Georgia police continue their search for Quinton Simon, a 20-month-old boy who was last seen at his Savannah home in early January.
Investigators have since been able to identify Quinton’s mother, Leilani Simon, as their “prime suspect,” in the toddler’s Savannah disappearance. They’ve also said they had reason to believe the baby’s body was discarded in a “specific dumpster” and transported to a local landfill by “regular means.”
After days of Looking for a Waste Management landfill? in Chatham County, police and FBI personnel have not located Quinton’s body. Despite identifying their suspect, police have not charged anyone in connection with the tragic news of Quinton’s disappearance and presumed death.
But instances in which parents cause their children’s deaths are, unfortunately, more common than expected.
MISSING GEORGIA TODDLER QUINTON SION: POLICE LINK ABY TO ‘SPECIFIC DUUMPSTER,’ PORTION of LANDFILL
A pair of baby pictures of Quinton Simon. Officials in Georgia believe that the child is deceased. Leilani SImon is the principal suspect.
(Chatham Police Department).
Experts from Brown University’s Alpert Medical School cited the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports in 2014 to determine that filicide – a parent’s act of killing his or her child or children – occurs on average 500 times per year in the United States.
Here’s a look at some of the most infamous alleged filicide cases in history:
MELISSA TOWNE (2022).
Photos of Melissa White Towne with her daughter Nichole. Towne is accused for strangling and stabbing the 5-year-old girl Oct. 16, 2022.
(GoFundMe/Harris County Sheriff’s Office).
Melissa Towne’s case has only been reported in the middle of October 2022.
Towne was charged with capital murder in connection to the stabbing and strangulation deaths of her five-year old daughter. Texas officials claimed that Towne admitted to the murder of her five-year-old daughter, but she was not tried nor convicted.
Towne, 37, is accused of leading her daughter, Nichole, into the woods near Spring Creek Park on Sunday in the Houston neighborhood of Tomball. She allegedly made her daughter kneel and cut her throat. Officers and police have said.
Towne then went on to cover the girl’s head with a trash bag after she began resisting and strangled Nichole for 30 to 45 minutes – even while the child screamed, “I’ve been good,” prosecutors and investigators said.
A police affidavit obtained by The Associated Press described how Towne “stated she wanted to end (her daughter’s) life because she was an evil child and did not want to deal with her anymore.”
But after Tuesday’s court hearing, court-appointed attorney James Stafford said Towne had been admitted to a mental institution at least nine times and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, The Associated Press reported.
“There’s no doubt there’s some dark demons haunting her,” Stafford reportedly said.
On Monday, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez revealed that Towne drove to a local hospital’s emergency room, where staff discovered her daughter’s body inside the Jeep SUV “partially wrapped in plastic and mesh bags.”
He stated that Towne had admitted to her killing of her daughter. She was placed under $15 million bail.
JENNIFER & SARAH HART (2018)
Sarah Hart and Jennifer Hart were Found to have committed suicide themselvesTheir six adopted children ranged from 12 to 19 year olds.
According to reports from the time, Jennifer drove the couple’s SUV off a Mendocino County cliff on March 28, 2018, plunging themselves and their six kids off the 100-foot precipice.
The tests revealed that both the men and women had high levels alcohol and Benadryl. Also, the children showed signs of having been given large amounts Benadryl.
In June 2014, members of the Hart family were seen at an event held in Astoria (Ore.).
(The Oregonian via Associated Press).
The Women and their children – 19-year-old Markis, Hannah, 16, Abigail, 14, Devonte, 15, Jeremiah, 14, and 12-year-old Sierra – were all pronounced dead. Seven of their bodies were located, but Devonte Hart’s remains were never found.
Investigators discovered that Sarah Hart had done several Internet searches about medicine dosages, suicide, and drowning.
Investigators say the women drove their children to California from Woodland, Washington in the days preceding the murder-suicide. They were alleged to have a history of domestic abuse and child neglect.
ANDREA YATES (2001).
Houston police officer walks out of the Clear Lake home where Andrea Yates, 36, is accused of killing her five children. Clear Lake is a suburb in south Houston.
(Photo by Phillippe Dasderich/Getty Images.
Andrea Yates confessed that she killed her five children in 2001. Inquiries found that she drowned the victims in a bathtub at their Houston, Texas, house. In 2015, a jury found her not guilty of murder by insanity.
The woman said She had drowned all five of her childrenOne by one, she and her six-month old daughter. Mary, 6 months old, Luke 2, Paul 3, John 5, and Noah 7, didn’t survive.
Rusty Yates (Husband of Andrea Yates), photographed in Houston, TX, on January 5, 2002.
(Photo by Pam Francis/Getty Images).
Then, she called 911 and allegedly said to an officer: “I just murdered my children.”
One pair of wet footprints was found in Yates’ home by the office. Yates believed that Yates had caught one of the children. According to reports.
An unnamed officer said that after the killings, “she appeared normal to me.”
This undated family photograph shows four of Andrea Yates’ five children. She confessed to her murder on June 20, 2001 by drowning her children in Clear Lake, Texas, a suburb south of Houston. From left to right, the children are Noah, Luke, Paul, and Luke.
(Photo Courtesy Yates Family/Getty Images).
Yates’ attorneys argued that the mom was experiencing severe post-partum depression, and her ex-husband described her as a “loving mother who just fell to this disease,” The Associated Press reported.
Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist, testified that Yates was delusional. She believed that she had destroyed her children and that they would become criminals.
SUSAN SMITH (1994).
Susan Smith is legal identity photograph. On July 22, 1995 she was convicted for the murders of her sons, Michael Daniel Smith, 3 years old, and Alexander Tyler Smith, 14 months, who were both born October 10, 1991. Susan Smith was arrested for the first time in 1994.
(Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma via Getty Images
Susan Smith was convicted in 1995 of drowning her two sons – and then concocting a story about how a Black man had stolen her car with her young sons inside.
On Oct. 25, 1994, the mother of two, aged 23, allegedly confessed to her husband that the carjacker had kidnapped Michael (age 3), and Alex (age 14-months).
Trois law enforcement officers, one in scuba gear and the other in plain clothes, talk lakeside while they examine the bottom of the water for Susan Smith’s car. Smith admitted to having drowned her sons Alex and Michael in her car at John D. Long Lake.
(Photo by Thomas S. England/Getty Images).
SUSAN Smith, MOM WHO KILLED 2 SONS IN 1994 SENTS ROMANTIC LISTS TO BOYFRIENDS FROM PRISON: REPORT
According to reportsShe told police that a gunman had taken her car while she was at a red light and then kidnapped the boys. She continued to lie for several weeks but then changed her story.
Toys and photos of Alex and Michael Smith at John D. Long Lake shore shrine. This is the site of the drowning murder of Alex and Michael Smith by their mother, Susan Smith who claimed they were abducted.
(Photo by William F. Campbell/Getty Images
She A polygraph test was failed by the applicantIn November, Smith admitted to the killing of her sons and a test. Investigators ultimately determined that Smith had rolled her vehicle into the John D. Long Lake with her sons still strapped into their car seats.
Smith was convicted in 1995 of two murder charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.
MARYBETH TINNING (1985).
Marybeth Tinning was led by sheriff Barney Waldron into the Schenectady County courtroom to face a $100,000 bail hearing. Tinning was charged in the death of Tammi Lynne, her 4-month-old girl, and was also suspected in the deaths her seven other children.
(Getty Images)
Tinning, a mother from Upstate New York was convicted in 1987 for the death of her four-month-old child. She was also suspected of having killed several of her eight children, who were all deceased. The Associated Press reportedAt the time.
Many of Tinning’s nine children were found to have died under suspicious circumstances from 1972 to 1985, the outlet reported. In 1985, Tami Lynne was four months old when she was raped by her mother. She was convicted and sentenced to twenty years to life in prison. She initially denied that she had killed children, but then changed her mind.
“After the deaths… According to the Albany Times Union, Tinning said that she had “lost it” after the deaths of her other children. She stated she “became a worthless, damaged person when I was young and in my mind, I believed that she was also going to die.” So, I did it.
Three of Tinning’s children had died in 1972 over the course of two months. Tinning claimed that the eight-month-old girl died of acute meningitis and that Tinning’s two- and four year-old children died from seizures. The four-year-old suffered from cardiac arrest.
The AP reported that a fourth baby died at the age of two weeks from sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS.
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The fifth, a five-month-old, died in 1975 from acute pulmonary edema. Three-month-old baby girl died of SIDS in 1975. A boy the same age also died in 1980. However, the cause is unknown.
According to reports, a boy aged three years, who the couple had hoped to adopt, died of bronchial asthma in 1981.
Tinning admitted later to having smothered three of her children. However, Tami Lynne was the only person ever convicted of Tinning’s murder, according to the AP.
Tinning, who is now 80, was paroled in August 2018. Tinning was sentenced to 30 years in a New York State jail. Records show.
This report was contributed by Louis Casiano, Fox News.
