1. Katy Hawkins

2.  The day you are born is the day you are most
likely to be a victim of homicide. The
murderer? Most likely your mother.
 Catching our attention with their grabbing
baby killer stories in the news.
 While many would agree that Neonaticide is
wrong, metal health professionals, like Phillip
Resnick, point to affective denial, mental
illness, and extreme depression which add
complexity to an otherwise clear issue of right
and wrong.

3.  Neonaticide - the killing of a newborn baby
within the first 24 hours of life
 Filicide – the killing of a baby/child once the
child is older.
 Phillip Resnick, forensic scientist, coined and
defined these terms

4.  He seperated the term
“infanticide” into
neonaticide and filicide
because he determined the
motives for each murder
are different.
 He created a classification
system within these terms
to describe the different
reasons that one would
commit these crimes.

5.  Altruistic filicide – the mother plans on taking her own
life and believes it will be better if the children are with
her in heaven. Mother kills out of love
 Acutely Psychotic – parent is suffering from a mental
illness which causes them to believe that killing their
children is the correct thing to do.
 Fatal Maltreatment – the parent abuses the child which
leads to its death. This can include the mother’s who
accidently leave their children in a hot car.
 Unwanted Child filicide – this is when the parent
decides that they do not want the child anymore and
they decide to “get rid” of the child.
 Spousal Revenge filicide – a parent kills a child because
they want to make the spouse suffer

6.  Affective denial occurs when the mother does
not want to tell a soul she is pregnant.
 She completely denies the pregnancy to the
point that she herself may not believe she is
pregnant.
 The site of a live, screaming baby awakens the
mother to what has happened, and the mother
believes that they only way out is to kill the
child.

7.  These are the babies who are found thrown
away like yesterday’s trash.
 The mother may be unemployed, single, and
may not have the means to take care of the
baby
 Doctor Joe Tucci said, “If an adult is killed,
there are friends and family who miss that
person.” Tucci went on to say, “But if a mother
has carried and delivered her baby in secrecy,
it’s not hard to make it disappear.”

8.  She arrived at prom, had her
baby in the bathroom, and
then left it for dead in the
garbage.
 She then made her way back
to prom.
 She had affective denial of
this babies existence because
she had the heart to kill it
and continue at prom like
nothing happened at all.

9.  High School
sweethearts. Amy
accidently got pregnant
their freshman year of
college and they kept the
pregnancy a secret.
 She delivered the baby
in a hotel room and Amy
killed it and had Brian
throw the baby away in
the hotel dumpster.
 Showed huge signs of
affective denial.

10.  These mothers believe that their children are
better off dead.
 They commit altruistic filicide, acutely
psychotic filicide, or fatal maltreatment filicide.
 Phillip Resnick said that these mothers
experience a time of psychological distress and
this causes them to commit this crime.
Depression goes hand in hand with mental
illness.
 Resnick used mental illness when defending
these women in court.

11.  Texas mother drowned her five
children in a bathtub because she
believed they needed to be “saved
by Satan”
 Resnick testified in her defense
saying that she was truly mentally
ill and insane.
 In jail, Yates made a statement that
helped Resnick to prove she was
insane. She stated that she was evil
and that her children were doomed
while on Earth.
 She believed their only hope was to
take their lives.

12.  Created a crazy story has to the
reason her children were founded
strapped in their car seats at the
bottom of a river.
 She lied to police about the
whereabouts of her children and
police searched for nine days
before finding them in the river.
 Smith admitted that she planned
on killing herself as well but
chickened out at the last moment.

13.  Casey Anthony was accused
of murdering her
daughter, Caylee.
 She came up with a insane
story about the whereabouts
of Caylee and she lied to
police.
 Resnick testified for Anthony
and made it seem like she was
mentally ill during this time.
 In all of these cases, this is the
first major win for Resnick
and the defense team that
worked for Anthony.

14.  Postpartum depression is a factor that causes
mothers to snap and kill their children.
 Mothers who suffer from this usually kill
within the first 12 months of life.
 Women become stressed with the challenges
they face when raising a child, and this can
cause some of them to snap.

15.  She shot her teenage children,
ages 13 and 16, for “talking
back to much”. This is an
example of fatal maltreatment
filicide.
 She is an example of someone
who snapped at the pressure it
was taking to raise these two
children.
 Resnick looked at this case and
said that is was one of the
rarest filicide cases because
parents do not usually kill
children that are older. They
normally kill newborn babies
or young children who can not
put up a fight.

16.  Affective denial, mental illness, and extreme
depression all have an impact on the reasoning
behind these crimes.
 Phillip Resnick has had control over the defense
world when it comes to the cases and trials of these
women. He is the man who has come up with the
filicide class system, and he is the man who has
come up with the reasonings behind these
murders.
 Neonaticide and filicide are complex issues, but
there is strong psychological reasoning behind the
reason of why a parent would kill their own child.