Attorneys for an Illinois mother accused of killing her toddler say she was experiencing psychosis when the child died.
Corie Walsh, a mother of four, faces three counts of first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old son, Barrett. She has entered a not guilty plea.
During a Sept. 8 detention hearing in Will County, Walsh cried and lowered her head as her defense team urged the court to send her to inpatient mental health treatment rather than jail.
Judge Amy Bertani rejected that request, saying, “I can’t make this decision out of compassion or empathy. There is clear and convincing evidence that she is involved in [a] first-degree murder offense and is a clear and present threat to husband and other children.”
After the hearing, defense attorney Andrea Lyon responded to the judge’s decision outside the courthouse.
“We’re disappointed with the ruling,” she told reporters. “But we’re going to continue to work really hard to investigate this case and present the defense as correct, which is that she was psychotic and this is not a first-degree murder.”
Court documents cited by NBC 5 Chicago noted Walsh was interested in Lindsay Clancy’s trial, claiming she “had been actively discussing the case via group text message with her friends” hours before Barrett was killed.
However, Lyon pushed back on comparisons.
“That it’s a copycat or anything like that,” Lyon said, “is baseless and cruel.”
According to the outlet, Walsh’s other defense attorney, Robert Kerr, called the contrast “sickening,” adding, “Describing Corie to a copied Lindsay is to take an easy bait.”
Earlier this month, police responded to Walsh’s home after a neighbor found Barrett, whose nickname was Bear, hanging from a basement rafter with a ligature around his neck, according to a petition for pretrial detention cited by NBC 5 Chicago.
Barrett’s body was cold and he had no pulse, however the neighbor lowered him to the ground and performed CPR. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
An unharmed infant was also inside the home and two other school-aged children arrived when authorities were there, the outlet reported.
Police found Walsh in an upstairs bathtub “fully dressed, surrounded by bloody water,” the petition read, with the neighbor pressing a towel to her thigh. The neighbor told investigators Walsh said she was trying to kill herself and that her son was in the basement.
Walsh told investigators that she “did this to her baby because he was the devil and the anti-Christ,” according to court documents cited by NBC 5 Chicago. Officials noted that Walsh “later admitted in the hospital how she killed Barrett.”
A preliminary autopsy cited by the outlet showed Barrett died of asphyxia due to ligature compression of the neck.
Prosecutors said Walsh also planned to harm her husband, who was not home at the time, and “poison him with a drink.” They said Walsh believed she had also killed her three other children.
“It is also a tragedy that Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened,” Lyon told ABC News in a Sept. 6 statement. “It is our hope that through a thorough presentation and investigation of the facts, that all of us will come to see this heartbreak for what it is.”
Walsh’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Oxygen.