Lehigh Valley is not immune to heinous crimes committed by mothers.
When a parent kills a child it’s rarely the mother, criminal experts say.
But, over the years, the Lehigh Valley has been home to many notorious cases involving mothers who were charged with intentionally killing a child.
In the past two decades, there have been at least 10 women charged with homicide or involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of their children. There have been other cases, not included here, of a mother being either intoxicated or high on drugs and leaving a child in a bathtub only to return to unimaginable anguish.
The victims in these heinous crimes have been beaten or drowned, one after being thrown off the Hamilton Street bridge into the Lehigh River in Allentown. Two victims were killed shortly after taking their first breath and the oldest was 14-year-old Grace Packer, who was raped, tortured and killed by her adopted mother and her mother’s boyfriend.
Here are some of the more high-profile cases. and found her alive, Sullivan strangled her. They dismembered Grace’s body and dumped the remains in a wooded area.
River. Witnesses said Perry kissed her son before sending him plunging 52 feet.
Perry, 19 at the time, then scaled the guardrail and jumped over the side, both of them landing in 4 feet of water, but she managed to haul herself onto the river bank before collapsing. The river carried Zymeir downstream for 700 yards before two police officers rescued the baby out of the water. The child was declared brain dead and died six days later.
At her sentencing hearing after she pleaded guilty to thirddegree murder, Perry’s attorneys and social workers detailed a bleak home life: Perry’s mother, a drug-addicted prostitute, often did not provide food, heat or water for Perry and two brothers.
She was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in state prison.
Adams paced as doctors tried to save her son’s life and admitted that she hit the child in the past.
Cashmiere died hours later and doctors found several other injuries, including bruising to his head, arms and stomach. An autopsy determined Cashmiere died of multiple blunt-force injuries and his death was a homicide.
Adams later pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in state prison.
During the initial police investigation, authorities said Stanford gave conflicting stories and later refused to cooperate, eventually moving to Alabama with the baby’s father.
The next year, both parents refused to testify before a Lehigh County investigating grand jury and the case remained open until April 2013, when a pair of detectives reviewed the investigation.
After learning the baby’s parents divorced, the detectives went to Alabama to interview them again and learned more about what happened, including that Stanford had previously struck the baby and that the baby had been smiling and appeared to be in good health the night before he died.
In 2015, Stanford was found guilty of third-degree murder and sentenced to 15-30 years in state prison. his toys. In an interview with a Morning Call reporter the day of the boy’s death, she said she tried to resuscitate him.
Despite her claims, a grand jury investigation concluded that she drowned Caspian. A forensic pathologist who conducted an autopsy found numerous injuries on the boy and ruled that the cause of death was drowning under suspicious circumstances and said the scratches and bruises could have been caused by the boy wiggling and squirming as his head was held under water until he drowned.
She later pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and was sentenced to 10-20 years in state prison.