The internet is now a numbers game. It’s been so ever since content became the new way to make money online. This mommy blogger, Lacey Spears, 26, however took her pursuit of traffic one step too high.
She has been deliberately and fatally poisoning her young child in order to garner sympathy and attention online.
For various reasons, ranging from ear infections and high fevers
to mysterious spikes in sodium levels, five-year-old Garnett
Spears was in and out of hospitals ever since he was born.
Although doctors were generally at a loss as to why – the boy
also had trouble gaining weight and, as a result, had a feeding
tube put in place – police now believe they know what was behind
at least some of the problems: his mother.
After an investigation that began even before Garnett’s death on
January 23, New York police have accused mother Lacey Spears of
purposely poisoning her son with too much salt. The 26-year-old
Spears has been charged with second-degree depraved murder and
first-degree manslaughter, charges to which she pleaded not
guilty on Tuesday.
“This mother was intentionally feeding her son salt in toxic
levels,” said Assistant District Attorney Doreen Lloyd in
court, according to the Journal News.
Officials also believe Spears suffers from a psychiatric illness
known as Munchausen by proxy, which involves a parent
deliberately harming or making their child sick in order to get
attention. In addition to gaining sympathy from those around her,
Spears regularly blogged about Garnett’s worsening condition,
posted updates regarding her son on Facebook and Twitter.
“Her behavior was just weird in the hospital,” one
friend told the Journal. “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.”