A woman who for years blogged about the constant health woes of her son was found guilty of poisoning him to death on Monday by force feeding large concentrations of sodium through a stomach tube.
A New York jury found the woman, Lacey Spears from Kentucky guilty of murder in the second degree in the death of Garnett-Paul Spears, here 5-year old son, according to the district attorney’s spokesperson.
The defense tried to portray Spears as a loving mother and her 5-year old as sickly, but prosecutors argued Spears reveled in attention that Garnett’s illness gave her.
Video showed how on two occasions Spears took the boy into a bathroom at the hospital, with a connector tube and then the boy suffering afterwards.
Patricia Murphy the Assistant District Attorney said the motive was bizarre and scary, but it exists. Murphy added that Spears craves attention from her friends, family, co-workers and above all the medical profession.
She even suggested that Spears eventually killed her son because she was worried he would start to tell people she was the one making him ill. Murphy called Spears’ actions equal to torture.
A number of doctors testified in court that no medical explanation exists for the spike of sodium levels in Garnett that eventually caused his death.
However, Stephen Riebling Spears’ defense attorney said no direct evidence existed of a crime and extracted from his witnesses that Spears seemed to be devastated by the death of her son. He said video in the hospital has been edited to eliminate the tender scenes that took place between Spears and her son, including one time when Spears fitted Garnett with two pairs of socks.
The defense attorney said if Spears was planning to kill her son, why she would care if he had cold feet or not.
Evidence in the case included two of Garnett’s feeding bags found in the apartment where Spears and her son lived that had been tainted heavily with salt. Spears had asked a friend to hide one of the feeding bags. One of the bags had what is equivalent to 69 salt packets from McDonalds, said a forensic toxicologist.