This Story About A Mom Blogger Poisoning Her Son To Get More Clicks Will Horrify You

This is unbelievably horrible; 26-year-old mom blogger, Lacey Spears, was arrested yesterday and charged with murdering her five-year-old son Garnett, by poisoning him with sodium. She has been charged in Westchester County, N.Y., with second-degree depraved murder and first-degree manslaughter, according to her indictment. She turned herself into the police and then proceeded to plead not guilty.

From CBS:

”She really didn’t show any emotion,” [said] Westchester Police Capt. Christopher Calabrese. ”She was kind of stoic when she came here. I think that she knew the grand jury was going on. She anticipated this happening, and she turned herself in with her attorney.”

The case could be the first invovling Munchausen syndrome by proxy in the Internet age. Munchhausen sydrome by proxy is used to describe a pattern of behavior in which a caregiver “causes or fabricates symptoms in a child. The adult deliberately misleads others (particularly medical professionals), and may go as far as to actually cause symptoms in the child through poisoning, medication, or even suffocation. In most cases (85%), the mother is responsible for causing the illness or symptoms.”

It’s disturbing how something like this could be magnified in the internet age, as someone suffering with this syndrome could get immediate gratification and sympathy by posting online. This is allegedly what Spears did – chronicling her son Garret’s illness and also a fabricated story about the death of his father. The father is alive and well and installing garage doors in Georgia. Perusing her blog is seriously disturbing. What a beautiful child. How awful.

Prosecutors told media that Spears “fed her son dangerous amounts of salt after she conducted research on the Internet about its effects.” From The Washington Post:

When Garnett was 5 days old, he reportedly went to an Alabama hospital with a high fever and ear infection. He had fluid in his ears, according to Spears’s statement to police.

At 10 weeks, she said he stopped breathing at the same time his sodium level climbed. At the time, doctors could not explain why.

Garnett purportedly had trouble gaining weight and, at 9 months, doctors put in a feeding tube.

By age 2, he was in and out of emergency rooms in Florida ”” once with a staph infection and blood leaking from his ears and his nose.

So she was basically torturing her son for his entire short life to garner sympathy on social media platforms. I have no words. I logically understand this is an illness that needs treatment – but I can’t stop feeling anger towards this woman. She was chronicling the life of her child with photo essays on her blog and at the same time allegedly poisoning him. It’s heartbreaking to see photos where the boy looks gaunt or pale and realize that he actually was suffering and sick. Because of his mother.

There are no words for this. It’s just terrible.

(photo: Garnett’s Journey)