The mommy blogger who slowly killed her son using lethal doses of salt was found guilty of his murder Monday.
After more than two days of deliberation, a Westchester County Court jury convicted 27-year-old Lacey Spears with second-degree murder following a month-long trial, according to the Journal News.
The mom to 5-year-old Garnett, who died last January with soaring sodium levels that doctors said was metabolically impossible, faces life in prison for her son’s “tortured death.”
“Throughout his five years, Garnett Spears was forced to suffer through repeated hospitalizations, unneeded surgical procedures and ultimately poisoning with salt, all at the hands of the one person who should have been his ultimate protector: his mother,” said District Attorney Janet DiFiore in a press release.
A straight-faced Spears showed little emotion as the verdict was read while her father and sister held each other in court. They refused to comment.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors argued that the “calculated child killer” made up young Garnett’s sickness, which she documented on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and her own personal blog.
They said Spears used her blue-eyed boy’s feeding tube to force salt into his stomach, which led to a swollen brain, seizures and eventually his death.
In her posts, Spears detailed Garnett’s various health problems that caused him to be unable to eat food or gain weight. He had a feeding tube in his abdomen following an illness he had as a newborn, which Spears said resulted in 23 visits to the hospital before he turned 1.
Hospitals were one of the only constants in Garnett’s life — as Spears brought him from Florida to Rockland County to join a fellowship community about a year before he died.
Garnett died at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital on Jan. 23, 2014, four days after he was admitted and doctors discovered his skyrocketing salt levels.
“It is still a mystery as to what caused Garnett’s death,” Spears’ lawyer, Stephen Riebling, said in court Monday.
He added that he was “disappointed” with the verdict and plans to appeal the case.
But DiFiore said she is “confident the conviction will be upheld.”
While it was not brought up in the trial, doctors have speculated that Spears has a rare psychological syndrome, Munchausen by proxy. It causes a parent to intentionally harm their child for attention.
She is due back in court April 8 for her sentencing.
