Editor’s note: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
A Frankfort mother accused of fatally hanging her 2-year-old son pleaded not guilty to murder charges Thursday, according to court records.
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Corie Walsh’s 2-year-old son, Barrett Walsh, was found unresponsive and hanging from a ligature in the basement of the family’s Frankfort home Sept. 1, according to prosecutors. Walsh was found upstairs in a bathtub full of bloody water, actively harming herself with a knife, prosecutors said.
Barrett was known by the nickname “Bear,” according to his obituary, where he was described as “a joyful, funny, entertaining, rambunctious 2-year-old.”
“He loved animals, bedtime stories, doing the good-bye dance with joyous perfection, feeding Oscar too many treats and really enjoyed playing his favorite game Ready, Set, Go,” Barrett’s obituary said. “Bear will forever be missed by all who knew him, especially the way his smiling face would light up a room and fill it with joy, wonder and awe.”
Prosecutors said Walsh told officers she had killed Barrett because he was the “devil” and the “anti-Christ.”
Walsh’s lawyers have not denied that she was the one who killed Barrett, but said that she was suffering from sudden-onset acute psychosis and lacked any intent or forethought. Her statements and actions around the killing were nonsensical, defense attorney Robert Kerr said.
“Is this first-degree murder? Not by any stretch of the imagination,” Kerr said at Walsh’s detention hearing. “Corie was in a state of psychosis when she harmed her child.”
Walsh is currently being held in the Will County jail. Her lawyers had asked that she be allowed to voluntarily admit herself for inpatient psychiatric care at her detention hearing instead of being incarcerated, alleging that the jail was not capable of providing the treatment she required.
Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak rejected that request and ordered that Walsh remain in jail as her case progresses, saying there was no combination of conditions she could impose on pretrial release that would alleviate the danger Walsh potentially posed to her surviving three children, her husband and to other children in the community.
Following Barrett’s death, Walsh had claimed to have killed her three other children, who in reality were all unharmed, and also expressed intent to kill her husband, who was out of state at the time, Will County Assistant State’s Attorney Tricia McKenna said at her detention hearing.
“The defendant made statements as well that she intended to harm her husband once he arrived home, that she intended to poison him with a drink,” McKenna said.
Prosecutors said that Walsh had been very invested in the Lindsay Clancy case, which was in jury deliberations at the time of Barrett’s death, discussing it with friends over group text.
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Clancy, a Massachusetts mother, was charged with murder in the deaths of her three children, while her lawyers argued she lacked criminal responsibility due to suffering from postpartum psychosis. Her case ended in a mistrial when the jury was unable to reach a verdict.
Walsh’s next court date is set for Oct. 26 at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet.
In Barrett’s obituary, the family asked that memorial donations be made in his name to Make-A-Wish Illinois.