Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Haley. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries, Tales from Appalachia. All right, welcome back.
Welcome back. Oh, back and back. I hit the stack. You know I was immediately in my head.
Apparently I have ACTC in my head. So we are recording this a little bit earlier than when you guys will hear it, but we are supposed to have some snow this weekend. No. I don't like snow.
I don't like it. There, I'm going to say it. You can judge me. I like snow if I get to stay home and curl up with a book and just look out and watch it come out.
If I have to be out in it or anywhere near it, I don't like it. Well, I mean, I'm one of those who I get antsy and I get out. I want people to do things and that bothers me. And also, ice terrifies me.
Ice is not a real thing. Yeah, and fortunately I discovered this ice melt stuff that is fantastic. Now, my foyer gets really nasty because I get it on my shoes and then we walk in with it. But it's so helpful because my biggest fear is falling.
Right. Yeah, I have a concrete patio outside my door and if it rains, it's been raining before and you get that ice right before it's snow. Which I think is what's supposed to happen tonight here at least. Oh, I've been recording earlier.
Yeah, apparently it's supposed to come in on Monday, but I think it's going to move up and we're going to start getting some tonight, which is a Saturday. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to be able to get out of here anymore.
Well, we don't want to get too much away for you guys. They were recording on blah, blah, blah. On Saturday? No.
And this episode is going to air on March 11th and that's exactly what today is. It's March 11th. It's snowing in March. I don't know.
Well, yeah. It's snowing March. It does. I've got snowing in March before, which is late April.
The Blizzard of 1993 happened on the 12th of March. Oh, that was a lot. I can hear my frickin' tree. You talked too long.
Well, we are trying to put off getting into this really horrific story. It's almost a can, but I think the time is now. We like horrific stories. That's why they're here.
That's why we're here. Tell it to me. Okay. Well, we're going to start out and learn a little bit about Miss Juanita Ethel.
She's already started off. Wow. What a name. Yeah.
So she was born on May 13th, 1946 in Richmond, New York. So this is a work we're going to New York this week. Okay, cool. So Juanita lived in the small farming community of Newark Valley.
This is about 70 miles south of Syracuse. The Appalachian Trail winds up through New York and it kind of goes in a little bit lower than where this one is. It's a look on some maps. This particular county is a little bit north of where the cutoff is, but I figured we'll include it anyway.
Well, it still runs through that state. Yeah. We're going to do it anyway. Yeah.
So Juanita was a homemaker and her husband Tim worked as a security guard at Cornell University's Art Museum. Oh, wow. And from the years 1965 to 1971 Juanita actually lost five children from SIDS, which is such an infant syndrome, which is really, really horrific and a horrible way to get you. Which did you know that now?
And they thought that SIDS was actually caused by children who were back in the day. They advised you put your babies on their belly. And they felt that they could easily smother being face down. So now they're released to always keep your baby until they can roll themselves on their back.
And actually they think that SIDS might be caused by centralized sleep apnea actually. That your brain kind of goes to sleep and doesn't tell your body to breathe. Yeah. So it's totally possible.
So hi children. She lost five kids to SIDS. Yeah. It's really sad.
So for over 25 years Juanita would drive to the cemetery on Memorial Day and she would put flowers on the graves of all five of her kids. And their names were Eric, Julie, James, Molly and Noah. And they had all died from SIDS according to doctors. And the parents were obviously devastated by the loss of five kids.
And Juanita would often be heard saying, I don't know what I did wrong. So she was clearly blaming herself for these deaths. Now of course with this podcast, nothing is as it seems. And there isn't a whole lot.
I mean, still there isn't a whole lot known about SIDS and why it happens. That's why it's called sudden infant death syndrome. But for it to happen, even twice within one family is really, really rare. I'm sure it happens.
Yeah. But it's not a common thing. I mean, if it ever happened once, it's really, really rare. So when Juanita's fourth and then fifth child were born, so they did this with both kids, their pediatrician, Dr.
Alfred Steinshider, I think. That's how you say his last name. He actually admitted both of the babies for observation at the hospital. And I think they spent like at least a month.
Was it because he was concerned of past, you know, maybe something genetic or something? Yeah. Yeah. He wanted to sort of observe them.
Yeah. And then finally though, after being, you know, cleared and sent home, they both ended up dying from SIDS. And both babies were autopsyed and, you know, the cause of death was ruled as SIDS. So, I mean, because there was no like, you know, sign of any type, anything that had happened to them.
It just, they were dead. So in the hospital, perfectly fine, healthy. But conveniently go home and they die. Yeah.
Your mind's a turn in a direction. I think we're headed. I smell that. Dr.
Stein Schneider actually wrote a paper about this strange family that had had five deaths from SIDS. And the couple actually did have a child that was living. This was an adopted son and his name was Jay. And so he, you know, I think he was in, you know, middle school or, you know, he was, he was older, I think.
And he was, you know, living. So this, of course, it caused the medical community to think that, you know, whatever was killing the children was probably hereditary. You know, if their adopted son was fine and, you know, all that stuff. So, you know, if they adopt him as a baby.
Yes, I believe so. Okay. She was actually working with this a little bit. I believe she was a foster parent.
Oh, that's terrifying. Yeah. It, you know, back in the 70s, 80s kind of thing, I think the rules were a little bit different. Kind of what they did and what they were called was a little bit different.
A lot of the rules we have now for fostering. You know, and I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure wouldn't they like check some of these things like, oh, you've had five children to die.
Like, I don't know if I would, you know, and I think a lot of it was before, I think she was fostering before. She had these kids. Oh, okay. So I think the timeline's a little, well, I don't know what, no.
Okay. But I think this, like she was fostering and adopting before she had her biological children. Pass. Okay.
Okay. So in 1986, an assistant prosecutor, William Fitzpatrick, read this article that Dr. Stench Nider had written. And while he was researching a possible defense for an upcoming child murder case that he was working on.
So he was working, you know, as a defense attorney on this case. And he immediately felt like something just wasn't right about this article. And he had a strong suspicion that the children have actually been murdered, good instincts. Yep.
Well, you know, he didn't really do a whole lot with it. But in 1992 Fitzpatrick went on to become the onondaga county district attorney. And he decided that he was going to follow up on this case. I had bugged him for years.
See that? And he went through and actually checked infant death records in the county until he found some that fit what he was looking for. And some of the surrounding counties. And he was actually able to find two children with the last name Hoyt that Dr.
Stench Nider had been involved with. And he was able to trace their mother to her home in Tiyoga County and notified their district attorney that hey, you may have a murder here. Wow. So this has been years, you know, because her last child died in 1971.
And this is 1992. Wow. So 21 years later. Yeah.
So it's been a minute. Yeah. So in 1994, so a couple years later, police decided, okay fine, you know, we're going to do this. So they got state police involved and they took one of the info questioning and she confessed to killing all five of her children.
And Juanita told investigators that she felt useless because she could not get the children to stop crying and she smothered them to death. All of them? That's what she says. Yep.
So I'm going to go through each of the kids and it's, it's real sad. So if you need to skip ahead or, you know, just come back next week for next week's episode. We get it. You know, take a safe space.
That's what I'm doing. I'm just going to curl up. I'll be so fully uncomfortable. I'm so sorry.
Okay. So it's, you know, I don't want to say thankfully because it's, you know, the murdering of children is never good, but you know, it's not like super outwardly violent, you know, like our, our one case where trees were engulfed. You drownings and drownings other things. So, okay, on January 26 of 1965, baby Eric was smothered with a pillow.
He was three months old. On September 5 of 1968, Julie was also smothered by Juanita pressing her face into her shoulder until she stopped moving and she was only a month and a half old. On September 26 and I can, 68, James was smothered with a bath towel. Now he was two.
Wow. He was two years old and Juanita said she killed him because he would not stop crying over the death of his little sister, which is just like right in the heart there. And she was not a patient person, was she? No.
And he actually apparently fought her so hard that he gave himself a bloody nose. And Juanita actually ran into the street with James's body in her arms and flagged down a garbage truck driver screaming that she had just found him like that and she thought he was dead. And now some reports that I've read said that neighbors believed that James had choked and that's how he died because I mean they didn't suspect that she had killed him. So, the sort of community was, oh, he choked on something and she found him.
She's probably got the ideal housewife, nice life, husband works at the university. Yeah. Yeah. On June 5 of 1970, Molly was a mother of the pillow and she was two and a half months old.
And on July 28th, 1971, Noah was smothered also with a pillow. And he was three and a half months old. So, there's some real sad world. There's some real sad world.
You don't need to warn. And you want to cry. Oh my gosh. And sometimes, you know, listen, I get when you have a newborn because I had a newborn and yeah, if you don't get in a sleep, you're going a little crazy, you know, you live on coffee.
But to do this, and also I really think some of the toughest part was when like my little one was anybody like, day old, a week or two old. But I mean, she seemed like some of these were three months and I don't know. Like, it almost seems like she liked maybe people. It could have been people going, oh poor, poor you.
I think that definitely had parts to do with it because the community was super sympathetic to this family because, you know, I don't think anybody, and if they didn't have any suspicions, they didn't show it. You know, they were all just devastated for the family as well. Yeah, but I mean, if it looks like a duck and it looks like a duck, I don't know. It starts to get to the point where it's like, okay, one child, okay, maybe two.
It's like an absolute tragedy. But now five, mm-hmm. Five, all from, and I mean, maybe they could have been like, you know, had a genetic son and his doctor thinking the same thing of like, oh, genetics, or. But it's interesting that they leave the hospital.
Just fine. Just fine. Yeah. I don't know.
I just know I was researching this case the other night and I was like, oh, I just felt horrible and I was like, oh my God, it's going to be so bad. I just have to tell it to Holly. And I was like, oh, I just wanted to like, come snuggle your little one. I know.
Like, I just want to go snuggle your little one. I don't know. Any, like, post-mortem depression? I would assume so, but this is, you know, the 70s and 80s, we're really talking about it.
But what's interesting is I found some more history on her and she, there really wasn't anyone healthy in her family ever. You know, she had several siblings that all had either a medical, you know, physical conditions or, you know, developmental issues. I believe her mom was really sick. I think her dad had died when she was young from like a medical thing.
So she sort of thrived on that. Yeah. And I think, you know, she was healthy. Well, I mean, not healthy, but like, mentally healthy.
She was physically healthy and, you know, I'm sure that that whole family had always gotten a lot of sympathy of like, oh, man, this is poor family and, you know, they've overcome so much. Almost like a munchau and bi-proxy, but she killed all of them. Right. And that's what people were kind of thinking as well, you know, later on, like this is, this speaks to that, but, you know, there's murder involved.
So, yeah. So none of the children were strangled because, you know, this obviously would have caused the bruising and the BTSI, which you should see in the eyes. And since they were smothered, there would have been no outward signs of any foul play. You know, they thought about this.
Right. I mean, sometimes with smothered, you do get that. TKI and your eye cyclotec are red dots, but apparently in younger kids, it's harder to detect for some reason. Well, even if they didn't have that, she could say SIDS because essentially SIDS is.
Yeah. So I don't know. It just, there was no, you know, no one saw any evidence of foul play. And all the medical personnel involved, you know, they accepted that Landa had just come into the room and found the kids dead.
You know, she was just distraught. Mother, she, you know, she put on a really good show. And then there's also a question too of like, you know, did she even know what she was doing? Did she associate?
Did she, you know, I mean, I personally believe she was exactly what she was doing. I think so. I think that she was looking for sympathy. I think that she was looking for, oh, you poor thing, you know.
And she probably just didn't want to be a mother. And we also have to look at this time period. Probably didn't have really solid birth controls. So she was continuing to get pregnant.
Maybe this was also a, I really don't want to be a mother. And now here I have these children. Yeah. So her, the other child that was adopted, and this is why I think she knew exactly what she was doing.
When they asked about him, I was like, you know, well, did he cry? Are you, you know, why is he still alive? One of the reasons why she didn't kill him was because her husband was always around when he was little and he would have seen her do it. So it sounds like she had a very intention of killing Jay as well.
And just did it. So, so prosecutors were eventually granted permission to actually exhum the bodies of the infants. So they could perform autopsies. And they didn't find much because they almost were already 25 years ago.
And also these are small, small bodies. Dr. Steinsteiner testified that he believed that the last two children had died from severe episodes of apnea. Which is, you know, when you saw breathing.
Yeah. You interrupted breathing. Now friends and neighbors had reported that one of those very nice and that they had even left their kids with her and had no concern about leaving their children with her. They had no issue with them.
Okay, here's your PSA. This is my PSA. Be careful who you leave your children with. Yeah.
Know your babysitters. No problem. No problem. And also, I'm sorry, but if my neighbor, my potential babysitter, had lost five children, I would be suspicious and probably wouldn't.
I would opt out for her to watch my child. Yeah, I don't think that would be on my list there. Yeah, and like I said earlier, it seems like Juanita was also a foster parent for a brief period of time, which is concerning. And she, you know, fought her and adopted her adopted son-in-law that she had, Jay.
However, she told a social worker to come and get another child that she had when that child was only nine months old. And she apparently told a social worker that she was afraid that she would hurt him. But didn't explain? I don't think she did.
I mean, that's literally, there was only that bullet in an article and I was like, what? So there's been, there were flags. There were definitely some red flags with this one here. Oh, yeah.
I wonder who the agency was. Really close words. Yeah, I mean, we'll shut that down. So, of course Juanita would go on to recant for convention.
Her attorney has actually used the defense that she was extremely emotionally scarred and that she would have likely admitted to anything with the right persuasion. No one, come on. If you were innocent, why would you admit to killing your children? And they actually brought her husband in as well.
And he, you know, for all, he didn't know about any of this. And he, you know, was brought in and she asked for him and she told him what had happened. And he was like, no, I don't believe this. He's like, this is crazy.
And then, you know, she's like, no, this is what happened and told him exactly what she had done. So, did they take her side and defend her? I don't think so. I didn't see too much else about him listed.
So, obviously, this defense did not hold up. And she was actually convicted in April of 1995. She wasn't sentenced until September 11th of 1995 and she was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison. And she received 15 years for each murder and those were to be considered consecutively.
And some believed, like you said, that she suffered from that much housing syndrome by proxy as well, but with some bad bonus on murder. So, in this case, it actually made a lot of people question if SIDS was actually a real thing that happened. If medical professionals could be tricked into believing that this woman had lost five children all the SIDS, then people felt like it was possible. There were a lot of other cases of SIDS out there that were actually murders.
So, now we're putting a diagnosis on trial. Right. That's kind of what this case is known for as the trial against SIDS. So, thankfully, this didn't hold up and SIDS is still recognized, of course, as I call the death for infants.
And it's a horrible tragic thing that does definitely happen and, you know, it's enough of anybody's who doesn't happen. So, not like in this case where it wasn't SIDS. Exactly. So, Juanita actually died in prison, a pancreatic cancer, in August of 1998.
And it actually pisses me off a little bit. She only spent three years in prison. Yeah. I got to live this totally normal life, otherwise.
And it's just, what's weird, and I don't know if it's a still thing, but it was back in the 90s, apparently. She was actually exonerated for her crimes because under New York law, apparently, if you die before your appeal is heard, she was exonerated. We didn't matter because she's dead. She's dead, so whatever.
But still, it's just weird. Like, a weird little lost had been there. Yeah, that's strange. I don't know if it's still a thing, but...
Well, yeah, but we're reading about it, and she confessed to it, so... Yeah. Yeah. She's definitely guilty in my book.
Yeah, same. A lot of it. So, this is another kind of short one. That's really all I have when I just thought it was really interesting.
Especially since it did put a whole disorder, like a whole medical diagnosis on trial. Well, I mean, there's several things. Like, my God, she was a foster parent. That's scary.
You know, she said that she wanted to kill both of her foster children, and then her adopted some. And then, you know, she ended up killing her children. And I don't know if initially it was with the intention of making them like... You know, I don't know.
Maybe it started as a munchouse, and like, I'll make them sick, but then, you know, they cried, she got frustrated, and she just killed them. I don't know. I just know... I know.
It's not a good one. Having a child. That's thanks to you. How can you not look at your baby?
You can just be like... I know. I know. Anything.
You know, like, oh my gosh, to protect you. Yeah. Yeah, it was a lot. This whole story was a lot.
But, you know, we're gonna go eat some cookies and... I had to pee. What a shock. In fact, that alien episode, just open the door and let me...
Let me urinate. Let me urinate. Alright, well, I have a shoutout this week, and I'm going to go ahead and shout out Luckersville, Virginia. Luckersville?
Luckersville? Luckersville. Luckersville. We're all gonna drink more than this.
No. We've had coffee. We have a coffee. I need some more coffee.
Yeah, and water. Yes. Luckersville, Virginia, thank you. Thank you.
We love you.