Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 27

Beverly and her husband badly wanted children but he was sterile so they opted for artificial insemination by a donor and, on 3 May 1986, she gave birth to a daughter, Laura, in a Nebraskan hospital. A few days later, the nuclear family returned to their Lincoln home.

Thirty-three-year-old Beverly went on maternity leave from her job as deputy superintendent of a wildlife centre but found it almost impossible to sleep and on the rare occasions when she did drop off, she had terrible nightmares. She lost weight and became obsessed with the idea that artificial insemination was immoral and that her husband would leave her because Laura wasn’t his biological child. As the days progressed, her mental health worsened and she apparently heard a voice telling her that her infant daughter was evil, that she had to die. On 24 May she visited her physician and told him of her paranoid thoughts but he said that she shouldn’t worry, that it was just the baby blues.

On 26 May, Beverly drowned her 23-day-old daughter in the sink: medics estimate that it takes as little as 60 to 90 seconds for a small baby to die by drowning. Forty minutes later, she made a confused call to the local emergency services who arrived to find the infant dead, wrapped in a nightdress, nappy and a towel.

The distressed mother was charged with first degree murder and spent a month in a psychiatric hospital, after which she was allowed home on the proviso that she was supervised by her husband and her mother. She remained under psychiatric care.

When the case went to trial, five psychiatrists testified that she had been psychotic when she murdered her daughter, and the judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity and said that confining her to a psychiatric hospital would serve no useful purpose. She was free to go.