Iowa Mom Gets Life for Murdering 2 Year Old

Seth Kehoe - 2 years old

An Iowa mother was sentenced to life without parole Tuesday for slitting her 2-year-old son's throat and leaving him to die near a remote pond in October 2008, a prosecutor said.

Michelle Kehoe, 36, also received 25 years on one count of attempted murder for slashing her older son's throat. She left both children outside the family van before attempting to kill herself.

The 7-year-old survived and provided key testimony against his mother, whose attorneys argued that she believed she was trying to save her sons from a life of suffering when she cut their throats and her own. "She put duct tape over my eyes, and nose, and mouth,” Sean Kehoe, then 7 years old, said in describing his mother’s actions. “She was hurting my baby brother.”

Kehoe faces a charge of first-degree murder in the death of her younger son, Seth Kehoe, and charges of attempted murder, and child endangerment causing injury.

The jury heard Sean Kehoe’s high, thin voice telling authorities his mother bound him and his brother before cutting their necks.

A jury rejected her insanity defense and convicted her of first-degree murder, attempted murder and child endangerment on November 4.

Kehoe began planning the attack the previous month, buying the knife and the duct tape, according to testimony. She told her husband she was taking the boys to visit her mother at a nursing home.

Kehoe also received a 10-year sentence for child endangerment for the injuries she inflicted on her older son, who survived for the night locked inside the family van, Buchanan County Attorney Allan Vander Hart said.



http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/15/iowa.kehoe.sentencing/index.html
http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/article_dabd712e-ca31-11de-a67c-001cc4c03286.html
http://www.dailyiowan.com/2009/10/30/Metro/14019.html

I'm glad she will never be free again to hurt any other children.

this story shakes me to my core everytime i think about it.

can you imagine hearing the details of this crime from the surviving child? talking about what his MOTHER did to him?

It is absolutely heartbreaking thinking about what the 7-year-old went through at the hands of his mother. He knows that she killed his 2-year-old brother and tried to kill him, and that has to be hard for him to live with.