An Illinois mother charged with murdering her 2-year-old son is claiming through her attorneys that she was in the grip of a "psychotic episode" when the boy was killed.
Corie Walsh, 38, is accused of hanging her toddler from the rafters of the familys basement, and prosecutors allege she told police she believed the child was the " anti-Christ" and the "devil." According to The Post Millennial, prosecutors further contend that Walsh had become intensely fixated on the high-profile Lindsay Clancy case, in which a Massachusetts mother admitted to killing her three children by strangulation before attempting suicide.
Defense attorney Andrea Lyon maintains that Walsh experienced a profound mental collapse at the time of the killing and should be viewed through that lens. Police were dispatched to the residence on Tuesday after a teenage neighbor discovered the boy unresponsive in the basement and attempted CPR, but the child was later pronounced dead at the hospital, with the coroner ruling the cause as asphyxia.
"It is also a tragedy that Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened. It is our hope that through a thorough presentation and investigation of the facts, that all of us will come to see this heartbreak for what it is," Lyon said, per CBS News. Walsh, who was reportedly found in a bathtub with cuts on her wrists and thighs, was treated for non-life-threatening injuries before being transferred to the Will County Adult Detention Facility.
Walsh is scheduled to appear in court on September 8 as prosecutors pursue a murder charge in a case that will likely test the boundaries of mental-illness defenses. The Illinois Department of Child and Family Services has stated it had no prior involvement with the Walsh family before this incident, raising difficult questions about how such a tragedy could unfold without any warning signs reaching authorities.
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