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