On 11 February 1990, Susan cancelled the 16-year-old’s beloved riding lessons, telling her riding instructor that Marcia had a bad attitude. She asked the riding school to sell the teenager’s riding boots and hat, saying that she no longer needed them. But, on the 13th, she bought each of the girls a bunch of roses and helped them wrap Valentine’s Day gifts to take to their friends at school the following day.
MURDER AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE
That same night, Susan was as insomniacal as ever. At midnight, she left her bed (which she was sharing with Audrey) and walked up the stairs to the attic where she fetched her husband’s 16-gauge, bolt-action shotgun from its usual storage space behind a bureau. She walked back down the stairs and into Marcia’s room, put a blanket over the muzzle and held it three inches from her sleeping daughter. Susan then shot the 16-year-old through the torso and hurried back to her room.
Marcia, who was naked, staggered from the bed and began to scream that there was blood everywhere. Audrey woke up and Susan told her to stay where she was whilst she returned to Marcia’s bedroom. Marcia yelled ‘Mother, stop!’ and Audrey raced down the hall to find her sister covered in what she thought was tomato ketchup. Susan told her that Marcia had had a bad dream, to go back to bed.
Audrey went back to bed as ordered, unaware that she’d just witnessed a Valentine’s Day Massacre. Seconds later, Susan approached the bed and pressed the muzzle of the gun into Audrey’s side and pulled the trigger but the shotgun jammed and Audrey managed to push it away. She noticed that her mother’s eyes were wide with fright. Jumping out of bed, she raced back to her sister’s room to find Marcia slumped against the door, moaning. She had lost a lot of blood.
The 14-year-old raced down the hall to call the police, but saw her mother in the bathroom, pointing the gun at her own stomach. She pulled the trigger but, again, the shotgun misfired. Susan warned Audrey not to tell the truth about what happened to her sister. When police arrived, Susan told them that Marcia had committed suicide.
They were suspicious as the 16-year-old had phoned her best friend that night and made plans to go dancing, hardly the actions of a girl who was suicidal. They also found out that Susan had previously slapped her oldest daughter and claimed to hate her, but they couldn’t prove that this hatred had resulted in a murder. Susan’s friends believed her version of events and she returned to her old life, buoyed up with a heavy intake of alcohol.
For the next year, young Audrey kept the terrible secret but then she broke down, walked into a police station and told them what had happened that fateful night. Weeping, she begged them to get psychiatric help for Susan, describing her as ‘a good mother.’
DRINK DRIVING
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.
TRIAL
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.
SECOND TRIAL
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.
MATERNAL
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.
PAROLE REQUEST
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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
Though 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 MCHATTIE
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.
CHAOTIC YEARS
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.
COURT
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 DACRI
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.
CREATING A SECOND VICTIM
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.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SICK AT HEART
Most 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 LEIGH REID
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.
Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents Page 8
