Following are 35 cases in which mothers coaxed or ordered their own children to commit murder.
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1740 – Elizabeth Branch – Taunton, Somerset, England
Elizabeth Branch and her daughter Mary were executed for the
murder of a 13-year-old servant girl. They had tortured this and other victims
in their employ mercilessly. One boy was tortured until he soiled himself and
was then forced to eat his own excrement. It was suspected that Mrs. Branch has
murdered her husband and her own mother and another servant girl.
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While
her husband was eating, Roxalana Druse “stole up behind him and shot
him. The daughter Mary, who had been provided with a rope noose, then
appeared upon the scene, threw the cord about him and dragged him to the
floor. Mrs. Druse then called Frank Grates back into the house. Handing
the boy the pistol, she said it would not go off, and ordered him to
shoot her husband or himself be shot. The deed commanded seemed more
desirable to the youngster than its alternative, and he commenced the
work with trembling alacrity. But before he had emptied all the chambers
of the revolver the infuriated female tore the pistol from his hand and
finished the horrid task herself. Then with an ax she cut off the dying
man's head, dismembered the body and chopped it small enough to burn
and boil, the boys gathering shingles to make right hot fires in both
stoves. All this with the assistance of her daughter Mary and in the
presence of her little son George. Then she fell into the errors that
finally led to her detection. The fragments of the body were thrown into
the boiler and two red-hot stoves.”
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Sexually tortured and murdered 3 orphan girls. Her son’s participation was not clear, but he was at least a passive participant.
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1901 – Mrs. Stallion – Aurora, Missouri
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1887 – Kate
& Kit Kelly (Kelly Family) – No Man’s Land, Kansas, USA
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Sexually tortured and murdered 3 orphan girls. Her son’s participation was not clear, but he was at least a passive participant.
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1897 – Nancy Staffleback – Galena, Kansas – Leader of a murderous clan guilty of at least 6
murders; 2 sons convicted along with their mother.
“George and Ed Staffleback have been found guilty of murder
in the first degree and sentenced to the penitentiary for life, while the
mother, hoary in crime as in years – she is now 65 – has been found guilty of
murder in the second degree and will no doubt end her years in prison, having
received a twenty-five-year sentence.”
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1901 – Mrs. Stallion – Aurora, Missouri
Mrs.
John Stallion and two sons by a former marriage murdered Alice
Stallion, her step daughter, aged sixteen. The boys held Alice while her
mother broke her skull with a poker. The body was then thrown in the
James river.
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1909 – Olga Ivanova Tamarin – Kurdino village, Novaya Ladoga, Russia
1909 – Olga Ivanova Tamarin – Kurdino village, Novaya Ladoga, Russia
Mother and 17-year old daughter; leaders of a large gang; daughter lured
victims to the Tamarin home where they were robbed and murdered and
cannibalized. 27 corpses were found.
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At the instigation of his mother,
Baroness De Courvigny, who was a drunk, Robert De
Courvigny murdered his father. The wife had failed in poisoning her victim but
the son succeeded in the task by means of a bullet.
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1913 – Yates / Farris case – Troy, Tennessee
Mrs. Hennie Yates, thirty-six, and daughter, Floy Farris, fifteen, charged with the murder of Ligon Yates, twelve, and Ida May Yates, ten. They were the step-children of Hennie and the half-siblings of Floy. Children drowned in creek near home at Troy, Tenn. Mrs. Yates will give no other reason for committing the crime than: “They made my life miserable.” The woman is apparently rational, realizes the enormity of her crime, but does not in any way show that she is remorseful. . The little girl cowered in a separate cell as far away from her mother as she could get. She declares she is afraid of her mother and assisted in the murder only after she had been threatened with death by her parent if she refused.
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Mrs. Hennie Yates, thirty-six, and daughter, Floy Farris, fifteen, charged with the murder of Ligon Yates, twelve, and Ida May Yates, ten. They were the step-children of Hennie and the half-siblings of Floy. Children drowned in creek near home at Troy, Tenn. Mrs. Yates will give no other reason for committing the crime than: “They made my life miserable.” The woman is apparently rational, realizes the enormity of her crime, but does not in any way show that she is remorseful. . The little girl cowered in a separate cell as far away from her mother as she could get. She declares she is afraid of her mother and assisted in the murder only after she had been threatened with death by her parent if she refused.
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1919 – Broderick / Woodlock case – St. Louis, Missouri
Ursula Broderick claimed she killed her father, Thomas P. Broderick, when she was 12. She was acquitted of murder by a jury who had believed her testimony that she had been protecting her mother from being beaten, and when 16, murdered her step-father, Joseph F. Woodlock, whom she falsely claimed has attempted to rape her. She was found guilty after three trials. Testimony revealed that Ursula had attempted to bribe a witness to perjure herself by repeating in court the false rape accusation story. After Ursula’s conviction, Mrs. Woodlock was charged with the murder of her both husbands, the state contending that Ursua had lied to protect her mother.
Ursula Broderick claimed she killed her father, Thomas P. Broderick, when she was 12. She was acquitted of murder by a jury who had believed her testimony that she had been protecting her mother from being beaten, and when 16, murdered her step-father, Joseph F. Woodlock, whom she falsely claimed has attempted to rape her. She was found guilty after three trials. Testimony revealed that Ursula had attempted to bribe a witness to perjure herself by repeating in court the false rape accusation story. After Ursula’s conviction, Mrs. Woodlock was charged with the murder of her both husbands, the state contending that Ursua had lied to protect her mother.
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Ray
Clough, 14, shot his father, James A. Clough, to death after his mother
gave him the gun and instructed him to do the deed, falsely claiming
the boy’s two younger brothers had just been murdered by the father.
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Elizabeth
Potegian, an Armenian immigrant living in central California, was
accused of murdering her husband, two stepchildren. Mrs. Potegian under
arrest, accused her mother, Mrs. Maria Torosian. When the police went to
arrest the woman they found her body dangling from a rafter in her
home. She had hanged herself. On the same day Mrs. Potegian tried to
kill herself in her jail cell, slashing her wrists. During the
investigation it was learned that while living in Armenia, Mrs. Torosian
had been married six times, each husband meeting his death under
mysterious circumstances. Mrs. Potegian was tried for the murder of her
step-daughter, with her surviving son, Gordon, as the principal
prosecution witness, and was found guilty.
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1929 – Ethel Lewis –
St. Joseph, Michigan
Two demented mothers who murdered their five children
confessed to killing their newborns. Mrs. Okal Gorham, 25, said the babies were
poisoned or strangled to death by herself and her mother, Mrs. Ethel Lewis, 57.
she could give no reason for the acts but said she and her mother frequently
quarreled over family matters.
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Landlady, a Hungarian immigrant took out insurance on her
immigrant tenants and is suspected of many murders. Her son was implicated in
pushing one of them from a window, witnessed by a man and a small girl, after
poison failed to killed him.
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1933 – Dorothea Irene Turley – St. John, Arizona
Mattie Turley, 15, shot her father in the back with a shotgun, having been encouraged by her mother, Mrs. Dorothea Irene Turley, who had convinced the daughter that the spirit world had required the act, having used a Ouija Board session to elicit the death order. Mattie understood, she declared, that “mother must be freed in order to marry the handsome cowboy.”
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Mattie Turley, 15, shot her father in the back with a shotgun, having been encouraged by her mother, Mrs. Dorothea Irene Turley, who had convinced the daughter that the spirit world had required the act, having used a Ouija Board session to elicit the death order. Mattie understood, she declared, that “mother must be freed in order to marry the handsome cowboy.”
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“I’ll
buy you a car if you help me kill your Uncle Robert,” Mrs. May Carey,
52, told her sons Howard and James. They did it and – but not until
eight years later – one of them got hanged along with their
murder-coaching mom.
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In
prison since 1928, serving a long term for car theft which she
committed with her son, Earl De Costa Mayer, a crime for which he also
was also in prison, 73-year old, Mary (alias “Shoebox
Annie” French) confessed to the murder of the car’s owner, plus three
earlier murders, all four murders committed in league with her son. As
soon as Mayer learned he was to be prosecuted for murder he committed
suicide.
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Chloe
Davis, 11, was ordered by her mother, Lolita Davis – who had just
seconds before beaten to death with a hammer the little girl’s siblings
Daphne, 10, and Deborah, 7 – to beat her little brother Mark, 3, and the
mother herself with the weapon. A coroner’s jury decided Mark died from
his mother’s blows – not Chloe’s – and that Mrs. Davis died after
slashing her own wrists.
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During the trial of Leonarda Cianciulli for murdering three
women in succession and cooking their body parts to make soap and desserts, the
prosecution made an effort to prove that without assistance a woman could not
overpower his victims, dismember the bodies and transport them. Leonarda,
however, stood by her story that she committed the crimes alone and that her
son, Joseph Pansardi, had no
involvement. A 2008 documentary film, La saponificatrice
- Vita di Leonarda Cianciulli, argues that the murderess did indeed have
Joseph as her accomplice and that Leonarda lied to protect him and was indeed
successful in achieving that end.
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Mrs.
Gertrude Inez Brennan and two of her sons, Raymond, 23, and Robert,
16, killed 2 men she met through “lonely hearts club” letters. The men
were shot in the head buried in a pigpen on the Brennan farm; later the
bodies were dug up, burned and scattered on the city dump.
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Asthmatic 16-year-old Sylvia Likens was tortured for months
by her foster mother, her own children and neighborhood children, and
eventually killed. She was beaten, had cigarettes put out on her skin, was
forced to undress in the living room and insert an empty Coke bottle into private
parts. After the beatings, Sylvia was forced into a scalding hot bath so she
would be "cleansed of her sins." She was severely beaten and burned
for wetting her mattress while asleep. She was thrown down the cellar stairs
and locked in, given crackers for food and refused the right to use a bathroom.
Gertrude Baniszewski announced to her children that Sylvia was a
"prostitute, and she's proud of it; so we'll just put it on her
stomach." She took a large needle and began to carve the words "I'm a
prostitute and proud of it!" into Sylvia's stomach.
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1972 – Carolyn Elizabeth McCrary – Santa Barbara, Ca. – Ginger McCrary Taylor, 22,
daughter; Carolyn McCrary, 45.
“Mrs. McCrary is one in a family of five being questioned
about a variety of crimes across the nation, including about 22 murders.
Currently she is serving a nine-month sentence for harboring her son and
husband in a supermarket robbery in Santa Barbara.”
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It
was a feminist murder – committed in the heyday of post-1960s women’s
lib and involving four adult women and one 13-year-old girl, in a plot
led by the wife of targeted optometrist John Bradford. The motive, as
expressed by one of the killers, 18-year-old optometry assistant Joyce
Cummings: “All we wanted was an all-female lab.” The pre-planned excuse
was to be a concocted self-defense by a battered wife. The climax of the
crime was when Priscilla Bradford ordered her daughter (from a previous
marriage) to beat her bloodied, but still-alive, step-father with the
iron skillet, the iconic feminist weapon, on the head.
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In
1963 Theresa Jimmie Cross murdered the first of her three husbands. She
was acquitted in a Sacramento, California court of murder on the basis
of a fake self-defense claim. She married Robert Knorr, had four
children with him and, in 1970, divorced him and undermined her
children’s access to their father. She became increasingly abusive to
the children, with constant beatings, escalating into tantrums in which
she threw steak knives at them and put a gun to the head of her youngest
child, Terry, threatening to kill her. Mom also stabbed and on another
occasion shot Suesan, the bullet remaining in her body until the day
before her murder. She forced her children to assist her in the brutal
beatings of the chosen victim. When it came time to murder Suesan on
June 16, 1984, she ordered the girl’s brothers William and Robert to
burn their sister alive. Almost exactly a year later, on June 21, 1985,
Sheila, whom her mother had forced to prostitute herself to raise cash
for mom, died after having been beaten and tortured and locked in a
closet for three days. It was not until 1993 that she was finally
charged with the murders. To avoid the death penalty she pleaded guilty
on October 17, 1995 and received a sentence of two consecutive life
terms.
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1995 – Mary Tene Steiner (Tene-Bimbo Gypsy Clan) – San Francisco, Ca. – Mother & daughter.
It was known to many the “Gypsy Sweetheart Scam,” by its many victims, all defrauded, but not all murdered. But between 1983 and 1995, after a group of five deaths came to be linked to a Gypsy family’s murder-for-profit scheme San Francisco police gave the name “Foxglove” to the case – after the suspected death tool, digitalis, a heart medicine derived from the foxglove flower. Six elderly men were apparently murdered soon after being married much younger women, all members of the Tene-Bimbo Gypsy clan, based in San Francisco. It is suspected each was killed through poisoning with digitalis (heart medication). Suspects arrested in the scam were Angela Tene Bufford; her mother, Mary Tene Steiner, of San Francisco, and, in New York, Sylvia Mitchell.
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1995 – Mary Tene Steiner (Tene-Bimbo Gypsy Clan) – San Francisco, Ca. – Mother & daughter.
It was known to many the “Gypsy Sweetheart Scam,” by its many victims, all defrauded, but not all murdered. But between 1983 and 1995, after a group of five deaths came to be linked to a Gypsy family’s murder-for-profit scheme San Francisco police gave the name “Foxglove” to the case – after the suspected death tool, digitalis, a heart medicine derived from the foxglove flower. Six elderly men were apparently murdered soon after being married much younger women, all members of the Tene-Bimbo Gypsy clan, based in San Francisco. It is suspected each was killed through poisoning with digitalis (heart medication). Suspects arrested in the scam were Angela Tene Bufford; her mother, Mary Tene Steiner, of San Francisco, and, in New York, Sylvia Mitchell.
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1996 – Anjanabai Gavit & daughters: Renuka Kiran Shinde, Seema Mohan Gavit – Pune, Kolhapur & Nashik, Maharashtra, India
–
The family – mother, 2 daughters and son-in-law – kidnapped and murdered 9
infants and toddlers. The gang made ransom demands in some instances and used
the children as props in petty thievery schemes. some victims were starved to
death, others were murdered brutally by smashing them into telephone poles.
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1996 – Ludmilla (Lyudmila) Spesivtsev – Novosibirsk, Siberia – Mother and son, cannibalism.
Lyudmila Spesivtseva, an employee of a Soviet government school, was sentenced to life in prison (or 13 years according to some accounts) for luring teenage girls for the pleasure of her son, Sasha, so that he could rape, torture and dismember them. The mother cooked the remains and served them up to her son. It is estimated that the number of teenage female victims numbers up to 80.
Lyudmila Spesivtseva, an employee of a Soviet government school, was sentenced to life in prison (or 13 years according to some accounts) for luring teenage girls for the pleasure of her son, Sasha, so that he could rape, torture and dismember them. The mother cooked the remains and served them up to her son. It is estimated that the number of teenage female victims numbers up to 80.
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1998 – Sante Kimes & Kenneth Kimes Jr. – New York (Bahamas, California)
Mother and son committed 3 murders.
Mother and son committed 3 murders.
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2000 – Lohstroh / Geisler case – Friendswood, Texas
A
10-year-old boy, who suffered from severe parental alienation induced
by his mother, Deborah Geisler, of Texas, shot his father, Rick
Lohstroh, with his mother’s gun in the back at the beginning of a
parental “visitation.” Two years later his younger brother described the
event: “When I was eight my DAD died
... I was scared! My mom told my brother to shot [sic] my DAD but my
grandparents came to help me."
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Li Huijie, from the central province of Henan, is accused of
killing all four of her husbands in a two-year period on the orders of her
mother, Tian Xueqin, for the "bride price" paid by rural grooms.
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2003 – Judith Hawkey – Mark Center, Ohio
In 2003, Judith Hawkey's step-son, Corey Breninger shot and killed his father Robert Breninger at his Mark Center, Ohio, home. At the time, it was ruled an accident. The son revealed years later to a teacher after Hawkey had collected hundreds of thousands in life insurance from Robert. He said Hawkey had manipulated him to pull the trigger, and then lie about what happened.
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In 2003, Judith Hawkey's step-son, Corey Breninger shot and killed his father Robert Breninger at his Mark Center, Ohio, home. At the time, it was ruled an accident. The son revealed years later to a teacher after Hawkey had collected hundreds of thousands in life insurance from Robert. He said Hawkey had manipulated him to pull the trigger, and then lie about what happened.
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A woman (name not disclosed) and her two young adult sons murdered a
neighbor then cooked and ate his body.
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2005 – Shirin Gul – Kabul & Jalalabad, Afghanistan
Shirin Gul, her lover Rahmatullah, her 18-year-old son and four others murdered 27 men and robbed them in addition to killing her husband, the father of her son.
Shirin Gul, her lover Rahmatullah, her 18-year-old son and four others murdered 27 men and robbed them in addition to killing her husband, the father of her son.
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2010 – Eva Cummings – North Collins, New York
51-year-old
Eva Cummings and her 31-year-old son, Luke Wright – mentally retarded
and marginally functional – were charged in the death of the woman’s
23-year-old severely mentally disabled daughter who investigators said
was repeatedly raped, beaten and scalded and had her face pushed into
feces.
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Silvia Meraz, leader of a small human sacrifice cult,
comprising family members exclusively it would seem, was arrested, along with
seven other family members, for the kidnapping, torture and murders of three
persons, ritually sacrificed in 2009, 2010, 2012. Prosecutors say they believe
the actual killings were done by Silvia and her son, Ramon.
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2013 – Diane Staudte – Springfield, Missouri
This mother-daughter serial killer team engaged in a homicidal house-cleaning project using antifreeze, a deadly poison, as their tool. The serial poisoner mom told detective that she chose to terminate the life of her husband Mark because she “hated him.” Her son Shawn deserved to die because he was “worse than a pest.” Daughter Sarah, who survived the attempt on her life, barely, was deemed not fit to live because she “would not get a job and had student loans that had to be paid.”
This mother-daughter serial killer team engaged in a homicidal house-cleaning project using antifreeze, a deadly poison, as their tool. The serial poisoner mom told detective that she chose to terminate the life of her husband Mark because she “hated him.” Her son Shawn deserved to die because he was “worse than a pest.” Daughter Sarah, who survived the attempt on her life, barely, was deemed not fit to live because she “would not get a job and had student loans that had to be paid.”
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2013 – Inessa Tarverdiyeva – Stavropol region, Russia
2018 – Flor Cazarín González – Chihuahua, Mexico
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[8126-9/23/18; 9184-4/1/2021]
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2013 – Inessa Tarverdiyeva – Stavropol region, Russia
A serial killer family: husband, sister & daughter as accomplices, with an estimated 30 or
more victims.
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Serial killer cult. Mom manipulated son and daughter to participate in murders.
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2018 – Flor Cazarín González – Chihuahua, Mexico
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[8126-9/23/18; 9184-4/1/2021]
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