake. The car drifted out a ways then slowly sank.

Susan Smith ran to a nearby home and hysterically knocked on the door. She told the homeowners, Shirley and Rick McCloud, that an black man had taken her car and her two boys. She described how she had stopped at a red light at Monarch Mills, when a man with a gun jumped into her car and told her to drive. She drove around some, and then he told her to stop and get out of the car. At that point he told her he wouldn't hurt the kids and then drove off with the boys who she could hear were crying out for her.  For nine days Susan Smith stuck the story of being abducted. 

http://crime.about.com/od/murder/a/susan_smith.htm

Gilberta

Gilberta Estrada, 25, and three of her girls were found dead. The youngest, 8-month-old Evelyn Frayre, was alive but in dire need of medical care.

After hanging her daughters with pieces of clothing tied around a wooden board that served as a clothes rod, Estrada looped the noose around her neck, leaned into it and buckled her knees to kill herself.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/30/national/main2866104.shtml

Deanna

When Aaron presented Laney with a rock that day, she later reported that she believed she was supposed to pay attention. This was a symbol.  Again she told God no, but again she felt pressured to comply.  She decided that rocks would be preferable to strangulation, so she found some in preparation.

Laney knew she had to step out in faith.  Lifting the rock, she hit Aaron hard on the skull. He began to cry, alerting her husband, Keith. He asked what was wrong and Laney kept her back to him to prevent him from seeing what she was doing. She assured Keith that everything was okay. But it wasnt okay. Aaron was still breathing, so she put a pillow over his face until she heard him gurgle. She silently told God that He would have to finish the job.

Next Laney went after her other two sons. She took Luke, 6, outside first in his underwear and smashed his skull by hitting him repeatedly with a large rock. Then she dragged him by the feet into the shadows so that Joshua, 8, would not see him. She left the stone, the size of a dinner plate, lying on top of him.

Joshua was next and Laney repeated to him what she had done with Luke, placing them together in a dark area of the yard.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/women_killers2/9.html

Angela

Camacho testified that on the day of the murders, March 11, 2003, Rubio told her that 2-month-old Mary Jane was “possessed” and ordered Camacho to go into the bathroom of their Brownsville apartment.

“He said they were possessed,” she said. “I believed him.”

Camacho said she came out when Rubio called her and ordered her to hold down the thrashing legs of Julissa, 3, while he severed her head.

“The (girl’s) body was on the carpet. … The head was on the carpet,” Camacho said. “I started crying and crying. … He was trying to cut (off) her head.”

Camacho testified that after the girls were killed, she cleaned the knives with pieces of clothing while Rubio washed the bodies and placed them in trash bags.

http://sergiochapa.com/files/911DeathRowFullNotes.pdf

Dena

Monday, authorities discovered a grisly scene at the family’s apartment after the child’s father called a day-care center, and asked them to check on his wife and daughter.

Day-care workers called 911 after talking to the mother; an operator then called Schlosser.

Asked if there was an emergency, Schlosser calmly responded “Yes,” according to 911 tapes released by police.

“Exactly what happened?” the 911 operator asked.
“I cut her arms off,” Schlosser replied, as the hymn “He Touched Me” played in the background.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/women_killers2/9.html

Andrea

ANDREA

She had gotten out of bed around 8:10 and had waited for her husband, Rusty, to leave for work at nine. The children were all awake and eating cereal. Andrea had some, too. Once Rusty was gone, Andrea went into the bathroom to turn on the water and fill the tub. The water came within three inches from the top.

Then one by one, she drowned three of her sons, Luke, age 2; Paul, age 3; and John, age 5. She put them in facedown and held them as they struggled. As each one died, she then placed him face up on a bed, still wet, and then covered all three with a sheet. Each had struggled just a few minutes. Next was six-month-old Mary, the youngest, who had been in the bathroom all this time, sitting on the floor in her bassinet and crying. When Andrea was finished with Mary, she left her floating in the water and called to her oldest son, Noah.

He came right away. "What happened to Mary?" he asked. Then apparently realizing what his mother was doing, he ran from the bathroom but Andrea chased him down and dragged him back to the tub. She forced him in face down and drowned him right next to Mary. She admitted in her confession that he had put up the biggest struggle of all. At times he managed to slip from her grasp and get some air, but she always managed to push him back down. His last words were, "I'm sorry." She left him there floating in a tub full of feces, urine and vomit, where police found him. She lifted Mary out and placed her on the bed with her other brothers. Andrea gently covered her before calling the police and her husband. It was time.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html

l

Dee

Two of the three children killed in their Hudson Oaks home were probably awake when they were shot, and the shooting death of their mother was a suicide.

The deaths of Sergio Perez, 10; Diego Perez, 9; and Bianca Perez, 4, were homicides. He also ruled that Dee Etta Perez, 39, died from a single gunshot wound to the left temple and she had "large quantities" of gunpowder on her hands.

Dee Perez killed the children Tuesday morning, critically wounded her husband when he arrived for a scheduled visit then killed herself.

Her estranged husband, Manuel "Manny" Perez, 38, a captain with the Fort Worth Fire Department, remained hospitalized with a gunshot wound to his back.

http://www.texnews.com/1998/2002/texas/hud0719.html