A mother in suburban Illinois has been charged with murder in the death of her two-year-old son, the Frankfort Police Department said on Friday.
Corie Walsh, 40, faces three counts of first-degree murder and is currently in custody at the hospital. Once released, she will be transferred to the Will County Adult Detention Facility, police said.
Frankfort police officers responded to a report of an unresponsive two-year-old at Walsh’s house on Tuesday. CBS News Chicago reported a 17-year-old neighbor called authorities.
Court records obtained by CBS show the neighbor found the boy “hanging in the basement on a device from a rafter.” The neighbor was giving the toddler CPR when police came to the residence.
The two-year-old, identified in media reports as Walsh’s son, Barrett, or “Bear,” was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police found Walsh when they were “directed to an upstairs bathroom located in the master bedroom,” NBC 5 Chicago wrote, “reportedly due to this defendant, the mother of the victim, attempting to harm herself.”
Walsh was lying in a tub and “surrounded by bloody water,” court documents said.
The Will County Coroner’s Office performed an autopsy on Wednesday and said the death was the “result of an apparent homicide.”
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family, their loved ones, and everyone affected by this heartbreaking tragedy,” Frankfort police said. “We ask our community to keep them in their thoughts and prayers and to respect their privacy as they navigate this profoundly difficult time.”
NBC 5 Chicago wrote that Walsh told police she “did this to her baby because he was the ‘devil’ and the ‘anti-Christ.'”
Prosecutors said Walsh had “recently become very invested in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial,” and was “discussing it via group text message with her friends,” according to NBC 5.
A judge in Clancy’s case declared a mistrial on Friday after jurors couldn’t agree on whether she is guilty in the 2023 killings of her three children. Authorities said Clancy strangled her children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan, in their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home and then jumped through a second-story window.
Clancy’s lawyers didn’t deny that she killed her children — but the defense argued that she was not criminally responsible, as she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors alleged that she planned the killings and was fully aware of her actions.
An attorney representing Walsh said in a statement to USA Today, “Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened.”
“This is a tragedy for the Walsh family, all of whom are mourning the loss of this child,” attorney Andrea Lyon said in the statement. “It is our hope that through a thorough presentation and investigation of the facts, that all of us will come to see this heartbreak for what it is.”
The National Institutes of Health define psychosis as a “collection of symptoms that affect the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality.” While in pyschosis, “a person’s thoughts and perceptions are disrupted and they may have difficulty recognizing what is real and what is not.”
Postpartum psychosis, which is what Clancy’s lawyers said she had, specifically affects those who gave birth, usually within several days, though the NIH says it can happen up to six weeks after.
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