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(Reuters) - A Texas woman accused of killing her 6-year-old son and leaving his body on a Maine roadside has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, court officials said on Friday.
The body of Camden Hughes was found along a remote road in Maine in May and remained unidentified for four days until authorities tracked down and arrested his mother, Julianne McCrery, at a Massachusetts highway rest stop after a multi-state manhunt.
Prosecutors said McCrery, of Irving, Texas, killed her son at a New Hampshire motel and then left his body, covered with a green blanket, on a Maine road hours later. The cause of death was ruled as asphyxiation.
McCrery, 42, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Thursday in Rockingham Superior Court in Brentwood, New Hampshire, before Judge Tina Nadeau, a court clerk said.
She said McCrery faces 45 years to life in prison when she is sentenced in January.
In court, prosecutors for the first time described the details behind the boy's murder.
New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Susan Morrell said McCrery, who had a history of depression, had been suicidal on her road trip to New England from Texas and had contemplated killing her son because she did not believe any relatives were able to raise him, nor did she want to place him with another family or a child welfare agency.
Morrell said that McCrery had told police she had given her son an over-the-counter cold medicine that induces drowsiness and later intentionally smothered him with pillows on the floor of their motel room.
"She stated that her son struggled by flailing his arms and kicking his legs for three to four minutes until becoming lifeless," Morrell told the court.
Prosecutors said McCrery had intended to kill herself and had begun eating poisonous castor beans she bought in Maine, but then stopped. After her son's death, she placed him in her blue pickup truck and drove across the border to Maine where she disposed of his body, prosecutors said.
Police later located McCrery at a Massachusetts rest stop while following tips from the public about the blue pickup spotted near the child's body in Maine.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-crime-boy-idUSTRE7A36GQ20111104
The body of Camden Hughes was found along a remote road in Maine in May and remained unidentified for four days until authorities tracked down and arrested his mother, Julianne McCrery, at a Massachusetts highway rest stop after a multi-state manhunt.
Prosecutors said McCrery, of Irving, Texas, killed her son at a New Hampshire motel and then left his body, covered with a green blanket, on a Maine road hours later. The cause of death was ruled as asphyxiation.
McCrery, 42, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Thursday in Rockingham Superior Court in Brentwood, New Hampshire, before Judge Tina Nadeau, a court clerk said.
She said McCrery faces 45 years to life in prison when she is sentenced in January.
In court, prosecutors for the first time described the details behind the boy's murder.
New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Susan Morrell said McCrery, who had a history of depression, had been suicidal on her road trip to New England from Texas and had contemplated killing her son because she did not believe any relatives were able to raise him, nor did she want to place him with another family or a child welfare agency.
Morrell said that McCrery had told police she had given her son an over-the-counter cold medicine that induces drowsiness and later intentionally smothered him with pillows on the floor of their motel room.
"She stated that her son struggled by flailing his arms and kicking his legs for three to four minutes until becoming lifeless," Morrell told the court.
Prosecutors said McCrery had intended to kill herself and had begun eating poisonous castor beans she bought in Maine, but then stopped. After her son's death, she placed him in her blue pickup truck and drove across the border to Maine where she disposed of his body, prosecutors said.
Police later located McCrery at a Massachusetts rest stop while following tips from the public about the blue pickup spotted near the child's body in Maine.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-crime-boy-idUSTRE7A36GQ20111104
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