Saskatoon woman charged with murder in young boy's death
CBC News, Jan 05, 2014
Saskatoon police have charged a 35-year-old woman with first-degree murder after a five-year-old boy was found dead in a west side home.
Initially investigators questioned a person of interest, who was charged late Saturday night. The 35-year-old woman is accused of first-degree murder in the boy's death.
In the early hours of Saturday morning emergency crews responded to a report of an injured child in the 400 block of Avenue R South.
The boy was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said he was suffering from a fatal injury, and while they know the cause of death no details have been released.
"It's hard for our officers to deal with. I can't imagine what it is like for the family," said Alyson Edwards with the Saskatoon police at a press conference on Saturday afternoon. "Any type of homicide is tragic, but when you're dealing with a small child, five years old, it's awful."
Police said three people, who were related to each other, were also in the home when officers arrived.
The names of the accused, and of the victim have not been released. It's not clear if there is any prior connection between the two.
An autopsy will be conducted as early as Monday.
This is Saskatoon's first homicide of 2014.
Kellie Johnson charged in death of Jonathan Vetter, 5
Saskatoon boy pronounced dead at a home in the 400 block of Avenue R South
CBC News, January 6, 2014
Saskatoon police are gathering evidence from a home in the 400 block of Avenue R South after a five-year-old boy was pronounced dead there Saturday morning.
Kellie Johnson (Facebook)
Jonathan Vetter (Facebook)
Saskatoon woman is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her young son.
Kellie Johnson, 35, made her first court appearance this morning. She's accused of killing five-year-old Jonathan Vetter.
She'll stay in custody until she returns to court tomorrow.
Police were called to a house on Avenue R South early Saturday morning with reports that a child was injured. Jonathan Vetter died at the scene. Police are not saying how the boy died.
Kellie Johnson was arrested Saturday and charged that same night with first degree murder.
Johnson is known to the authorities.
Last January, she was the subject of a missing person report after she left a mental health facility at the university. Family and friends were concerned about her welfare due to a history with mental illness, said the police report at the time.
Johnson also missed two court appearances in Saskatoon last year. She's also charged with threatening a man from Harris, west of Saskatoon.
Kellie Johnson not criminally responsible in son’s death, judge rules
CTV Saskatoon, Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Kellie Johnson is not criminally responsible in the death of her five-year-old son, a Saskatoon judge has ruled.
Justice Neil Gabrielson delivered the verdict in the first-degree murder trial Tuesday afternoon at Saskatoon’s Court of Queen’s Bench.
Johnson, 38, was accused of killing her son Jonathan Vetter in January 2014.
The boy was found dead Jan. 4, 2014 in a home on the 400 block of Avenue R South.
Johnson killed him with a knife, both Crown and defence lawyers agreed. The case revolved around whether she was criminally responsible for her actions.
The defence argued she wasn’t criminally responsible due to mental illness.
The mother had pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder charge.
Johnson had been experiencing mental health issues for years and her mental state was deteriorating leading up to the killing, according to her defence lawyer Leslie Sullivan. She believed an imaginary figure, referred to as "the woman" throughout the trial, would kill her. She feared if "the woman" killed her, Vetter would be molested by her ex-boyfriend, become a molester himself and go to hell. She felt she was protecting him.
"I am satisfied that on the morning in question the accused was suffering from delusions such that she could not understand that her actions were morally wrong," Gabrielson wrote in his decision.
"She was trying to save her son from eternal damnation and to do that she believed that she had to kill him."
During the trial, Crown prosecutor Brian Hendrickson agreed Johnson was suffering from a psychotic episode linked to schizophrenia at the time of the killing, but said the mother was capable of making rational decisions.
He argued she knew the killing was wrong by societal standards because she hid the knife weeks before the incident, because she said "I’m sorry" after her son’s death, and because she fled the house after the killing.
Gabrielson stated in his decision he accepted the testimony of two doctors who said Johnson didn’t understand the killing was morally wrong.
He told Johnson he had a difficult time making the decision, to which she replied, "Thank you."
Johnson will be taken back to Saskatchewan Hospital in North Battleford, where her case will be looked at by the Saskatchewan Review Board.
She will remain in the hospital indefinitely, unless officials determine she does not pose a threat to the public. If she is deemed fit to return to society, she will slowly be reintegrated into public life.
The process could take years.
Canada's largest national newspaper
Some mothers have had enough hugs
The Globe and Mail
October 6, 2006
Toronto - As a female friend of Frances Elaine Campione put it, this after Ms. Campione was charged on Wednesday with murder in the death of her two young children, "That mother needs a hug."
In that line, widely repeated in Toronto and national media outlets, is a telling clue to what is so wrong with much of what happens both in the nation's family courts and in its child-protection system -- the pervasive view of the female of the species as constantly nurturing (except, you know, when she allegedly kills) and as in need of constant nurture (hugs all 'round, no matter what).
For the record, Ms. Campione was arrested two days ago after she phoned 911 to report that there were two dead children inside her Barrie, Ont., apartment, and shortly after, didn't police arrive to find the bodies of her own little girls, one-year-old Sophia and three-year-old Serena.
She and her estranged husband Leo were reportedly in the throes of a nasty custody battle, with Mr. Campione accused of assaulting his wife and the older child, and Ms. Campione allegedly alarmed, and/or depressed, at the prospect of losing that fight.
And The Globe has confirmed that involved with the family was the Children's Aid Society of Simcoe County. At the moment, the nature of that involvement is unknown -- except as it has been reported by neighbours who saw social workers at the apartment and say that, for a time recently, the girls lived with their paternal grandparents.
Ontario woman convicted of son's starvation death granted full parole
Canadian Press
Wednesday, May. 22, 2002
KINGSTON, Ont. (CP) -- An Ontario woman who was sentenced to 16 years in prison in one of Canada's stiffest penalties for child abuse will be released on full parole after serving less than half her term.
Lorelei Turner, 38, and her husband Steven were convicted of manslaughter in July 1995 for beating and starving their three-year-old son John to death in a case that horrified Canadians who followed the trial.
But on Wednesday, a panel of the National Parole Board in this eastern Ontario city ruled Turner will be released but placed on probation until July 2011.
Until then, she must remain within 25 kilometres of her residence, is not allowed unsupervised contact with anyone under 16, and must continue to receive counselling.
"The board would have looked at the risk and obviously found a low risk to reoffend," Carol Sparling of the National Parole Board said Wednesday.
Woman accused of throwing son off Oregon bridge
The Associated Press, U.S.A., November 4, 2014
NEWPORT, Ore. -- A woman who said she threw her 6-year-old son off a historic bridge on the Oregon coast was arrested after the boy's body was found in the bay, police said.
Police and firefighters in the coastal city of Newport, Lincoln County deputies and the Coast Guard searched the bay with boats and a helicopter after Jillian Meredith McCabe, 34, of Seal Rock called 911 at 6:25 p.m. Monday to report throwing her son off the Yaquina Bay Bridge.
The boy's body was found at 10:23 p.m. in the bay after it was spotted near the Embarcadero Resort, police said.
Affair led to mother murdering her own kids
Days after buying another woman Valentine's Day flowers, a Sydney father came home to find a trail of blood leading him to the bodies of his two young children lying next to their mother, a court has been told.
Australian Associated Press
Aug 24 2009
The woman had given the couple's three-year-old daughter and four-year-old son rat poison and an unidentified pink liquid before smothering them and killing them, court papers said.
She then tried to take her own life, the NSW Supreme Court was told.
Doctors agree the mother, from Canley Heights in Sydney's west, was suffering from "major depression" when she poisoned her children on February 19 last year.
She has pleaded not guilty to the two murders by reason of mental illness.
As her judge-alone trial began, the mother's lawyer told Justice Clifton Hoeben his client didn't think life was worth living after learning about her husband's affair.
New Brunswick woman ruled responsible in burning of baby's body
ST. STEPHEN, N.B. - A New Brunswick judge says a woman who burned and dismembered her newborn son is criminally responsible for her actions.
Becky Sue Morrow earlier pleaded guilty to offering an indignity to a dead body and disposing of a newborn with the intent of concealing a delivery.
Judge David Walker ruled Friday that the 27-year-old woman may have been suffering from a mental disorder when she delivered the baby but that that was not the case when the baby's body was burned and its remains hidden.
It is not known if the baby was alive at the time of birth.
At a hearing last month, the court heard contrasting reports from the two psychiatrists. One said Ms. Morrow was in a "disassociated" mental state when the crime occurred. The other said she clearly planned her actions and understood the consequences.
Mother sentenced to more than two years jail time in connection to death of infant son
The Toronto Star, April 3 2013
A woman has been sentenced to 27 months in prison in connection to the death of her nine-week-old son in a bizarre case where the infant boy's body has yet to be recovered.
Both parents Ricky Ray Doodhnaught, 32, and Nadia Ayyad, 24, have been implicated in the case that dates back to November 2011 when Children's Aid workers along with York Regional Police attempted to seize two children under a court order from a Vaughan home.
Investigators: Mother son afire in blaze that killed both
Associated Press, USA, published in Toronto Star, Oct. 24, 2019
LAS VEGAS USA- A Las Vegas woman who waged a court custody battle for her 6-year-old son set the boy afire earlier this month, igniting a house fire that killed them both, police and arson investigators found. Gasoline was detected on first-grader Gavin Palmer’s clothing, and the deaths of the boy and his mother, Renai Palmer, were investigated as a rare arson murder-suicide, Las Vegas police homicide Lt. Ray Spencer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for a Wednesday report. The Clark County coroner’s office said Thursday the cause and manner of the two deaths remained under investigation.