Sheriff: Mother Said God Told Her to Kill Sons

I think I rember someone on this board who said if God tells you to do it then it's OK.



Woman Accused in Sons' Deaths on Watch

TYLER, Texas (AP) - A woman accused of fatally beating two of her sons with rocks remains on a suicide watch Monday at Smith County Jail, where she was held in lieu of $3 million bond on capital murder and aggravated assault charges.

Deanna LaJune Laney, 38, is accused of killing Joshua Laney, 8, and Luke Laney, 6, and injuring their 14-month-old brother, Aaron. Aaron remained in critical condition early Monday at a Dallas Hospital.

In a call to emergency workers early Saturday, Laney reported that she had just ``bashed their heads in with a rock,'' Sheriff J.B. Smith said.

When they arrived at the home, sheriff's deputies found Joshua and Luke dead in the yard wearing only their underwear, large rocks on top of their bodies. Aaron was found in his crib with a pillow over his face, alive but bleeding.

Wearing bloodstained pajamas, Laney told the first deputy on the scene ``I had to'' when he took her into custody, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by the Tyler Morning Telegraph.

Smith said Laney acted erratically Sunday during interviews with investigators.

``Sometimes she is incoherent, sometimes she's in a fetal position and sobbing. Sometimes she's singing spiritual hymns or muttering about God and sometimes she has a flatliner (poker) face and not saying a thing during interviews,'' Smith said. ``But she has not spoken of the crime anymore. She said it all on the 911 tape. She said she had killed her children.''

Laney, he said, claimed that God ordered her to kill her sons.

The boys' deaths were announced Sunday to more than 200 members of the First Assembly of God Church, where Laney sang in the choir and her brother-in-law, Gary Bell, is the pastor.

Bell told his parishioners that he and his wife, Judy, would stand behind Laney.

``This was a brutal and horrific incident that has changed our lives (and will) for years to come,'' Bell said. ``But we all believe as a family that this wasn't our Dee that did this to her children.''

Another Texas woman, Andrea Yates of Houston, confessed to drowning her five children in a bathtub in June 2001 and was convicted of murder. The jury rejected defense pleas that Yates was innocent by reason of insanity. She was sentenced to life in prison and is not eligible for parole until 2041.

these kind of people should'nt be allowed to have children..

I second that

I know this really isn't about 'this' topic, but I just had to tell you when I read this. I worked in a place where we would have to scan medical records onto disks and one of the places we were contracted through was a mental hospital, anyway talk about reading some very strange stuff that these people did-that they claimed God told them to do!
I remember one in particular, this woman lived next door to another woman and the 'other' woman was pregnant-well the lady said God appeared on her wall and told her the lady was carrying Satans child and that 'she' needed to go get rid of the child before it could be born, sooo she went next door and proceeded to try and do so. Luckily, she did not succeed and was sent to the mental home for eval. But there was all kinds of stuff like this about people claiming that God would tell them to do this or that..some of the stuff is way too terrible to mention here...but it definately makes one wonder "what" or "who" is actually speaking to these types of people. Scarey stuff really, scarey world we are living in.
Sincerely,
Mag

MY grandmother is schizophrenic and she used to talk to her self a lot. The voices and hallucinations come from within. We just now put a name on it, but back in the ancient times there was no name for it. Who to say that some people were following crazy people? Just playing a little devils advocate

[Edited on 13-5-2003 by abstract_alao]

If a woman has a tendency to depression, Postpartum depression can make her do strange things (and yes, it can linger for 2-3 years.)

Now... something I've started to wonder about: I see a pattern in the last several of these cases. The mother is homeschooling, and the family is involved with ("religously" I might add) a fundamentalist Protestant church. Does anyone know if there is an unusually high proportion of "fundamentalist/Bible literalists" among people who believe God tells them to kill their families?

Originally posted by abstract_alao
MY grandmother is schizophrenic and she used to talk to her self a lot. The voices and hallucinations come from within. We just now put a name on it, but back in the ancient times there was no name for it. Who to say that some people were following crazy people? Just playing a little devils advocate

[Edited on 13-5-2003 by abstract_alao]

That what you said is a VERY scarey thought indeed!
Magestica

Don't even like to think about what the fcking woman did to her children.

Hang her...!

[Edited on 14-5-2003 by boomhaur]

Originally posted by Byrd
If a woman has a tendency to depression, Postpartum depression can make her do strange things (and yes, it can linger for 2-3 years.)

Now... something I've started to wonder about: I see a pattern in the last several of these cases. The mother is homeschooling, and the family is involved with ("religously" I might add) a fundamentalist Protestant church. Does anyone know if there is an unusually high proportion of "fundamentalist/Bible literalists" among people who believe God tells them to kill their families?

But it's not always women. I read several stories(true) about God speaking to men..Like one where this guy went on to tell the doctors that God told him to get out his gun and shoot off his right arm because of something he'd done-and the man shot his arm...and it had to be amputated What's amazing(in a bad way) is reading the explainations of these people like they FULLY believe God spoke to them and told them to do these terrible things...and these were seemingly 'normal' people til then?? That to me is scarey, very scarey..

This is a creepy story I just thought of and thought to share here..My mom had my sister 7 years ago and she was in Sacred Heart (Catholic Charity Hospital) in Fla. Anyway, my sister had to be on oxygen for a few days and she roomed with my mom. Well my mom says she had a weird feeling one night and couldn't sleep, as she just started to doze off a nurse came in to check on Larah-my sister..and when the nurse left my mom woke up startled and checked her and the nurse had turned off her oxygen! My mom flew out to the nurses station and asks if they were suppose to turn it off and they said NO!! and ran in there and turned it on...noone knew why the nurse did this, and they didn't know who she was either...but it was an uproar within the hospital needless to say! And I don't know...this just reminded me of how sick and scarey people can be...
Magestica

I believe this, "God told me to do it" is all bull.

There's just a lot of fcked up people out there that need talking off the streets, before something happens to somebody I know or you know.

Freaks...too many of them,!

absolutely, couldn't agree more!!!

Too many nutters use things like "god told me to" as an excuse....

They know exactly what they are doing

Magestica -- interesting!

I've started to be a little curious about the issue of religion and homicide. I remember in Costa Rica seeing the religiously fervent doing abnormal things, but rather than being violence-oreinted, it would be something like walking on their knees for several miles to prove their devotion or whipping themselves till they bleed.

Although we think of those as more primitive types of worship, I wonder if they might actually be safer than some of the things of the "first world" churches.

Be it of whatever ''religion'' murder is non justifiable!!!

There could be many reasons why this woman commited the crime she did........

Voices in your head is not a ''truth'' statement of why she committed the crime........

Yes she should be punished according to the law of justice........but then again, is there such a law for a crime like this???

God does no such things..........
It is man's own ''selfish acts '' of self love and hate toward the truth of God........
Blame can only be of the person that commited the crime......whether the voices were in her head or not.........the end does not justify the means

Murder is murder!!!

Although we cannot judge , we hold an opinion based on the means.........

Originally posted by helen670
Be it of whatever ''religion'' murder is non justifiable!!!

There could be many reasons why this woman commited the crime she did........

Voices in your head is not a ''truth'' statement of why she committed the crime........

Yes she should be punished according to the law of justice........but then again, is there such a law for a crime like this???

God does no such things..........
It is man's own ''selfish acts '' of self love and hate toward the truth of God........
Blame can only be of the person that commited the crime......whether the voices were in her head or not.........the end does not justify the means

Murder is murder!!!

Although we cannot judge , we hold an opinion based on the means.........

lol

According to Dogma (the Kevin Smith Movie) the world should cease to exist. Did god make a mistake when she said "thou shalt not kill" and is now saying "thou shalt kill your children"

Come on, whenever someone gets killed the murderer claims that god told him to, going all the way back to mckinley's assasination. God is pretty homicidal it seems.

XAOS

Originally posted by helen670
Be it of whatever ''religion'' murder is non justifiable!!!

There could be many reasons why this woman commited the crime she did........

Voices in your head is not a ''truth'' statement of why she committed the crime........

Yes she should be punished according to the law of justice........but then again, is there such a law for a crime like this???

God does no such things..........
It is man's own ''selfish acts '' of self love and hate toward the truth of God........
Blame can only be of the person that commited the crime......whether the voices were in her head or not.........the end does not justify the means

Murder is murder!!!

Although we cannot judge , we hold an opinion based on the means.........

Your wrong. Killing under certian circuminstances is justified in the bible.

"If a man commits adultery with another man's wife; with the wife of his neighbor; both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death." - Leviticus 20:10

"If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die." - Deuteronomy 22:22

[Edited on 15-5-2003 by abstract_alao]

Guess I got the last word

Well, He told Jephthah to kill his daughter.

You can't legislate for psychopaths, it's not so much religion as disease. even though religion can be a disease of sorts too, I guess...

Don't forget god rained fire down many times, bet that stung a bit before the people died. He was ready to kill thousands with death of first born children. He killed a ton of people to prove to satan the guy would still worship him even though god had killed his family, freinds, and workers.

God is ten times more homicidal than Jeffery Lionel Dahmer ever was.

But the god told me to is a good excuse. I bet Bundy could have gotten away with it. Depends on who and where. If in the 9th district, probably would have won. If the judge was like the one who gave a guy over a thousand years, only four hundred on good behavoir, would have lost.