Possible Munchausen by proxy victim-investigating the death of Garnett the Great

[cannongal]

This is Garnett Spears, he was hospitalized 23 times before his first birthday...


This is Lacey Spears, supposedly devoted single mother who chronicled her son's 'sickness' all over social media...


Garnett died on January 23, 2014, and now Lacey is being investigated for his death.

Taken from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/natio...d/5593295/

"Westchester Medical Center alerted police and Child Protective Services that day that Garnett Spears had suspiciously high levels of sodium in his system. Police are investigating the source of the spike to determine whether any criminal activity was involved in the child's death, sources told The Journal News.

Even before Garnett's death, police were executing a search warrant at the mother's home, seizing food items, her computer and cellphone.

Authorities won't publicly speculate on the cause of the boy's death. Days before taking her son to the hospital, Spears wrote on Facebook that Garnett had the flu. Diarrhea can cause dehydration and result in elevated sodium levels."

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Note: I have more to add, but this laptop keeps freezing on me. I'm going to post this part and switch over to my other laptop.

[Carsman]

Wow, hospitalized 23 times before his first birthday, the mother should have been investigated after the first 10 or so times!
What a damn shame, somebody sure dropped the ball, poor kid suffering right till the end.

[cannongal]

Lacey, apparently, liked to make up stories about who the boys father was.

Taken from: http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/20...r/6795121/

[On Sept. 18, 2012, she wrote: "We have together survived nearly 365 days, a complete year without Blake, my soulmate and Garnett's Daddy. … The past year has been the hardest year of my life."

Mention of this "soulmate" on social media had Lacey's Alabama friends scratching their heads.

"(Blake) was never in any pictures when Garnett was born, but she was crying about him on Facebook posts, saying he was the love of her life, that he was always there for her," said Riley Vaughn, 26, who knew Lacey when she lived in Decatur. "That's why I stopped Facebooking her. I was just done with her after that, after realizing that most of the stuff she was saying just wasn't true." ]


While her boy lay dying in the hospital, she made a phone call...

Taken from: http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/ro...d/6934831/

[Lacey Spears, 26, is the focus of a police investigation into the Jan. 23 death of her 5-year-old son, Garnett, who had a feeding tube. Police are investigating whether she fed potentially life-threatening amounts of salt to her son in a case of Munchausen by proxy, a psychiatric disorder that leads a parent to harm a child to seek sympathy or attention.

As he lay dying, sources said, Lacey called a Fellowship neighbor and asked her to get rid of one of the boy's feeding bags from her home. The neighbor removed the pouch and called police, who searched the Fellowship and recovered the bag, which contained an extreme concentration of sodium, sources said. Police also took food from Lacey's apartment, along with her computer and cellphone.

Lacey has denied doing anything to harm her son, and her lawyer, David Sachs, has declined to comment.]

You can read the series chronicling all the details here:
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/ro...s/6736141/
*******

I have family in Florida that befriended Lacey and organized toy drives and fundraisers for Garnett. They have been interviewed by police several times, and are heartbroken over the possibility that Lacey could have done this to Garnett.

[aussiefriend]

fuck off cuntface

[Duchess]

Hospitalized almost twice a month for every month of his life and they wait until now to do something. C'mon!

Very glad to read that the neighbor had the good sense to contact LE.

[cannongal]

Wow, hospitalized 23 times before his first birthday, the mother should have been investigated after the first 10 or so times!
What a damn shame, somebody sure dropped the ball, poor kid suffering right till the end.

From what I've been reading, she did a lot of 'hospital shopping'. If a hospital didn't do what she wanted, she went to another one. She also moved around a lot. (I think, Maybe, when people would get suspicious about Garnett being sick so much, she would go to another state)

My niece didn't think anything was wrong until Lacey moved from Florida to New York, when she moved to New York, Lacey started posting things about living in Florida that never happened.

[crash]

fuck off cuntface

Bit of sand in the vagina there, CrayLa?

[aussiefriend]

fuck off cuntface

Bit of sand in the vagina there, CrayLa?

If only u knew Gina, I will pay for your surgery, you poor pathetic prick. Serious. Give me your details and i will do it. and the beauty is, no one needs to know, no one needs to know what we are talking about. You poor pathetic sell out creep. You make me sick to my stomach.

[crash]

Ok, you finally took the final step off the plank there, CrayLa...

What. The. Fuck?

ETA: and who the fuck is Gina? Why do I want to know her?

[ramseycat]

I have no response to this nonsense. Gina? Really?

[HairOfTheDog]

Wow, hospitalized 23 times before his first birthday, the mother should have been investigated after the first 10 or so times!
What a damn shame, somebody sure dropped the ball, poor kid suffering right till the end.

From what I've been reading, she did a lot of 'hospital shopping'. If a hospital didn't do what she wanted, she went to another one. She also moved around a lot. (I think, Maybe, when people would get suspicious about Garnett being sick so much, she would go to another state)

My niece didn't think anything was wrong until Lacey moved from Florida to New York, when she moved to New York, Lacey started posting things about living in Florida that never happened.

Poor kid. Very sad.

I can see how little Garnett fell through the cracks and only hope that there aren't a lot more like him.

Sounds like Lacey put on the "best mom in the world" facade while she was intentionally making him sick to get attention for herself. She cut the boy's father out of his life before birth (he sounds like a loser -- knew she was lying about someone else being the dad, but didn't push the issue til after Garnett was dead). So it was just mother and child in the home.

And, each hospital would only have a couple of visit records before she moved on to another and then moved the little guy to another area and established a new social circle.

Had Garnett been older and in kindergarten, authorities probably would have caught on more quickly with a school reporting excessive absences or teachers noticing problems with the boy.

If Lacey Spears killed her son, sure hope there's enough evidence to lock her up for life and she never has a chance to birth or care for other children. Since she seems to have documented so much regarding Garnett's illnesses and also documented so many of her lies, LE should have a lot to work with. Good.

RIP Garnett Spears.

[HairOfTheDog]

Thanks for starting a new thread, crash. Appreciated.

This thread is about Garnett Spears' death.

For anyone interested in the "cuntface / Gina" drama, please proceed to the Hey CrayLa thread found here: http://mockforums.net/showthread.php?tid...#pid358794

[aussiefriend]

apologies for crashing this page.

[HairOfTheDog]

I have family in Florida that befriended Lacey and organized toy drives and fundraisers for Garnett. They have been interviewed by police several times, and are heartbroken over the possibility that Lacey could have done this to Garnett.

Sad for your famiily, cannongal. That's gotta be a hard thing with which to come to terms. Have you heard anything more?

The case seems to be gaining more national attention -- it was covered by Crimesider today -- mostly a reiteration of what you already posted.

This part was new though:
Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for the Westchester District Attorney's Office, told CBS News' Crimesider today that he anticipates "a shoe will drop" in the case in the next month or so.

Based on the known circumstances, it sure looks like Lacey killed her son for the attention. If she did, I hope there's enough evidence to arrest her soon. If she's eventually convicted, she deserves a life sentence and not some open-ended stay at a psych ward, IMO.

[cannongal]

Thanks HOTD,

I was actually going to post a couple of articles yesterday, but got sidetracked by a bloody child (my son cut himself, while carving a hiking stick)

Garnett's death has been determined a homicide.

Taken from: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/05/05/mom...e-charges/

Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. – A woman who built an online following blogging about her sickly young son could soon face charges after authorities determined that his death last January was caused by a lethal dose of sodium injected into his feeding tube, a source close to the investigation told FoxNews.com.

Five-year-old Garnett Spears, of Chestnut Ridge, N.Y, died at Westchester County Medical Center Jan. 23, after being hospitalized, first at Nyack Hospital, several days earlier. Although his mother, Lacey Spears, had for years blogged of his health problems, authorities became suspicious when doctors discovered the alarming sodium level in the child's body, and the Westchester County medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide, according to the source.

"It's evident by the nature of what was found in his body that somebody, in effect, poisoned him," the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told FoxNews.com. "He [Garnett] died at the hands of somebody else."

Prior to his death, the boy had become known as "Garnett the Great" to an online circle who followed reports by his mother, Lacey Spears. She chronicled his many hospital stays and dietary problems on a blog, "Garnett's Journey," subtitled "Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it."

But the source who discussed the case with FoxNews.com said that shortly after the boy was hospitalized for the last time in his short life, his mother called a neighbor and asked that she destroy any evidence of feeding tubes within the home.

"She wanted the neighbor to dispose of incriminating evidence," the source said. "The neighbor never did get rid of it and police seized it." That accusation was originally reported by The Journal News, which was the first news outlet to launch an in-depth investigation into the case.

Spears' attorney, David Sachs, denied any wrongdoing on the part of his client.

"Lacey is completely devastated by the loss of her son and absolutely denies harming her son in any way," Sachs said in an email to FoxNews.com.

The Journal News interviewed a friend of Spears, who reportedly told the paper that Spears expects to be charged with murder. A source with intimate knowledge of the case told FoxNews.com charges could range from murder to manslaughter to reckless manslaughter to criminal negligent homicide. The source declined to elaborate on when a decision will be made.

Spears has relocated to Kentucky, where she is staying with family, and could not be reached for comment. The 26-year-old single mother had moved from the South to live in the quiet "Fellowship Community" in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. -- a close-knit, rural community about 30 miles north of New York City that cares for the elderly and prides itself on organic farming and other self-sufficient means of living. The legal responsibility for the community is carried by the Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Foundation, Inc., a non-profit licensed by New York state as an adult care facility, according to its website.

While few at the Fellowship were willing to speak about the ongoing investigation over the weekend, friends of Spears in her native Decatur, Ala., are reportedly shocked over the ruling.

"I've been on the phone all afternoon with mutual friends and they're all saying, 'I can't believe this,'" Shawna Lynch, a friend from Spears' former hometown, told the Journal News. "We're devastated, mad, angry, hurt, shocked. We all wanted to believe Lacey and be there for her. But with the evidence the way it is, everyone feels the same way I do. Justice needs to be served."

In an April 18 posting on her Facebook page, Spears put up a photo of her son holding a toy with the comment, "I want to carry on his legacy & the only way I can right now is to write about him & share his pictures." Earlier postings show a beaming blond boy riding a red bike, sitting on the beach with his mother and eating solid food.

Garnett Spears first received a feeding tube when he was a baby. Since that time, his mother has publicly detailed her life with her son on social media websites, like Facebook. She would often post comments about her son's many hospitalizations -- even posting pictures of her son in his final hours at Westchester County Medical Center, where he was airlifted from Nyack Hospital after being admitted there in mid-January for seizures.

Investigators are looking at the possibility the boy's mother suffers from Munchausen by proxy, a psychiatric disorder and rare form of child abuse in which a parent or caregiver harms a child to seek the attention and sympathy of others.

"These are people who are desperate for attention and seek it through creating a sensational scenario," said Dr. Manny Alvarez, senior managing health editor of FoxNews.com.

In the case of Munchausen by proxy, "the parent is seen as almost a hero," Alvarez said. "The reality is that they do these actions being aware that they're lying."

"It's extremely difficult to diagnose," noted Alvarez, who said only through "extensive" interview and observation can psychiatrists trained in the syndrome identify it.

It remains unknown whether Garnett ever needed a feeding tube in the first place, and medical personnel in at least two states declined to comment, citing patient privacy laws. Members at the small Fellowship community, meanwhile, reported seeing the boy eating solid foods on several occasions without a problem.

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Note: Someone from my nieces attachment parenting group called the Florida DYS on Lacey in 2011, because of the feeding tube. The case went no where.

[cannongal]

Lacey's online Blog: http://garnettsjourney.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Life as we know it!
Here's a few pictures from the last year of our life. We've done OUR unthinkable. We have together survived nearly 365 days, a complete year without Blake, my soulmate and Garnett's Daddy. It hasn't been easy or even remotely enjoyable. The past year has been the hardest year of my life, I don't imagine the next will be easy but worth living through.

October: To be honest I have no idea what we did the entire month, I do know Garnett was an alligator for Halloween.


November: Celebrated Garnett's 1^st Thanksgiving home and our 1^st without Daddy Blake.



December: Christmas, G's 1^st spent at home. Our home was quite, still and simple. Chirstmas wasn't Christmas without Daddy Blake.


January: The entire month Garnett
dressed at a SUPER SUPER HERO and we got a new friend, Odie! From the moment Garnett laid eyes on "Owie" he was in love. They were inseperable!


February: We spent a few weeks in Orlando with a friend, played with "Owie" and momma got to enjoy a nigh to herself on the waterfront.



March: We made a 14 hour drive home to attend a memorial service for Daddy Blake. While there we enjoyed sometime revisiting our old home and friends.




April: This may have been the 1^st month that I can recall events that occured without looking at pictures or videos. April was filled with many doctor visits for Garnett, long waits on momma's end and Garnett mastered his balance bike



May: May and its MADNESS!!! May was a busy month, a month of new beginning. Garnett and I started what I guess you would call therapy, there was Easter, and Garnett LIVED in his pool. May was a rather difficult month.







June: June was just June, another day, another month, we survived. June also held Father's Day.




July: July 1^st would have been Daddy Blake's 26^th Birthday. Garnett spent many hours playing with water beads. More mornings then not we went to the pier for an early morning run and then stopped by the fountain were Garnett just had to put his feet in. Garnett also discovered that veggie sandwiches are pretty tasty.




August: August was an ugly month. We spent more time away from home then we did home. I believe we were both thankful to see August end. "Owie" journeyed onward, Garnett discovered the art of dress-up, we spent several nights at the pier and many mornings playing with "street paint".





September: What a month and its only half over. Garnett has enjoyed driving his tractor through our neighborhood, playing in the rain, riding his bike for hours and we spent a few days in the hospital.






Here's to another year. Many memories. Lots of laughs. Most of all hoping we both find peace, balance, happiness and light.

**********************************

Note: I've heard that she had 2 or 3 blogs going, but I could only find this one at the moment.

[Maggot]

Thats terrible. Poor kid never had a chance.

[Duchess]

It's a horrible thing when the person who is supposed to love you the most does the most hurtful things to you. You can't love someone and hurt them too, it doesn't work like that in my mind anyway.

[aussiefriend]

I actually read this thread through last night and the mother just looked so evil with her evil intentions being played out and read like a sick story book.

[cannongal]

Garnett Spears' last days: 'Something is not right here'

link to article

Her son had just been airlifted by helicopter from Nyack Hospital to Maria Fareri Children's Hospital and Lacey Spears was rushing to be by his side when a doctor approached her outside his room.

He told her it was "metabolically impossible" for 5-year-old Garnett's body to have produced the extreme sodium levels found in his system.

"Something isn't right," the doctor told her sternly, according to two witnesses to the conversation.

That was Sunday night, Jan. 19. Four days later, Garnett was dead. It would be more than two months until Garnett's death was ruled a homicide by the Westchester medical examiner. But from the outset, Spears, who lived with her son in the Fellowship Community in Chestnut Ridge, was a focus of the investigation.

Doctors called police shortly after Garnett's arrival there. By Tuesday, detectives were at the medical center interviewing Spears, her friends and medical staff. Spears was told not to leave the floor, but was permitted to be with her son in the room.

Friends and others who were at the hospital, and sources familiar with the case, provided the first real glimpse into those final six days at Nyack Hospital and the Westchester Medical Center. They spoke to The Journal News on condition they not be identified because of the ongoing investigation.

It started with Garnett being taken to Nyack Hospital after a seizure Friday, Jan. 17. Shortly after his arrival, Spears began posting pictures of her son, one of him casually hanging out in his hospital bed. She stated he was well enough to run laps around the pediatric unit.

Things suddenly got worse Sunday afternoon, when Garnett had a seizure attack that prompted the emergency flight. The boy's blood sodium level spiked to a life-threatening level. Normal range is 135 to 145 milliequivalents per liter. Garnett's had surged to the mid-180s. A doctor told Spears in the presence of others that it was the highest sodium level he'd ever seen.

"He was fine in Nyack Hospital and then, all of a sudden, 'bam!'" one woman who was with Spears at the hospital said.

Garnett was held in Nyack another two hours so doctors could stabilize him enough to take the flight to Westchester, witnesses said.

Police suspect Spears may have poisoned her son with salt, possibly through a tube connected to his abdomen and may have lied about when she last fed him that way. They are looking at Garnett's death as a possible case of Munchausen by proxy, a psychiatric disorder that leads parents to sicken their children for attention or sympathy.

One potentially key piece of evidence is a feeding bag – also containing an extreme concentration of sodium – that police seized from the Fellowship. A neighbor told The Journal News that Spears secretly phoned her from the medical center early Wednesday, Jan. 22, and told her to get rid of the bag from her home. She removed the bag but later handed it over to authorities.

Spears has not been charged and has denied doing anything to harm her son. Her lawyer has declined to comment.

Spears' actions raised the suspicions not just of the medical staff and police, but also friends who found her behavior in both hospitals strange at best, deceptive at worst.

"Her behavior was just weird in the hospital," one friend said. "It was not the behavior of a grieving mother. She was more concerned about what everyone else was saying, or what investigators were asking people, or what people were saying on Facebook, than putting all that aside and taking care of her child."

One key discrepancy investigators are trying to nail down was exactly when Spears last fed her son through the tube.

Spears gave conflicting accounts, telling some it was more than a week before the seizure that landed Garnett in Nyack Hospital on Friday, Jan. 17. But another friend told authorities that she saw Spears feeding him through the tube that same day, hours before the seizure.

Police have reviewed video surveillance from both hospitals. At Nyack, the boy was mostly confined to a room with a video monitor trained on his body. At Westchester Medical Center, video footage reviewed by law enforcement shows times when Spears took Garnett to the room's private bathroom, which was not monitored by a camera.

In those final days leading to Garnett's Jan. 23 death, the 26-year-old kept friends updated about his condition on Facebook, sharing pictures of him dying as she urged followers to "keep the prayers coming!!!"

While farflung friends offered support, friends who spent time with Spears and Garnett at Nyack Hospital and the Valhalla medical center described a more disturbing picture.

One woman recalled the sedated Garnett waking briefly on Monday night, Jan. 20, catching her eye and pleading "Don't leave me."

Another woman said his speech was slurred, and "He was thirsty, asking for apple juice. He wanted to go home."

Garnett's final plea to these women echoed those he shared with someone else in Spears' circle the previous Friday. Hours before he was rushed to Nyack Hospital, Garnett begged the neighbor (the same woman Spears called to remove the feeding bag): "You promise you're going to come to my house and get me."

They all have replayed his final words countless times, wondering if he knew he was in danger, if his words were a cry for help.

The next morning, Garnett fell into a coma, never to regain consciousness. A doctor showed Spears pictures of the boy's swollen brain – and told her there was nothing more to be done.

Friends question several other things they observed at the hospitals, and accounts Spears shared during her time there.

One is that Spears told them she provided her son 100 ounces of water at Nyack Hospital by refilling her own bottle for him several times, on the Sunday Garnett's sodium level spiked. If she did, it's unclear why.

"Lacey said numerous times that he was very thirsty and she kept giving him water," said a woman who was with them at both hospitals.

Another curious sight was the apparently icy interaction between Spears and her mother, Tina, who flew in from Kentucky to be with her grandson in the days before he died.

Friends were surprised they didn't see the mother embracing her daughter. Some recalled Lacey telling them that, years earlier, Tina called child protective services to raise concerns about the way Spears was raising Garnett. The Journal News was unable to confirm whether such a call was made. Spears is staying with her parents in Kentucky.

There was other behavior that struck friends as odd.

When doctors asked about Garnett's medical history, Spears did not go into detail, despite his extensive history of hospitalizations.

Acquaintances were also disturbed to see Spears snapping cellphone photos of Garnett lying listlessly in his hospital bed. Friends had grown accustomed to seeing photos of Garnett in the hospital, but these last photos were more gruesome. In one, Garnett's legs are splayed at awkward angles.

"It was disgusting," said one woman who saw her taking the photos. "It was really disturbing. When your son is there and he's dying, you're going to want to hold his hand or pray or something like that."

"She was always doing something on her phone," the woman added.

Spears, with her son on life support, detailed her bedside vigil to friends on Facebook.

"Tonight I sat at the bedside of my beautiful amazing lively one of (a) kind son's bed," she wrote Wednesday, Jan. 22. "Knowing his soul is already with the angels. There's just no words to describe this horrible nightmare. Please pray. Garnett's journey into the next life is nothing short of amazing."

Then there was a final posting early Jan. 23. "Garnett the great journeyed onward today at 10:20 a.m."

Staff writer Peter D. Kramer contributed to this report

In late January, Garnett was transported from Nyack Hospital to Westchester Medical Center. He died Jan. 23. Westchester County Police subsequently launched an investigation.