SA mum held over US killing

ACCUSED child killer Lisa Cunningham disciplined her stepdaughters more strictly than her own children, according to people who knew her in Phoenix.

The former Adelaide woman and prison guard will be the first Australian woman to face death row in America if she is found guilty of murdering her young stepdaughter Sanaa.

She and husband Germayne Cunningham are set to face trial in 2020 for the firstdegree murder of the sevenyear-old, who died in February last year after allegedly suffering horrific abuse including being restrained with cable ties and confined in a weighted straitjacket.

They both deny they harmed Sanaa, who they say suffered from an array of serious mental health conditions.

They are fighting the charges and say they were trying to protect the little girl and their other children.

A source close to the family told News Corp Australia the pair treated Sanaa and her older sister, who cannot be identified, differently to Lisa’s own four children.

The blended Cunningham family included Lisa’s daughter Cierra, 20, and 16-year-old son, as well as Germayne’s daughters Sanaa and her older sister. Lisa and Germayne produced two children after getting together around 2011.

They are both now in custody after a judge revoked their bail last month and agreed to a “death note”, should they be found guilty.

Lisa’s 16-year-old son is now in the care of his father, her first husband Russ Anderson, a former US Air Force member whom she met in Australia and wed in the 1990s.

Mother and son are now not in contact, according to the family source.

“He doesn’t want to talk to her,” the source said.

Sanaa’s older sister has been returned to her birth mother, Sylvia Norwood, who had lost custody of both girls in a messy 2010 divorce.

The Cunninghams’ two