This post may contain affiliate links. That means if you click and buy, I may receive a small commission (at zero cost to you). Please see my full disclosure policy for details.
Happy Friday! What an invigorating #azchat last night listening to others share their excitement for the challenge and getting to MOB other bloggers’ pages. I was gratified to have 10 ‘mob’ my page and it’s gratifying to know that my topic on Child Abuse and Sexual Assault has been helpful for you guys! Thanks for your mention… Means so much! xx
Moving onward – “M”. We’re halfway through! And it’s time to talk about those murdering mothers. God forbid they should exist but sadly they do…
I would argue that mothers have the greatest duty of care owed to their children. A child comes into this world and/or their household knowing that she is his/her mother and the matriarch of the family who will make them safe. That’s the ultimate duty of care and when a mom misuses her position and murders her young, she does not deserve the title anymore.
So let’s get down to it… Here are a few of the most notorious mother murderers I have heard about.
Table of Contents
Megan Huntsman
Megan confessed and admitted to strangling and suffocating 6 of her newborns from 1996 – 2006. I repeat, she killed 6 of her newborn children! Acting on a tip from an estranged husband, the police searched her house in 2014 and found 7 (!) dead newborn bodies in the house. The 6 she had suffocated and strangled were in cardboard boxes. And there was a newborn who had apparently died as a stillbirth.
 |
| Megan Huntsman’ mugshot. Photo courtesy of Pleasant Grove Police. |
Diane Downs
In 1983, the Oregon mother drove her three children to the hospital emergency room claiming they’d been shot by a carjacker. The true story was much more harrowing when detectives and prosecutors learned Diane herself had killed her 7-year-old, paralyzed her son (from the waist down), and caused her eldest daughter to have a disabling stroke due to the gunshots. All so she could persuade her married lover to leave his wife and commit to her. She was convicted of all charges and sentenced to life in prison. The best part of the story is that the prosecutor, Fred Hugi, and his wife ended up adopting and raising Diane’s two surviving children! Love that prosecutor — he gets a special award, right? 🙂 For a gripping retelling of the story, try to find the Farrah Fawcett 1989 movie – Small Sacrifices.
 |
| Diane Downs and children. |
Susan Smith
Similar to Diane Downs, Susan in 1994 blamed a carjacker. She claimed he had stolen her car (with her two boys in their car seats – 2 years old and 14 months old) but the truth is that she had strapped these two innocent children into their car seats and pushed the car into the lake sending them to a watery grave.
 |
| Susan Smith’s two boys. |
I honestly don’t know of a great sin or crime than for a mother who is blessed with the duty of care and love to kill/murder her own children. Gobsmacked that it is still happening even today with several hundred cases a year. If you’re a mom or dad, give your kids a special hug this weekend and if you are a kid blessed with a great mom or dad, give them a call and say thank you. To think you could have ended up with a mother like Diane Downs or Susan Smith or Megan Huntsman.
Sharing is Caring
omg it’s so terribel and awhul. how can they be a mothers? ;(((
I can’t believe any normal human being would ever be able to hurt their own children. These women were in need of help..
I wonder how mothers could do this. Really sad stories.Such offenses should be given the harshest statements.
This is so scary I think sometimes this type of murders can get into the caregiver syndrome.b But I don’t know, I mean if you’re mom and you thinking about killing your kids you just don’t have a heart
Such a sad story, what were these women thinking!
Tragic horror! It is beyond my ken as to why one would behave in such a fashion, that too a mother of all the people.
Oh my goodness these are sad. I can’t even imagine. 🙁
This is so sad. It’s hard to think about something like that is even possible. Sad sad sad.
Child Abuse and Sexual Assault are very important topics we all need to talk about! Thank you for sharing!
Aaaahhhh….such life events make me very sad. I always wonder what I could have done to ensure that this doesn’t happen, you know.
This is a tragic and sad story! I hope it will not happen again. 🙁
It is just insane to me how a person like this can exist. I could never even think of doing this.
As a Mother myself, these stories always shock me. I can’t imagine putting my kids in harms way, let alone doing something like these women did.
This is very sad, but also very interesting to read and learn about too xc
Very horrible! I can’t even imagine why a parent would kill their child.
How horrible! A woman has to be really out of her mind to kill her own children. What a sad, horrible thing!
This makes my skin crawl. As a working Mum to 6 I know things can be hard at times. But murder is a completely different level. I can only imagine those women must be despirate beyond belief to murder at all, let alone their own child.
I remember these cases. It’s like reading about something that happened on another planet. Hard to get your head around.
This is so interesting and very sad at the same time.
It’s hard to think what would drive someone who is supposed to be your career into your killer
Thanks Lianne!
Informative blog.Sad but true.
Great job. Good luck with the rest of the month.
Computare Citus
Lianne Kruger
I'm not a very maternal woman, but I can't wrap my head around a mother killing her children. It's up there with pedophiles. Like, hooooooow??????
~Ninja Minion Patricia Lynne aka Patricia Josephine~
Story Dam
Patricia Lynne, Indie Author
🙁
It is sad when you hear about this happening; you wonder why they didn't get help down the line if they felt overwhelmed, etc., but yet maybe they were trying to get help and no one was listening to them or taking them seriously. It took me years to convince people that my daughter needed help with her depression, etc., people just kind of wanted to "shake" it off. Took a major crisis to finally get someone to listen and believe me.
betty
Glad your daughter is getting help. But you're so right people do want to "Shake it off" and pretend it isn't happening because it's easier to ignore.
So sad and so hard to understand. Sleep deprivation, depression, any number of things can result in bad things happening. But murdering your own babies. Something definitely missing in these ladies minds.
Thanks for visiting and sharing.
Wow! Wow!
Exactly.
I recall all of these.
There is no punishment enough for them.
Very important theme you are sharing with everyone.
Heather M. Gardner / @hmgardner
Co-Host, Blogging from A to Z April Challenge
The Waiting is the Hardest Part
Couldn't agree more, Heather. Thanks for visiting!
Ah so sad stories… but it was interesting to read so thanks for sharing!
I think I already have seen the photo of first killer before.
Creepy first picture, right? 😮
It's hard to believe, isn't it? I wonder what has happened in the mind of women who do these things. Clearly something is very wrong.
#AtoZchallenge
Meet My Imaginary Friends
So sad 🙁