Casey Anthony

DIANE DOWNS
In May of 1983, Downs drove herself and her three blood-soaked children—one of them already dead—to a hospital-emergency room in Springfield, Oregon. All three kids had been shot, and Downs had suffered a bullet wound in her forearm. Investigators grew suspicious at Downs’s placid demeanor. Their skepticism intensified at the sight of terror on eight-year-old stroke victim Christie Downs’s face when her mother visited her hospital room. Downs originally claimed the shootings were the result of a carjacking by a “bushy-haired stranger,” but as her story unraveled, it became evident she’d shot her children (and her own forearm) while parked at a roadside because her little seedlings were obstacles to her affair with a man named Robert Knickerbocker who reportedly disliked kids. Downs was convicted on the testimony of her daughter Christie, who eventually regained the ability to speak. Downs was sentenced to life plus 50 years and, despite wildly conflicting alibis, she maintains her innocence. Farrah Fawcett portrayed her in the 1989 TV movie Small Sacrifices.

DEBRA JENNER-TYLER
In 1987, South Dakotan Debra Jenner-Tyler used a kitchen knife and a “metal toy airplane” to stab her three-year-old daughter Abby Lynn not once, not twice, but 70 times. She later claimed that she’d been “under a lot of stress” and “had been working a lot” and became enraged because her daughter “wasn’t sleeping much” and was “very finicky.” But these statements came after fourteen years of steadfastly denying her guilt both in official statements and through a money-soliciting religious website that allegedly blamed an elaborate law-enforcement conspiracy for her reputedly wrongful conviction. During a parole hearing, Jenner-Tyler claimed she’d be an asset to the community because she’d already lined up jobs at a Holiday Inn and a Chikadily’s Restaurant. Her son testified that “I couldn’t ask for a better mother than I’ve got,” even though she hadn’t taken care of him since he was five and she’d been lying to the world for fourteen years. South Dakota prosecutor Mark Barnett described Abby Lynn’s murder as one of “incredible violence” and that in over two decades of prosecuting crime, it was one of only two cases that gave him nightmares. Jenner-Tyler’s parole was denied.

KENISHA BERRY
In 1998, a couple in Beaumont, TX, who were collecting aluminum cans from a dumpster pulled out a bag containing what they thought was a baby doll’s leg. It was instead the cadaver of a four-day-old child whose mouth had been duct-taped and his arms strapped to his body. Neighbors dubbed the unidentified infant as “Baby Hope” and held prayer vigils in his honor. Five years later in a ditch on an abandoned road, a passerby noticed an infant girl whose body was dotted with ant bites. The girl, who was still alive, was handed over to Child Custody Services. An investigative trail led to Kenisha Berry, who had been previously employed at a day care. Her fingerprint matched one found on the duct tape that had been used to bound Baby Hope’s mouth. She was convicted of his murder and is serving a life sentence.

SHAQUAN DULEY
In 1993, South Carolinian Susan Smith gained national infamy for locking her two sons in her car and letting it roll into a lake, where they drowned. This may or may not have been the inspiration for a 2010 incident where South Carolinian Shaquan Duley flagged down a motorist and claimed her car had accidentally careened into the North Edisto River, drowning her two sons, Ja’van (18 months) and Devean (2). She claimed she’d tried to rescue them, but investigators grew suspicious when they noticed her clothes were dry. It was revealed that she had become psychotically enraged after arguments with her sister and her live-in mother, who was so floored by her anger that she called 911. Duley fled the house with both sons and went to a motel where she intentionally suffocated both sons with her hands. She then strapped their corpses into their car seats and rolled them into the river. The dead boys’ father was nowhere to be found, and it was later revealed that the unemployed Ms. Shaquan was so irredeemably stupid, she even had failed online classes. Aquatic drowning child murders involving automobiles seem to be a trend. In 2011, New Yorker Lashanda Armstrong killed herself and three of her children by driving into the Hudson River after discovering her live-in boyfriend had been cheating.