Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some, readers’ discretion advised.

 

Garnett-Paul Thompson Spears was a 5-year-old boy who died at a hospital in suburban Valhalla, New York. He was murdered by his mother, Lacey Spears, who injected him with high levels of sodium, leading to swelling in his brain.
After his death, Garnett’s mother, Lacey Spears, was charged with second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter of her 5-year-old son. On March 2, 2015, a jury found Spears guilty of murdering her son by poisoning him with table salt, which she had administered to him from infancy through his feeding tube.

On April 8, 2015, a judge sentenced Spears to 20 years to life in prison for the death of her son. The judge in the case, Robert Neary, acknowledged that Lacey Spears suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and therefore did not sentence her to the maximum of 25 years in prison before parole eligibility. Her murder conviction was upheld in state appellate court and the state’s highest court declined to review her conviction.

As of January 2023, she is imprisoned at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, and eligible for parole no earlier than June 12, 2034.

Lacey Spears was born and raised in Decatur, Alabama. Lonely as a single mother and desperate for attention, Lacey constantly posted on social media about her son’s health struggles, even going so far as to start a blog devoted to chronicling her search for a cure for whatever illnesses plagued him. Telling friends she wanted to leave Alabama, Lacey moved with Garnett to Florida to live with her maternal grandmother, Peggy.
Eventually, she moved with her son to the town of Chestnut Ridge, New York, 14 months prior to Garnett’s death. In New York, Lacey and Garnett lived in a community called The Fellowship for elderly and disabled people. In explaining her son’s paternity, she created a fictional character, police officer Blake, who died in a car accident, to be Garnett’s father.

She lied to Garnett’s biological father, Chris Hill, that Garnett was not his son and threatened him to keep distance from her and Garnett. Garrett and lacey Spears .

Lacey Spears, who poisoned her 5-year-old to death with salt through his feeding tube, plans to appeal her conviction of second-degree murder. As her lawyers finalize the papers, here are some highlights from last year’s trial, with links to some of the testimony.
The case gained significant media attention because Spears chronicled her son’s demise on Facebook. When a judge sentenced her last April to 20-years-to-life in prison, he gave some leniency, convinced she suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare mental disorder in which a caregiver injures someone to seek attention.

“This case has never been about Garnett. It’s all about Lacey, mother of the year.”
Westchester Assistant District Attorney Patricia Murphy

Prosecutors said Spears planned killing

“Lacey Spears is not an innocent mother grieving the death of her son,” said Westchester Assistant District Attorney Doreen Lloyd in her opening statement last February. “Lacey Spears is a calculating child killer who researched, planned and executed the intentional poisoning of her son…She is no longer the mother of Garnett Spears because she murdered him.”

“Let me be clear,” said Spears’ lawyer Stephen Riebling in his opening statement. “You will not hear a single witness, not one testify…that anyone saw Lacey Spears do anything, give anything or feed anything to her son that would have caused his sodium level to rise or which would have caused his death.”

When Garnett was extremely sick at Nyack Hospital on Jan. 19, 2014, clutching his head, screaming and dry heaving, Spears said the last time he exhibited those symptoms his sodium level was high, nurse Nora Bompensiero testified. As hospital staff waited for Garnett to be airlifted to Westchester Medical Center — after his sodium level spiked from 144 to 182

Bompensiero testified: “Lacey came back into the room and I said to her, ‘mom, like you were right, the sodium was elevated,’ and she said ‘yeah, I know, I know my Garnett.’

Doctor had no explanation for sodium spike, but trusted mom

Dr. Ariel Sherbany, a pediatric neurologist, was “very puzzled,” by Garnett’s sodium spike at Nyack Hospital, but testified medical school training was to give the mother the benefit of the doubt. “.. I went over to the mother and said was he drinking a lot, urinating a lot, you know trying to find some reason,” Sherbany testified.

 

Dr. Steven Kernie, a pediatric critical care physician, testified that unlike many other children, Garnett couldn’t vomit because of a surgical procedure he had when he was younger to treat chronic acid reflux.

“I don’t know if I explained it, what a nissen fundoplication is in children – this is done in children, not very rarely, who are unable to tolerate feeds…” Kernie testified. “..and one of the reasons we as physicians don’t like recommending that procedure except in extreme cases is because you lose the ability to vomit…” He also testified that if you gave an average child a teaspoon of salt by mouth “they would immediately spit it out” and the only way to get salt into a five-year-old is “by forcing it into some kind of feeding tube.

As Garnett was dying at Westchester Medical Center, his mother updated Facebook, her friend Nellie Grossenbacher testified. “Lacey Spears had posted numerous pictures and updates – regarding his health including pictures of him brain dead and on life support…,” Grossenbacher testified. Grossenbacher also recalled seeing Spears for a few minutes after Garnett died to exchange some belongings and said Spears was “was very concerned about what the papers were saying and what people in the school community were saying,” but didn’t mention her son.

Garnett couldn’t vomit because of a surgical procedure

When it was clear Garnett wouldn’t recover, Dr. Carey Goltzman, director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, felt he had a legal obligation to call Child Protective Services because he suspected Spears may have poisoned her son with salt through his feeding tube, he testified. Asked by prosecutors how Spears responded to being told CPS was being called,

Goltzman testified, “She had a very flat affect. She would stare at me and I felt like she was looking right through me.”

Spears told friend to remove feeding bag

After Garnett was declared brain dead, Spears spoke to a friend on the telephone and asked he rin a “very urgent, serious” manner, to go to Spears’ apartment and remove a feeding bag that later tested positive for high sodium levels.

“She wanted me to go to her house and get a feeding bag in the middle of her living room and throw it away and not tell anybody, and, yes, that is what she said, asked me to do, and she said ‘can you do it now?’ ” Valerie Plauche testified.

In closing arguments, Westchester Assistant District Attorney Patricia Murphy encouraged jurors to watch footage from the video EEG that was set up at Nyack Hospital to monitor Garnett for seizure activity and see whether Spears showed Garnett affection.

“See if ever once, in whatever segment of that video you want to look at, see if she has ever ever hugged her son,” Murphy said.
“See if she has ever kissed her son.” When Spears threw herself on the hospital floor and flailed around upon learning Garnett was brain dead, Murphy suggested it was nothing more than a “performance.” Murphy said, “Ladies and gentleman, it has always been about Lacey. This case has never been about Garnett. It’s all about Lacey, mother of the year.”

 

Years before Lacey Spears poisoned her own son, three children became sick while under the mommy blogger’s care, a new book claims.
In the bombshell release, My Sweet Angel, author John Glatt alleged that after digging deep into the 27-year-old’s past, he discovered that three kids had developed serious ear infections after being under Spears’ watch.
Her son, Garnett, also suffered an infection at the time, Glatt claimed.
According to the author, the other children began to improve as soon as their mothers, who Spears had befriended, cut them off from her care.

As RadarOnline.com reported, Spears was very active on social media in the days leading up to Garnett’s death, chronicling his declining health in great detail. According to prosecuting lawyers, the boy’s sodium levels rose to a dangerous level with no medical explanation. His condition worsened to the point of a swollen brain, seizures and, ultimately, death.

The single mother, who moved from Chestnut Ridge, New York, to Kentucky after her son passed away, reportedly administered toxic levels of salt through a feeding tube. Evidence in the case also showed that she had researched “dangers of high sodium” several days before Garnett was admitted to hospital.

Garnett Spears was born in Alabama on Dec. 3, 2008. People close to his mother, Lacey Spears, said she seemed to be a loving and caring mother.
In her only interview, Spears explains to “48 Hours,” that Garnett’s health issues began just weeks later and he was diagnosed with failure to thrive. “He was in and out of the hospital for the first nine weeks of his life, and then — even for a period of time afterwards.”
Plagued by health issues, Lacey Spears took Garnett to over a dozen medical facilities. In her only interview, she told “48 Hours,” “Garnett had severe ear infections … and the biggest problem we had was we couldn’t get him to eat … so he was losing weight…he just would not take a bottle, he would not take baby food, he would not nurse.”

At 10 weeks old, doctors at a hospital in Alabama found his sodium levels to be unusually high at 180. The normal range is 140 for infants.
According to Lacey Spears, she still couldn’t get Garnett to eat and gain weight. So she took him to more doctors and at 9 months old, he had surgery to insert a feeding tube commonly referred to as a G-tube, where nutrients go directly into an opening in the abdomen, either through a hanging bag or a bottle or through a syringe.
Lacey Spears documented her life with Garnett on social media. She included photos of him during hospital stays and frequently posted on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and a blog she created,

“Garnett’s Journey.”

 

“48 Hours” obtained documents that revealed suspicions that Lacey Spears suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a condition where illnesses may be faked or induced in someone else, usually a mother onto her child, and it’s mostly to seek attention.

Lacey Spears and her son, Garnett, moved from Alabama to Florida where she continued to take Garnett to various doctors. Some friends back in her hometown however say Garnett seemed healthy. “The day that they came to visit, Garnett was just a bouncing little 2-year-old kid, running around. I never thought he was sick or anything. And then we had lunch and he ate just like a normal 2-year old would do,” says friend Shawna Lynch.
In 2012, Lacey and Garnett Spears moved to Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. They lived in an alternative and holistic living community called The Fellowship Community, where Spears worked taking care of the elderly and Garnett attended school.
Life at the Fellowship was going well for Lacey Spears, and for Garnett, who after living there for a year-and-a-half, was thriving. “He was a little social butterfly and he loved it,” Spears tells “48 Hours.”

Lacey Spears sits on a hospital bed with her son Garnett on Jan. 17, 2014, after he was admitted into New York’s Nyack Hospital. A video EEG was set up using a special cap on his head, wired to a machine that monitors brain activity. Meanwhile, with his mother’s consent, a camera recorded Garnett in the room.

Everything seemed normal but almost two days after being admitted, he took a turn for the worse. Tests later showed that Garnett’s sodium levels, which were a normal 138 when he was admitted, rose to dangerous levels of 182. This is a frame of the video EEG footage before Garnett’s condition changed.
Garnett Spears was airlifted to Westchester’s Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital. His condition improved but the recovery lasted less than 24 hours. The high sodium levels had already caused Garnett’s brain to swell. He was placed on life support. In her only interview, Spears she tells “48 Hours” she couldn’t understand why.

“I don’t know what’s happening … this is my 5-year-old son on life support.”

 

On Jan. 23, 2014, Garnett Spears was officially declared dead. Doctors suspected Lacey Spears poisoned her son with salt and called for a police investigation. Police immediately acquired search warrants to enter her home and they seized hundreds of items including the bottle of sea salt seen in this photo.

During the second search warrant, almost two days later, police returned to The Fellowship Community. Two feeding bags were recovered. Lab reports later reveal they contained massive amounts of sodium. Each bag had at least, according to officials, the equivalent of 69 small packets of salt. Retired Westchester County Det. Daniel Carfi said, “The amounts of sodium that were in those bags were lethal.”

Lacey Spears was arrested on June 17, 2014, almost five months after her son’s death.

Lacey Spears’ trial began on Feb. 3, 2015. Her legal team insists that Garnett’s death was caused by a medical mistake with Nyack Hospital at fault. Stephen Riebling, right, one of Spears’ attorneys, tells “48 Hours,” “They[Nyack Hospital changed his diet that caused or exacerbated his stomach problem … they didn’t give him the necessary medication during the day to combat dehydration. Then they exacerbated the dehydration

On March 2, 2015, after less than three days of deliberations, jurors found Lacey Spears guilty of second-degree murder.
by giving him a rapid infusion of IV solution.”

9 Apr 2015
Lacey Spears’ chilling blog: How mum who killed son with salt wrote online about his ‘mystery illness.

Lacey Spears had ‘Munchausen by proxy syndrome’, forcing illness onto five-year-old Garnett while blogging for attention about his hospital trips
With photos of golden-mopped Garnett on his bike and in the paddling pool, it looked like any caring mum’s scrapbook.
But Lacey Spears’ blog about her poorly son hid the truth – that she caused his mystery illness by force-feeding him salt through a tube in his stomach.
Spears, from Chestnut Ridge, New York, was jailed for 20 years yesterday after a jury convicted her of murdering the five-year-old.
It emerged she had kept a blog, Garnett’s Journey, which showed him on days out in her child car seat in between his regular hospital trips.

One photo showed Garnett in an alligator onesie with the caption:

“The past year has been the hardest year of my life.”
“I don’t imagine the next will be easy but worth living through.”
Another showed the boy on a toy tractor and included a chilling reference to his illness.
“What a month and it’s only half over,” 27-year-old Spears wrote.
“Garnett has enjoyed driving his tractor through our neighborhood, playing in the rain, riding his bike for hours and we spent a few days in the hospital.”
On Twitter, she added: “My son is my everything!!! I love him so much :)”

Her blog spent many of its words mourning the supposed loss of Garnett’s father, who Spears claimed had died in a car crash.

But a man claiming to be the father later came forward, saying he was very much alive and had been trying to contact his son.

“Like any other morning in our home I stood at the kitchen sink somewhere between 1am and 3am washing dishes,” she wrote.
“I peered through the kitchen window to see my son peacefully sitting in his “rock chair” watching cartoons! Yes that’s right, 1 in the morning and he is awake.
“Thinking about what needed to be done that day and how to make our errands, doctor visits, whatever it may be as fun and peaceful for Garnett.
“I was lost in thought only be brought back to reality when a little hand pulled on my shorts and said “Mommy where is MY DADDY?”
“As a parent we want to protect our child from anything that could harm or hurt them.
“So aswering this simple question was a challenge but I had finally found a way to explain to Garnett just ‘where’ his daddy was.”

Spears told investigators her son suffered from a slew of medical problems from Crohn’s disease and Celiac diseases to ear abnormalities, according to court papers. Her sentence yesterday was less than the maximum penalty of 25 years to life requested by the prosecution.

Father whose son, 5, was poisoned to death with salt by his ex says he
hopes she gets ‘beat to death in prison’ after she is sentenced to 20 years

The ex of a woman convicted of killing their five-year-old son by poisoning him with salt has lashed out on Facebook just days after she was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
Lacey Spears of Scottsville, Kentucky, who was spared the maximum 25 years to life, appeared emotionless as the verdict was read in the death of her son Garnett-Paul Spears.
The boy’s father, Chris Hill, was not emotionless however and wrote of his wife’s sentence; ‘Please put her in general population! Thats all im asking for! Because she wont make it.’
As the conversation continued on his Facebook page the father, who said he was tired of crying over the loss of his boy, stated; ‘Crazy a** woman needs to be beat to death in prison.’
He also noted his ex’s complete lack of emotion at her sentencing, writing; ‘No emotion what so ever. What the hell!??’

 

The New York judge who sentenced Spears on Wednesday said she suffers from a mental illness and said the crime was still ‘unfathomable in its cruelty.’
Prosecutors asked for the maximum sentence, saying Spears made her son ill because she had a bizarre need for attention.
Spears’ lawyer requested the minimum 15 years to life – he called her a hardworking single mother who gave her son unconditional love.
Prosecutors said Spears loaded the hospitalized boy’s feeding tube with a lethal amount of salt and kept on blogging.
Spears’ lawyer Stephen Riebling said she was innocent and blamed the hospital for negligence as he revealed plans to appeal the verdict.

While awaiting sentencing, she was being held at Westchester County jail in Valhalla, said a spokesman for Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore.
Prosecutors blamed Spears, who lived in Chestnut Ridge, about 32 miles north of New York City, for her son’s short and tormented life.
‘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,’ DiFiore said after Spears was convicted.

 

‘Using the child’s ‘illnesses’ to self aggrandize herself, her actions directly lead to her son’s tortured death,’ the prosecutor said.

Spears told investigators that her blond, blue-eyed son, whose father was killed in a car accident, suffered from a slew of medical problems from Chrohn’s and Celiac diseases to ear abnormalities, according to court papers.
Her social media posts about his ongoing problems and hospitalizations, including photos of his final hours on life support, were introduced as evidence by the prosecution at trial.

“By not imposing the maximum, I’m exhibiting something you didn’t show your son – namely mercy,” said Judge Robert Neary in the Westchester County Courthouse in Valhalla.

A jury convicted Spears of second-degree murder in Garnett’s 2014 death at Westchester Medical Center.

Assistant District Attorney Doreen Lloyd described Garnett as a normal, healthy child whose illnesses were induced by his mother.

She eventually killed him by putting a lethal amount of salt into the hospitalised boy’s feeding tube, all the while blogging and posting pictures to Facebook.
She continued to portray him as a sick child for her own bizarre need for attention.

“She used that feeding tube as a weapon to kill him,” Lloyd said.

Defense lawyers, who asked for the minimum sentence of 15 years to life and filed a notice of appeal on Wednesday, said Spears was innocent and blamed the hospital for negligence.
The judge described her as mentally ill and identified her condition as “Munchausen by proxy syndrome,” in which a caregiver fabricates a medical problem for someone in their care.

“Your crime is unfathomable in its cruelty. How could a mother ever treat her child in such a callous, inhumane manner?” the judge said

 

When Chris Hill heard from a friend that Garnett Spears was dying at Westchester Medical Center in January, he reached out to Garnett’s mom, Lacey Spears, in the only way he knew how: He sent her a Facebook friend request. Then he waited. And waited. It’s a strange way for a father to get news about his son, but Hill tried it, anyway. He had never met Garnett, hadn’t seen Spears since shortly after their boy was born five years earlier.Spears, 26, had taken him from Alabama, where Garnett was born, to Florida and then on to Fellowship Community in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. And now Garnett-Paul Thompson Spears was dying nearly a thousand miles away from Hill.

On Jan. 23, 2014, the day Garnett died, Hill went on to the public part of Spears’ Facebook page, copied a photo and shared it on his page, with the status update:

“This is my other son Garnett, and he is 5 years old. I never get to see him because his mom just up, and moved to New York. Well, Friday he had some severe seizures that caused his brain to swell, and now is brain dead, and on life support…. Even though I don’t get to see him, I feel like he’s been with me this hole  time. IM not going to lie. I cried for hours when I found this out, and it will continue to hurt till the day I die.”

 

And still he waited for Spears to click on an icon on Facebook to let him back into her world in the smallest way, a way that would open dozens of other photos that she shared with her friends, including graphic photos of Garnett on his deathbed. Spears had spent the boy’s five years chronicling his life on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.
Hill concedes with self-deprecating humor that alcohol may have cost him brain cells, and his memory isn’t what it was, but he’s certain of one thing: Garnett Spears was his son, even if Spears told people otherwise.
A stout, balding 30-year-old garage-door installer, he now lives in Athens, Ala., with a girlfriend.

Early encounters
In 2008, Hill lived in the Cedar Key Apartments in Decatur, Ala., downstairs from the two-bedroom apartment where Spears lived with her older sister, Rebecca. To get to her apartment, Spears had to pass Hill’s.
Before he met Spears, he would joke about her.

“We used to make fun of her, called her ‘the predator,’ ” Hill recalled of watching with his ex-girlfriend as Spears walked without expression to her apartment. “She was quiet. You’d really have to stop her, say ‘Hey, hey, hey’ for her to talk to you. She was cold, or just very antisocial. Another breed altogether, like nothing I’ve ever dealt with before.”
One day, Spears knocked at Hill’s door to ask a favor.
“She asked me if I’d put a baby crib together for her,” said Hill. During this period, Spears was caring for Jonathon Strain, a friend’s baby, and would often keep him overnight and on weekends. In fact, she told some friends “JonJon” was her own child.

 

“I started putting it together and she started asking me personal questions,” he said. “I think she was lonely. I hadn’t seen anybody go up to her apartment in some time. I just figured she needed some attention.”
In the days that followed, that “attention” became sex; “neighbors with benefits,” as Hill puts it.
“We hooked up for a little while,” he said.
The relationship lasted a few months then Spears broke it off, he said. Soon after, she told Hill she was pregnant. They talked about marriage, even started looking at books to find a name for the baby.

“She said ‘I like Garnett.’ I said, ‘No. Let’s keep looking,’ ” Hill recalled. “We were acting like we were a couple. I was trying to get her to marry me and see if we could make it work.”
Then something happened. Spears changed.
“She went from wanting to be married to saying ‘He’s not your kid,’ ” he said.
It was the first indication of a story brewing and that Spears planned to deny him access to the baby she was carrying.

In the years that followed, Lacey Spears told friends — and even the slightest acquaintances — that her “soul mate and Garnett’s Daddy” was a police officer named Blake who died in a car accident.
Spears created a blog and devoted its only two posts to the loss of Blake.
On Sept. 18, 2012, she wrote: “We have together survived nearly 365 days, a complete year without Blake, my soul mate and Garnett’s Daddy. … The past year has been the hardest year of my life.”
Mention of this “soul mate” on social media had Spears’ Alabama friends scratching their heads.
“(Blake) was never in any pictures when Garnett was born, but she was crying about him on Facebook posts, saying he was the love of her life, that he was always there for her,” said Riley Vaughn, 26, who knew Spears when she lived in Decatur. “That’s why I stopped Facebooking her. I was just done with her after that, after realizing that most of the stuff she was saying just wasn’t true.”

Hill wasn’t in any pictures when Garnett was born, either. In fact, he said he never met the blond and bubbly little boy his mother called “Garnett the Great,” even though he lived one floor down. Instead, he would catch glimpses of the newborn boy with Spears’ comings and goings.
“We had already split up, and she was saying he wasn’t mine, and to leave her alone. I only saw her, and him, when she would get out of her car to walk upstairs. I would hear her car door shut, and hear him cry. Then I would look out of my window to try and get a look at him.”
Hill said Spears threatened to call police if he didn’t keep his distance.
He vaguely remembers Spears mentioning a man named Blake as “an ex, way before me … dark hair.”
Hill can’t explain Spears’ change of heart, stomping any talk of marriage.

“All of a sudden, she just acted like I didn’t exist. She just ended it. She just wanted to be a mother and not have a father involved.”

Garnett-Paul Thompson Spears weighed 6 pounds, 14 ounces when he was born Dec. 3, 2008, in Huntsville Hospital. The birth announcement in the Decatur Daily newspaper lists no father.

Police are digging into the stories Spears told, as they investigate the death of her 5-year-old son. Her lawyer, David Sachs, declined to comment.
The Blake story is among a string of narratives Spears presented to her online public, sad stories that won her sympathy, prayers and attention from a social media circle who followed her efforts to raise her sickly son alone and to make him well.

Ginger Dabbs-Anderson was another close friend who would have Spears and Garnett over to her house and then read online later that Spears said she was with Blake at the time.

“She was over here, and I never saw anybody named Blake, or whatever his name was. I think it was a made-up picture, a fabricated situation. That was not even his daddy. His daddy, I met him. He lives in Decatur. Chris.”

Reconnecting with Garnett’s father
A week after Garnett died, Spears accepted Hill’s friend request.
The wait was over.
They started texting, and had a couple of phone conversations. Years had passed since their brief physical relationship, but the two communicated as two grieving parents who had just lost their child. In the texts, Spears laid to rest the idea of Blake.

“I need you right now,” she texted on Feb. 18. “This is OUR SON.”
On Feb. 19, she texted: “Chris, you know we will always be a part of each others lifes for the rest of our time here. We have a son together.””We may not have worked out but now we both need each other. Friends at the very least. Do you agree?”
In other messages, Spears texted her pain: “I WANT G Back” and “I feel OK at moments and then it hits me like a thousand pound weight.” She later texted “I want to die.”
Spears also noted the police investigation.
“I know they are looking at me,” she wrote to Hill on Feb. 20. “I WOULD NEVER HURT MY BABY.”

 

In one text, Hill asks Spears about the news reports that suggest police are investigating whether Garnett was poisoned with salt. He writes

 “Did they tell u about a salt deal?”
Spears replies: “What?” … “Salt?” … “What does this mean.” Then “Just in disbelief.”
Hill comforts her, then asks why Spears lied about Garnett’s father being a man named Blake who died in a car crash.
“I wanted to protect Garnett,” she replied. “… Everything I DID or said was to protect G.”

 

“I hear them talking about me as I walk by.” They call me ‘baby killer,’ and “mother of the year” but I just ignore them because I know inside, that is not the person that I am”

These are the words of twenty-eight-year-old Lacey Spears, who was convicted in March of 2015 of murdering her five-year-old son by administering lethal doses of salt through his feeding tube. It is suspected that Lacey suffers from Factious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA) formerly Munchausen Syndrome by proxy (MSP) a psychological disorder in which a child’s primary caretaker, most commonly the mother, fabricates or causes real symptoms in the child to garner attention for themselves. The individual with FDIA gains attention by seeking medical care for exaggerated or completely fake symptoms of the child. Lacey denies this diagnosis stating she has undergone a thorough psychological evaluation and does not have the condition, but experts believe that her history with Garnett, the many hospitalizations and the trail of then-unexplained medical conditions which plagued her young son say otherwise.

The exact cause of factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA) is unknown, but some research suggests that the early loss of a primary caretaker or a history of childhood abuse or neglect may increase the likelihood of developing the disorder. What is know is that a person with FDIA uses the many trips to the doctor, hospitalizations and complicated medical treatments often provided their child as a means of earning praise for their devotion to their child. They will often use the illness as a way of garnering sympathy and concern from friends, family, physicians and peripheral hospital staff, basking in the attention of being a suffering mother with a sick child.

Garnett came into the world in the winter of 2008, the product of a relationship between Lacey and a mystery man by the name of Blake, a police officer who was supposedly killed in auto accident prior to the baby’s birth. Friends and family members who were close to Lacey during this time, never met Blake or even heard his name. Garnett’s real father, a garage door installer named Chris Hill, never even got to meet his son.

Garnett arrived healthy but almost immediately, began to develop problems with malnutrition and dehydration. When the child was life flighted to Children’s Hospital of Alabama in 2009,

he was “so severely dehydrated his tiny 2 ½ month old body was in shock.” Said Dr. Robert Pass who cared for Garnett during his hospital stay. A blood draw showed significantly high levels of sodium. “An MRI, EEG, CT, chest X-Ray and swallowing study were completed in a effort to get to the bottom of Garnett’s problem and all of tests were normal” testified Dr. Pass at Lacey’s trial in March of 2014. “

According to Lacey’s social media posts, in the first year of his life, Baby Garnett was hospitalized 23 times, once for almost five weeks and by the time he had reached nine months old, his doctors were concerned he was not receiving the essential nutrients he needed to survive and surgically placed a feeding tube directly into his stomach. It was a decision that would prove instrumental in his death.

The feeding tube is normally used in a hospital setting but can also be used at home but a method of treatment to be used when all other solutions have been exhausted and this was no exception. Multiple physicians submitted to Lacey the suggestion that Garnett’s feeding tube be removed when it seemed the child was improving but Lacey was resistant to the idea. Instead, each time a doctor wanted to remove the tube, she took her son to a new doctor and a new hospital where the clinicians were not as familiar with the child or the history. Time and time again, the symptoms lessened while Garnett was under the care of the medical staff but flared up once he returned home.

With each stay, Lacey’s group of sympathizers continued to grow. According to their online posts, they enveloped the frazzled mom in their prayers and well wishes when hope seemed out of reach and celebrated with her when Garnett rallied against yet another mysterious ailment.

Lacey’s online posse followed the little makeshift family as they moved from her hometown of Decatur, AL to Clearwater, FL where she and Garnett lived for a time with her grandmother. Life in Clearwater seemed tranquil, but the peace was short lived. Garnett’s medical issues continued to persist. In Lacey’s words, “The main problem we had was we could not get him to eat and he would projectile vomit.” Many of Lacey’s friends commented that although the boy ate well for them and seemed to experience no issues, they never saw Lacey prepare food for Garnett and she always fed him through the feeding tube.
Spears moved to Fellowship Community, a commune-like enclave located in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y, 35 miles northwest of New York City. It was Lacey’s hope that the organic-based life style would be good for Garnett and both she and her child seemed to thrive there. She assisted in caring for the seniors who resided in the community and everyone loved the bright-eyed little boy.

Garnett’s pediatrician testified that he noticed that Garnett seemed fine at his first pediatric appointment on March 22, 2013.

“Garnett was playful, trotting happily around the office.” Despite his mother’s report that he had been suffering high fevers and seizures. “Something just did not seem right” He told the court that his priority had always been to remove the tube and he had originated numerous conversations with Lacy Spears to this effect. The mother was always resistant to consenting to the necessary testing.”

When another hospital physician, Dr, Ivan Danenov, told Spears that Garnett needed a biopsy to rule out celiac disease, Lacey readily agreed to the painful procedure, but was resistant to the suggestion of a nutritional evaluation that might allow the removal of her child’s feeding tube.

“It was my priority to remove Garnett’s feeding tube. I had numerous conversations with Lacy Spears to this effect and the mother was always resistant to consenting to the necessary testing.”

The feeding tube was to be the solution everyone had hoped for but even after insertion, Garnett’s problems continued, as did the hospitalizations. Lacey Spears told anyone who would listen that her son suffered from Crohn’s and Celiac disease, high fevers, seizures, as well as a slew of other conditions. Garnett was repeatedly admitted with elevated sodium levels and Lacey continued to act as the anguished mom of a kid with an unknown illness.

“She continued to portray him as a sick child for her own twisted need for attention.” said Assistant District Attorney Doreen Lloyd.

During the trial. she described Garnett Spears as a normal, healthy youngster who illnesses were caused by his mother.

 

The last hospitalization brought Garnett to Nyack Hospital. Garnett had just been flown from Nyack Hospital to the Children’s Hospital in Westchester and Lacey Spears was dashing into his room when a doctor who had begun to put the facts together, intercepted her outside his room. He told her it was not possible for the body of a 5-year-old to produce such high sodium levels. “Something is going on here,” he admonished.

procecutors claime that just off the camera in the bathroom, lacey gave garnet a lethal dose of salt. which moments later caused his brain to swell  and  ultimately killed  him.

But theres´s more, the video tap shows lacey on  her phone doing google searches.

” she had been on the phone lying in the bed, and we obserwed  that, some of those  searches  were salt posining  ,  on the  phone we can connect the time of the phone to the video and the search that she was doing.   detective  kirk budnick/ town of Ramapo police deraprtement.

The last hospitalization brought  Garnett to Nyack Hospital. Garnett had just been flown from Nyack Hospital to the Children’s Hospital in Westchester and Lacey Spears was dashing into his room when a doctor who had begun to put the facts together, intercepted her outside his room. He told her it was not possible for the body of a 5-year-old to produce such high sodium levels.

“Something is going on here,” he admonished.

Two months later, the death of Garnett Spears was ruled a homicide by the Westchester Coroner’s Office. From the beginning, Spears, who resided with her son in the Fellowship Community in Chestnut Ridge, had asked her neighbor to remove the feeding bag containing the high concentration of sodium and had been caught on camera taking her son into the bathroom numerous times, shortly before his death, was the focus of the investigation.

Doctors notified police shortly after Garnett’s arrival there. By Tuesday afternoon, detectives had arrived and were interviewing Spears, her friends, family members and staff. Spears was told she was not allowed to leave the leave the pediatric ward but was still permitted to be with her son in his room.
Friends and others who remained at the hospital, and sources acquainted with the case, provided law enforcement with the details of into those final at Nyack Hospital and the Westchester Medical Center.
It started with Garnett being rushed to Nyack Hospital after suffering a seizure Friday, Jan. 17. Shortly after his arrival, Spears began posting online pictures of her son, one of him hanging out in his bed.

She wrote he was well enough to be “up and running circles around the hospital”.

Police suspected Spears had poisoned her son with salt, possibly through a tube connected to his abdomen and lied about when she last used the feeding tube to feed him. One of the most damning pieces of evidence was uncovered during the investigation, thanks to a neighbor who lived near the Spears. According to the woman, Lacey Spears called her from her child’s deathbed on the morning of Jan. 22 and asked her to get rid of the bag. The neighbour did as she was asked and took the bag from the Spears’ home but later handed it over to authorities.

In a MySpace album titled “Garnett Paul 9-12 Months,” Lacey Spears posted a photo of Garnett Spears with the newly installed feeding tube visible.

Police carefully scrutinized video surveillance from both hospitals. At Nyack, the boy was mostly restricted to a room with a video monitor trained on his small body. At Westchester Medical Center, video footage studied by law enforcement showed times when Spears took Garnett to the private bathroom and these trips were not filmed. The police believed it was during one of these trips that Lacey poisoned him for the last time.
In the final days leading up to Garnett’s death on Jan 23, his mother kept her followers updated about his condition on social media, sharing pictures of her only child dying as she urged supporters“Not to give up!!!”

“She used the feeding tube as a weapon to kill him,” Lloyd said. The judge described her as mentally unstable as he sentenced her to 20 years for the heartless murder of her only child.
“Your crime is bottomless in its cruelty. How a mother could ever treat her child in such a methodically calloused, inhumane manner, I will never comprehend.”

 

 

 

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