Artist’s Statement
This baby scrapbook is dedicated to children who have been (at least allegedly) murdered by their mothers. This tragic, unimaginable, and reprehensible act, sometimes referred to as “maternal filicide,” is one we rarely discuss outside highly charged debates surrounding recent cases. It is often left untouched by arguments of reason and levelheadedness, given the repulsion by which it is regarded – and with good enough reason, too. I am entirely horrified by what motivates mothers to kill their own children. This project was no easy task, given the amount of research into gruesome cases of maternal filicide and the details surrounding these murders. This book is, in a way, haunted by the memories of these children that were killed, by the details and motivations surrounding the murders that remain unclear, and by the injustice of it all.
I decided to limit my focus to three high-profile cases, so that I can highlight the way in which the cases were treated by the media and processed by the general public. I focused on Caylee Anthony, whose cause of death was reported as undetermined and whose mother, Casey Anthony was tried and found not guilty of her murder. The Casey Anthony trial garnered unprecedented attention across the globe. I included the death of Addison Weaver, a baby who was wrapped in a plastic bag and discarded in the trashcan outside the Delta Gamma Theta sorority house at Muskingum University in Ohio by her mother, Emily Weaver. This was the second case of its kind in the 21st century at Muskingum University. The mother, Emily Weaver, was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Finally, I included the murders of Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary Yates, all systematically drowned in a bathtub by their mother in their Texas home.
I chose the form and aesthetic of a baby book for this project partially for the shock factor, and partially as a way to comment on the lives and memories that these children could have had had they survived past their infancy or young childhoods. The light pastel colors, soft fonts, patterns, frames, and illustrations are all intended to lull the viewer into a false sense of ease and security – a hauntedness that reminds us what their lives might have been. The photos of the children before they were killed and the photos of the mothers’ mug shots and court proceedings are intentionally juxtaposed against the soft backdrop of the baby book to elicit a sort of cognitive confusion.
The Casey Anthony trial was a national melodrama that captivated audiences all across the United States. Although Anthony was found not guilty of child abuse, manslaughter, and murder (Barnett 2016, 14), this case exemplifies the way in which mothers accused of such an unthinkable crime are represented in popular media. Caylee Marie was reported by her grandmother, Cindy Anthony, approximately a month after she had last seen the child alive. The report set off a massive search for the missing toddler, eventually leading to the discovery of her remains in the woods near her grandparents’ house. Casey claimed that Caylee had been kidnapped by a babysitter, and then switched her story to claim that she had drowned in the family pool and was then buried in the woods by her grandfather, Casey’s dad, George.
After the toddler’s remains were found, however, focus was placed primarily on the activities and demeanor of Casey during the month long period in which her daughter was missing. The media had a field-day covering Casey’s lack of merit as a mother and painted her as a callous, calculating liar. Much of the attention was centered on the drinking, partying, and shopping she was doing, the clothes she was wearing, and the men she was dating while Caylee was missing. During her trial, spectators from all across the country flocked to Orlando, Florida in an attempt to procure one of the highly coveted public seats in the courtroom. One woman in attendance said that Anthony’s “stories are so extreme and fantastic, it’s hard to believe they’re true, but that’s what engrosses people. This case has sex, lies, and videotapes just like on reality TV.” (Barnett 2016, 13).
When a jury of her peers found her not guilty, social media went wild with shock and threats of vigilante justice. The social media coverage of this case allowed journalists and their audiences to interact and to air their grievances and outrage. Facebook groups, posts, and tweets questioned how long Anthony would make it outside of prison before being “taken out” and urged citizens to track her whereabouts and make sure she didn’t “slip into hiding” (Barnett 2016, 14). Social media was an outlet for those who felt invested in the outcome of the case and created the illusion that by engaging via the Internet, a person had acted or contributed constructively to the case. While there was a great deal of vilification of Anthony, there was very little shared on how we might avoid such a tragic case in the future. Over the course of the investigation and trial, Casey Anthony became one of the most nationally prominent villainous celebrities and the token “bad mom.”
Emily Weaver was tried and convicted for giving birth to a baby girl in a sorority house bathroom and then disposing of the baby (who proceeded to die from asphyxiation) in a plastic bag in the trashcan outside. She was sentenced to life in prison without parole because the judge didn’t think she seemed the least bit remorseful. Prosecutors argued that Weaver knew she was pregnant all along and engaged in risky behaviors because she had never intended on keeping the baby. One of the most surreal aspects of this case is that virtually the exact same thing had happened at this university in 2003 when Jennifer Bryant dumped her newborn baby in a campus trash receptacle, pleading guilty to the charges but maintaining that she had thought the baby was stillborn. Bryant was sentenced to three years but served only six months in prison.
Andrea Yates was portrayed as a picture-perfect mother who was mentally troubled and unstable. She attempted suicide twice months after the birth of her fourth child and a few years before the murders. Despite the symptoms of what was later diagnosed as postpartum psychosis, a rare condition that affects approximately 0.1 percent of mothers, Yates’ family never saw her as a threat to her children because they believed she loved them so much (Barnett 2016, 66). Yates, however, saw herself as a terrible mother who was failing to save her children from the temptations of Satan. Sometimes she thought she was possessed by Satan himself and other times she believed she was carrying out a prophecy.
Some accused Yates of being a lying trickster (an all too common trope assigned to women) who was feigning her mental illness in an attempt to get off the hook for her actions. She was initially charged with the crime of which she admitted she had committed and sentenced to life in prison. Upon appeal, however, she was found not guilty by reason of mental insanity and committed to a mental facility where she remains today. Referring to our understanding of the events and the motivation of Yates, journalist Dahlia Lithwick said, “Perhaps it comforts us to believe that anyone who violates the sacred mother-child bond is simply crazy; it would be unimaginable if these mothers were making rational criminal decisions” (Barnett 2016, 71). We label women who kill their children as nutcases, so as to more neatly fit these anomalies in our understanding of what women and mothers should be.
In her chapter on “Woman as Possessed Monster” Creed argues that many horror films explore female monstrousness and the inability of the male order to control women whose perversity is expressed via her rebellious body (Creed 34). As is evidenced by these and other cases of maternal filicide, it is easier for us to understand women who kill their children as monstrous anomalies rather than perhaps the product of a system that rarely provides enough support or acknowledgement for women who struggle with the demands of motherhood.
In “Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning,” Brubaker et al. discuss how the removal of geographical barriers via social media changes the ways in which people grieve and mourn. They also examine how the social expansion of mourning has changed the dynamics surrounding death. This is especially evident in these cases, where the public – perhaps even from states away, geographically and socially removed from the immediacy of the situation – grieves the children murdered and calls for justice via tweets, comments, and likes.
Tragic stories of women killing their children are nothing new; they date back at least as far as the Greek tragedy Medea. The facts about these real life tragedies are not shared via statistics, however, but shrewdly crafted into human interest stories that inform and explain things in a way that create and reinforce cultural norms. The way we talk about these cases and these women matter. The way they are portrayed by the media matters and affects the general discourse and the norms and values with which we continue to instill upon each new generation of mothers.
Click here to view the baby book
References
Barnett, Barbara. 2016. Motherhood in the Media: Infanticide, Journalism, and the Digital Age. New York: Routledge.
Brubaker, Jed R., Gillian Hayes, & Paul Dourish. 2013. “Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning.” The Information Society 29: 152-163.
Creed, Barbara. 1993. “Woman as Possessed Monster” In The Monstrous Feminine. London Routledge. 31-42.
